My story began with my heart and soul, my parents. While I was in college at UC Berkeley, my father was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer. He fought but lost a very painful battle. Two short months later, my mother was diagnosed with a rare and extremely aggressive form of ovarian cancer. Before we even had a chance to grieve my father, we were in another surreal battle to save my mother, who could hardly process the death of her soulmate, let alone her own mortality. With experimental treatment and (I truly believe), my father in heaven watching over her, my mother is still with us today.
As you can imagine, this completely changed my perspective on life. All that mattered was the health and happiness of my loved ones. I took it upon myself to be the ultimate caretaker, making it my passion, my mantra and my goal to make sure that the people I loved were happy and healthy. But in doing so, I overlooked my own health, heartache and trauma from what our family had gone through.
My good intentions and drive for healing others led me to a place where I was sacrificing my wellness for the sake of helping others.
As passionate as I was about healing and providing comfort and nutritional education to others, I did not realize the personal damage that the entire experience had caused. That is, until I found myself fighting for my own health after I had a surgery and contracted MRSA straight from the operating room.
