I feel like I’ve come full circle. In December 2021 I was in the process of selling my business Puff Fitness. I wanted to go back to my roots, back to nursing to focus on women’s health. And that’s not all about vaginas and pelvic health either although I did end up in Gynaecology and I thrived there for 5 weeks in the winter of this year (no not as a patient, as a nurse in a crispy white tunic).
Primary health was my ultimate mission or so I thought. I was uber keen to take on a position as a Practice Nurse and that I did. I wanted to excel, do my master’s, become a nurse practitioner.
What I didn’t understand was that being in business had changed me more than I realised. I knew what I wanted. I needed to be that square trying to fit into a round hole for a bit to understand where the hell I was going.
I wouldn’t be satisfied just jabbing, inserting or squeezing (a.k.a: injections, smears, blood pressure taking) all day. I actually wanted to spend time with people. I could see there was so much more to unpack in people’s lives.
I bring life experience to lifestyle medicine. It’s a bloody good fit. If you think about my journey from nursing (health) to fitness (exercise) we’ve got a few bases covered already.
When I was 21, a new graduate nurse, stick thin, naive, and full of knowledge at Rotorua Hospital, I saw so much disease. People seriously failing from stroke, heart attacks, cancer, kidney failure, chronic obstructive respiratory disease, GI bleeds, cirrhosis and the list goes on. It was largely preventable, lifestyle related disease.
Now at 51 I want to change the stats, improve health outcomes in the way that I was trained in nursing school. Serve people holistically, work in partnership with patients to prevent, treat and reverse disease with lifestyle medicine. It sounds exciting doesn’t it?
Women’s healthy aging is where it will start. My husband says “What about men, you are missing out on half the population.” I just need to begin. Men won’t be exempt. There will be an offering here too. The planning is already happening.
Of course their will be a pelvic health offering, but there’s much more to our wellbeing than just pelvises isn’t there?
