Like many in the professional health and wellness community, my journey started when my health took a turn. I’ve always been an active, healthy, lively person who has never broken a bone or had any major injuries. Growing up I played all the sports, indoor and outdoor, summer and winter, and never had any issues with stamina or lag in strength. My body worked how it should.

I remember sitting on the couch at 9 at night and out of nowhere the left side of my face went numb and my vision started to go blurry. Long story short, after an exhausting 7 hours in the ER with endless blood tests, scans and everything in between the doctor walks in and says you never told us you were Diabetic. I remember kind of laughing in my sleepless state and saying “I’m not diabetic.” That night in the ER my blood sugar was at 29 mmol/dl. A non-diabetic person's blood sugar levels should never be above 8 mmol/dl. I was discharged at a whooping 18 mmol/dl and said “A specialist should give you a call in a few days.” It wasn’t after some good ole “Dr. Googling” I realized I was still sitting at a dangerously high number and called my family doctor in a panic.

Fast forward a few months after many nights of crying and asking into the dark “Why me”, endless needle pokes, bruises and slowly learning how to navigate this new lifelong rollercoaster, I went and got some routine T1D blood work done. And to my dismay, I tested positive for Celiac disease. So off for a gastrointestinal scope I went and was diagnosed with severe scaring on my stomach lining from long-term gluten exposure while being an undiagnosed Celiac, and was instructed to immediately remove any gluten-containing foods from my diet. Now looking back at my life growing up I always had stomach aches. I’d eat something and within 20-20 minutes I was in the washroom and as this was quite embarrassing I never looked into it, now it all made sense. Soon after this, I was also sent to be tested for GERD, Gastrointestinal Esophagal Reflux Disease, which is the heartburn that does damage, and what would you know, I had GERD as well.

Now the GERD thing may not be a huge topic in my health journey but it does tie in HUGE to why I decided to go into Holistic wellness. What I haven’t mentioned above is the countless ER visits with heart ultrasounds, chest x-rays and stress tests, with extreme chest pain, and left arm tingling, neck shoulder and jaw pain. Every time they ran their tests, looked me over and said “You’re fine, probably just anxiety.” It wasn't until after being in class and talking about GERD and the symptoms it can present that it clicked. ALL of my unexplained chest, arm, shoulder, neck, and jaw pain were symptoms of GERD. No one had ever taken the time to look at my medical records and make the connection.
Not ONCE.

Now let's be clear. I am not bashing the medical system. Without it, I would have slowly slipped into a diabetic coma and passed away before the end of 2020.
We need it like we need air. Or like Insulin…

After all my experiences, positive or not, I knew I was meant for this new career path of teaching and helping people be their best advocate for their body because it's the only one we have, so why wouldn’t we give it the best chance possible?