Why I quit being a nutritional therapist
Having to give up working as a nutritional therapist felt like a huge failure. Now, I try to see it as a gift.
I spent 25 years working in design and branding before qualifying as a nutritional therapist in 2017. It was thrilling to change careers so I could help others in a meaningful way (supporting health!) instead of a superficial way (designing logos!). Long Covid, two major surgeries, and a colostomy bag later, I've had to come to terms with giving up nutritional therapy and falling back on my old career.
Having built my design career working for big names in Rome, New York City and London, I went freelance to look after two very demanding 'clients' I made with my own body in 2004 and 2006. These children were miracles to me — I'd been diagnosed with infertility 'so severe' that I didn't even qualify for IVF. I'll write about that saga another time, but yes, supporting my body naturally certainly helped.
My youngest became severely ill with PANDAS in 2013, and the lack of medical support made me anxious and angry. I retrained in nutritional therapy to understand how I could help support her health, especially as she was on constant prophylactic antibiotics that I knew were destroying her long-term gut health. I qualified in 2017, and in the meantime found Stella Chadwick at Brainstorm Health, who helped us navigate treating PANDAS. Stella’s level of knowledge was mind-blowing, and although I was often overwhelmed by the volume of lab tests, diet plans, and supplements, I was determined and just kept ploughing through.
Happily, the worst of my daughter's symptoms resolved by 2019 and she was discharged from Great Ormond Street with 'the healthiest blood test results' the consultant had ever seen (his exact words). Thank you, nutritional therapy!
Stella offered me a job at Brainstorm Health as a practitioner and I was thrilled. It was a huge privilege to do work that helped families who were in the same situation we used to be in. Not that a well-designed logo can't be helpful, but supporting desperate parents of very sick kids felt a bit more important.
Then COVID happened and everything got f*cked.
My post-PANDAS daughter contracted it in March 2020, and some of her symptoms returned. This was devastating and terrifying. I became very anxious about us going back to the surreal hell that is living with PANDAS. Thankfully, she's never become as ill as she was originally, and has even gone on to study Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University. At the height of her illness, I couldn't imagine a future where that was even possible. It's not a smooth-sailing miracle cure story, but I am incredibly grateful she is well enough to live away from home and study independently.
I also got COVID in March 2020 but was relieved to spend only a day in bed with a bad headache. 'No big deal!' I thought. By June 2020, I was debilitated by what is now called Long Covid. I could no longer sit up at a computer during Zoom consultations. Looking at anyone moving on a screen would cause the whole room to spin in a strange, funhouse kind of way. I often felt as though the room was slowly tipping on a mechanical axis, and that at any moment I would slide into a corner. This is not a funhouse I wanted to live in.
Pausing here for a personal shout-out to Covid: F*ck You.
When I quite literally busted a gut
Between 2022 and 2023, my sigmoid colon perforated several times, the last episode resulting in life-saving emergency surgery where I had a 50% chance of not making it as I also had sepsis. In February 2023, I woke up after 9½ hours of surgery with a colostomy bag, and spent the next 9 months with my new companion (I named him Bilbo) before my reversal surgery in December 2023.
These dramatic turns of events made it clear that I needed to reduce my stress as much as possible.
I decided to focus on rebuilding my design and branding career, comforted by the knowledge that I could support other nutritional therapists and health practitioners, and remain part of the community. I'm ashamed that it took a life-threatening situation to make me do what was best for me but anyone who knows me would say this is very ‘on brand’ for me. It’s never too late for a re-brand, and I’m still trying to reprogramme myself on a daily basis.
This is me with my colostomy bag ‘Bilbo’, as I came to call him. I was lucky enough to have a reversal, and in the days before that surgery, I realised just how grateful I was for everything Bilbo had done for me. It felt strange to feel bereft saying goodbye to what had originally been my worst nightmare. I wrote about the experience for Tidings Magazine, Colostomy UK's publication. You can read it here.
What now?
I'm trying to rewrite the story in my head: taking a scary situation — a major health crisis that forced me to give up something I loved — and turning it into something positive. So, my new purpose is to take the stress out of branding and websites for nutritional therapists. I want to give them the professional platform they deserve. They shouldn't have to DIY it or settle for poor advice. With my background in both branding and nutritional therapy, I feel I'm in a genuinely unique position to serve this incredible group of people.
What nutritional therapists do is HARD. Very hard. Harder than what doctors and nurses do (I've been told this, by actual doctors and nurses). It's so complex, detailed, and deeply personal. The last thing nutritional therapists need is for setting up their business and website to be hard as well.
So now I take that off their plates. So they can get on with the important work of putting more fibre on yours.