Built by Patients for Patients.

I'd always been an active child — adventurous, disciplined, and determined. Despite frozen back spasms, a severe neck injury that nearly broke it, and abdominal pain starting in my teens, pain was something I'd grown accustom to and just pushed through. Until college I felt pretty normal — confident, athletic, and healthy.

So how did a pretty normal girl end up with a long list of diagnoses by her early 30s?

• CIRS / Mold Toxicity
• Lyme Disease and co-infections
• Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS)
• Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS)
• Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)
• Dysautonomia / POTS symptoms
• Parasites
• Endometriosis
• Chronic Fatigue
• Chronic Pain
• Cranial Cervical Instability (CCI)

My career as a professional piano performer ended abruptly when burning pain radiated down my arms, hands, back, and neck — Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

Depression, tendinosis, severe nutrient depletion, and anorexia followed. Not purposefully, but because the only way I knew to blot out pain was to push harder. So I kept running five-to-ten miles a day, sleeping five or less hours a night, and surviving off cheese, salad, and Larabars.

I traveled internationally for the first time and came back very ill. I saw doctors and specialists for the debilitating back pain with numbness down to my heels and GI symptoms that left me doubled over after eating. The answers were always the same: "No known cause. IBS. Take a Pepcid." It didn't help.

My labs looked mostly normal, so no one dug deeper. My body kept deteriorating. It was screaming at me — I'd start falling asleep standing, sitting, teaching piano… or driving. Which landed me in my first car accident. Then another less than a year later, both resulted in concussions, followed by a third in sports.

I pursued culinary arts to fill my creative side. It brought joy feeding people beautiful food. It couldn't replace music, but helped dampen the hole piano had left.

But symptoms continued to spread. Eating became difficult. A deep, crushing pain sat in my chest. I became a full-time chef, traveling the world, winning competitions, and building a career around food… food I could barely eat. I found myself lying on my back in the driveway at high-profile events, nearly passed out from pain and fatigue.

Flights left me nauseous, seething from back pain, throbbing with migraines. I'd traveled extensively, adding South Africa, Norway, and Mexico plus ten to the list — but not without adding more symptoms (and parasites).

I never fully recovered after covid, but was hopeful when I got married — a new life with my favorite person would surely reduce symptoms. We moved into our dream home and my health collapsed. For the first time ever, I couldn't keep pushing. I was crawling on the floor, unable to walk. Water made me nauseous.

We found black mold. Lots of it. We were homeless, all our unwashable items discarded. Daily migraines, partial seizures, tremors, difficulty breathing, vertigo, and so much more. My husband had to hold me up to walk. The pain was relentless; the brain fog and depression relentless. Numbness, paralysis on the left side of my face left me terrified. I sought help from my PCP and without seeing me, she ordered therapy sessions.

I wanted to give up. Instead, I started searching for answers myself.

Functional doctors. Naturopaths. Mold experts. Lyme experts. MDs. Internists. I listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts, read research papers, watched case studies, interviewed practitioners, and devoured knowledge. I started working with different practitioners — some treatments helped. Others didn't. My body had become so sensitive, helpful interventions often left me bedridden.

My social life disappeared. My husband's unwavering support and prayer were the only dependable constant. Then endometriosis took center stage. The pain became unbearable, and surgery unavoidable. It helped, relieving chronic back pain, but migraines, fatigue, shortness of breath, and now heart symptoms continued.

I became a certified Integrative Nutritional Health Coach, partly to understand my own health better, partly to help others one day. We moved to a sunny climate. Doing all the lifestyle things right, I was confident this was the turning point. I started studying nutrition from Stanford.

My health declined again. Finally diagnosed with Lyme disease, pericarditis, palpitations, irregular heart rate, near-syncope, and more fatigue followed.

A severe allergic reaction to MRI contrast — the scariest experience of my life — became the breakthrough point. Only through gadolinium poisoning did the dots connect, and in those dark hours, scared even to breathe, God was working.

My view on healthcare shifted. I'd met wonderful doctors and disappointing ones in both the functional and traditional medicine worlds. They'd given me many diagnoses. But in over a decade, both had ultimately failed in fixing anything.

Because they'd glossed over the foundations — genetics, cellular hydration, vitamin and mineral imbalance and depletion, and autonomic nervous system function — we can't bypass or biohack enough lifestyle and supplement protocols for someone who isn't first supported on a genetic level or in a state of nervous system freeze. Run all the labwork, GI maps, and TotalTox tests, but little progresses unless the terrain is considered. And when the body's in a constant state of chronic sickness, chronic fear creates a feedback loop — the nervous system and the brain cycle must be addressed in every single chronically ill patient first.

No one will fight for your health the way you will. Doctors and practitioners can guide you, but you know your body best. With access to resources and knowledge, you can find those who listen and empower YOU, the patient. That's why I created The Health Konnector — to fill the gap I wish I'd had.

My journey cost tens of thousands of dollars, thousands of hours, countless tears, and painful searching. But God used it to bring answers to me and now to you.