Meet Katie

Katie is a holistic Nurse Practitioner and Health Consultant

With nearly two decades working in the healthcare world, a graduate with honors from Duke University, boarded as a Family Nurse Practitioner and an Advanced Practice Hospice and Palliative Care Nurse, I have had a wide variety of experience that has made me the clinician I am today. Throughout my career the tides have changed in healthcare. More disease, more medications, more inflammation, obesity, mental health conditions, and autoimmune disease; with no true resolutions. With the  experience and knowledge in multiple care models; naturopathy, reiki, holisitic, and integrative medicine, I believe that a one model approach is a disservice to our patients by just keeping the condition stable. There has to be more than the common allopathic model to achieve great health!

It all started when I became a very sick patient…

I was terrified, exhausted, having severe neurological complications and I had just given birth to our son just a few months prior. I was a busy Nurse Practitioner working in the inpatient hospital setting providing hospice and palliative care to the critically and terminally ill patients. I loved my home life and loved my career, but inside I felt like I was truly slowly dying, something was physically affecting me, and I had never felt this sick before. I pushed through until the symptoms were so severe I began to drag my leg and loose sensation in parts of my body. I for sure thought I had Multiple Sclerosis in my mid 30s as I already had been affected with autoimmune disease in my teens and early 20s.  I went to multiple providers who told me I was too stressed and likely had post-partum depression. None of which I had, my life was great, I did not have primary psychological stress, my health and symptoms were not being looked at as a whole person. 

My passion for quality of life is my foundation for all my patients and clients, as it takes a special person to devote their career to the terminally ill population. I have tried to achieve this goal for my patients in a confined medical model in hospitals and private practice, although met with resistance within the structure of the allopathic model that is not right for all patients. This rang true to me as I was very ill and became a patient that felt very lost in a system I was part of. I found myself having to self advocate for referrals, and being bounced around without a lot of education,  guidance, or resolution to the ailments. This resulted in delay in proper diagnoses, treatments that then became extended due to misdiagnosis, debilitating symptoms, and long lasting chronic conditions that I still deal with today.