That’s right — I’m taking you back to a story from more than six years ago when I first decided it was time for me to move out of clinic work and into my own work.
At the time I was rather burnt out.
We were in the thick of the COVID. The team I had been leading for the previous three years had their hours reduced because we were unable to see patients, and I had helped the company develop initiatives to transition our sleep clinic into an online remote model so they could continue generating revenue during the period when face to face consultations were restricted.
It was a strange time in healthcare.
Uncertainty everywhere.
Clinics trying to adapt.
Patients falling through the cracks.
One day a 67-year-old gentleman came in for lung function testing.
He could barely walk up a flight of stairs without becoming breathless.
Naturally, everyone assumed something must be wrong with his lungs.
But when I ran the tests…
His lungs were completely healthy.
On paper he looked fine.
But when you sat with him and watched him breathe, listened to his story, and observed how his body was responding to stress, something else was clearly going on.
And I knew this was something I could help him with.
The problem was that in the traditional medical pathway, my role ended with the test results. My job was to send the report back to the GP.
If I had simply done that, he would likely have been bounced around a medical system that often misses dysfunctional breathing. These patients frequently end up trapped in a frustrating cycle — normal tests, persistent symptoms, and no clear answers.
Many of them eventually begin to feel like the problem must be “in their head.”
But this gentleman was not going to be one of those patients.
Because he had a big goal in mind.
And when he shared that goal with me, something shifted inside me.
I felt a pull to widen my skills and support him beyond what I was traditionally allowed to do inside the clinic walls.
And in many ways…
That moment was the beginning of everything that followed.
