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My whole life I’ve always been the guy that’s “up for it”. A spur-of-the-moment 5-mile hike - sign me up! Getting up before dawn to catch the sunrise after flying in on a red-eye - sure why not! Want to snowboard from when the slopes open until they close - is there any other way?
Then one day I realized I’d started saying no and making excuses like “I’m too tired”, “that’s too far”, or “I’d be soo sore after that”. I knew it was time to start asking questions, but who should I ask?
For the first 26 years of my life, a doctor was someone you went to because you needed paperwork filled out or because you broke something (yes I do have screws in a bone). For better or worse, I never built a proactive medical routine with a primary care doctor or even getting regular physicals. We moved every couple of years and routinely changed insurances so finding new doctors who were in-network seemed like too much work.
This all changed a little over 3 years ago when I started having fairly consistent GI discomfort. I did the whole classical medical process: find a primary care doctor, get referred for special tests, wait a couple of weeks for test results, get referred to another specialist, wait some more, then proceed to be told by all of them that I’m one of the healthiest people they’ve seen in a while and there’s nothing wrong with me.
But I didn’t feel like I was healthy.
The answer came from a nutritionist friend who recommended starting a food journal of everything I ate, looking for commonalities, and then one at a time eliminating things from my diet for a month at a time. A few weird months later having figured out that by removing dairy and eggs from my diet I felt great, and questioned the 4 figure medical bills I was paying from all my tests that couldn’t do what a simple journal helped me fix.
Simply put, I was starting to trust doctors to fix me, but not necessarily to help me feel my best.
Earlier this year I jokingly commented to my friend when we both turned 30, “It’s all downhill now that we’re old”. And even though it was total sarcasm at the time, within weeks I pulled a groin muscle playing a casual game of tennis that to this day hasn’t healed properly.
After 2 months I finally decided I needed to see someone. I followed the only medical playbook I knew (and had done a few years before): search for an in-network PCP → a 10 min conversation with a PCP → tests → wait → results & new specialist → repeat → “You’re healthy”. By that point, I noticed that the PT I was doing was making me more sore, like my body wasn’t healing like it used to.
And even though I said it sarcastically, at 30 years old I shouldn’t feel like I’m 50+.
Maybe it was time to try something different…
Sitting down with Sarah for my consultation at DTE was a totally different experience. For one, it was on a couch not a paper-covered sterile (and uncomfortable) table, but also it was relaxed. She sat across from me, tucked her legs under her, got comfortable with a drink and a laptop, and started where no one I’ve seen before had, “let’s start at the beginning”.
With my previous experience with doctors, it was more than a little weird (in a good way) to have someone look wholistic at my health experience up until this point with the lens of how it all connects. The further we got into the conversation Sarah would make comments about things that she would be paying attention to in the full blood test based on what she was starting to piece together of my medical history and what my personal goals of optimizing my health looked like.
My consultation ended up being 3-4x longer than I’ve ever spent talking with a medical professional before since she went over everything holistically, took the time to answer any questions I had, and validated that it wasn’t normal to feel how I was feeling, even if it was just low energy or taking longer than usual to heal.
I left my consultation excited to get my blood test done and sit down with Sarah again to discuss what she found based on comparing what she learned from my consultation and what she saw in my comprehensive blood test.
If nothing else it was reassuring to have a professional tell me that it’s not normal to feel what I’m feeling at this age and that there were things I could do to optimize how I feel today, and to maintain it in the future.
My next steps are to get labs done and meet with Sarah again to review the results. You can see real-time updates on our Instagram or check out the reel below that Jo put together from her perspective of getting her consultation.
To learn more about the Total Wellness Care at Down to Earth Wellness Center you can find more information by clicking here.
-Lyndon
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