All About Me

The Practical Practitioner - All About Me

Hey everyone! Welcome to my blog! I'm so excited you're here! 

My name is Lyndsey and I'm all about making my life one of wellness, balance, health, and joy. I firmly believe that with a little effort and a lot of patience, you can live your life fully versus watch it pass you by.

Why The Practical Practitioner? Well, I'm a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner by trade. I specialize in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. However, I'm not your typical health care provider. I believe that Western medicine has it's place in the treatment of acute illness but I also believe that until your body is whole on the inside, you are not living your best life possible.

You may be thinking "what could this young woman possibly know about illness"? You may wonder what I've been through or why I've chosen to grab my own health by the reigns and take back control. Well to understand that, you'll need to understand my history. So here goes....

I've been a sickly girl from the day I was born. God bless my parents for everything they went through to keep me healthy. The endless doctors visits, hospitalizations, allergy shots, breathing treatments in the middle of the night - you name it, they did it for me. 

I fought serious asthma and repeated ear infections and respiratory illness until around middle school. I caught a break with my health for awhile although I began rapidly gaining weight as I hit puberty. In high school I struggled with ovarian cysts, extremely irregular cycles, going on and off every kind of birth control possible to attempt to manage my hormones, and even a non-cancerous breast tumor the size of an orange at age 16! My hormones were out of whack and I had no idea they could actually get worse from here.

In college, I actually got my asthma back! Yes, isn't that nice? Back to wheezing at the drop of a hat. My hormones also took a scary turn. I would sweat, shake, and nearly pass out from PMS hormone surges. My Dad nicknamed them 'episodes'. My parents cheer-leaded me endlessly as my hormone surges began to turn into anxiety. Fear to even leave the house because I 'might feel sick'. I was diagnosed with everything you can imagine to explain my symptoms. But every diagnosis only lead to more pills and no relief. 

I continued to eat my way through the pain. Gaining weight into the 200s rapidly. I worked out but no where near enough to burn off the emotional calories I was consuming. Little did I know at the time, this weight gain was only fueling my hormonal problems by increasing insulin resistance. 

I fought MRSA bacteremia (basically a MRSA infection made it all the way into my blood stream). I made my way through numerous hospitalizations for asthma exacerbations and pneumonia. I worked through many shifts as an ER nurse giving myself breathing treatments every 2 hours just to be able to function. I caught every single germ I came into contact with. My best guess, I was on antibiotics 10 or more times per year and steroids at least 8 times per year. I was put on verbal and bed rest numerous times for my asthma to keep me out of the hospital. I also recall 2 months of illness where I had strep then the stomach flu then mono all back-to-back. I lost 30 lbs in about 5 weeks! For a young woman making her way through her first years as a nurse, this was not the most ideal situation!

One ER shift, I actually got so bad from a PMS hormonal surge, I found myself passed out on the floor. One of the nurses I was working with sat me down and asked what was going on. I explained my monthly cycles from hell. Thanks to her, I finally landed in an OBGYN office where a PA she referred me to decided to make it her mission to figure out what was wrong with me. She discovered the PCOS. She discovered the estrogen dominance. She even identified a genetic bleeding condition that would be essential to know about if I ever got pregnant. She also 'fixed' me by putting me on DepoProvera injections. Honestly, as much as I hated going onto yet another drug, hitting me with doses of progesterone and stopping my cycles all together probably saved my sanity and allowed me to live my life.

So I lived my life as best as I could. I continued to fight anxiety - sometimes so crippling I would cancel fun plans just because I couldn't think of leaving the house. I began to suffer symptoms of IBS closely tied to my hormones and anxiety. I pasted a smile on my face and did my best. My breaking point was coming soon and I am beyond thankful to my family and handful of friends who hung in there with me and supported me through it!