After passing my boards and getting officially licensed, I was eager to go out and hopefully help change people’s lives with nutrition. I wanted to get a wide variety of experience before settling into a specialty. Working at a hospital would give me the opportunity to get experience with all the disease states. 

     With a passion to help patients, I would get some wins here and there; it was so encouraging to counsel a patient during discharge who was motivated to make changes and learn about how food can improve their health. But without a follow-up system in place, many patients would be back in a few months down the road even sicker than before. 

     Or I would get the heartbreaking cases, like the young mother with young children at home who seemingly was “healthy”. She was even a marathon runner. I cared for her for months. We got special permission to get a treadmill in her room so she can stay active on her good days.

     I made special requests on behalf of her and many of my patients for them to receive boiled eggs instead of the standard, ultra-processed powdered eggs. It was a small effort on my part to hopefully increase palatability while also helping reduce the processed foods in their hospital diet. 

     Working in the clinical setting especially on the Bone Marrow Unit, took a toll on my mental health. Feeling helpless and angry, I couldn’t help but think that the subpar nutritional supplement shakes and ultra-processed foods that comprised my patients’ diets during their hospital stay certainly did not help fight cancer or the infections they were vulnerable to due to cancer treatments.

     Witnessing so much death, I questioned if I was achieving the purpose that drove me to be a dietitian in the first place. Why were the patients not getting better? I often only felt useful for the most extreme cases when the patients required nutritional support via a tube to the gastrointestinal tract or intravenously to avoid acute malnutrition.

     But knowing if the sickest patients were able to survive this hospital admission, their progressed disease states along with their continued lifestyle habits such as poor nutrition, inactivity, and smoking would likely lead them right back to me in their next hospital stay. It was a cycle. The medical intervention of more medications and more procedures were not improving the quality of life for these patients.

     The more questions I asked, the more helpless I felt. Then, there were ethical questions raised as a collective within the profession. Why were ultra-processed food companies like Coca Cola and General Mills active “sponsors” to our professional organization? Why are they accepting money and influence from companies that push us to promote ultra-processed supplement shakes and foods? I canceled my professional membership and was completely fed up.

     I worked at Tulane Medical Center Hospital for a decade. During that time, I got married, had two children, and started two side businesses. After having my second child, I felt deflated and hopeless as I entered a phase of burnout with my nutrition career. I needed to take a step back and gain some perspective. I focused on my most successful side business of photography and made it my full-time gig for the last 10 years.

    Since leaving the hospital, I have continued my education and research within the nutrition and health field while raising a family. I currently own and run a successful photography business that I adore with my sister. I often call the photography business my third baby. 

     My efforts to raise my own healthy family have reignited my calling to promote health to others outside of my previous role within the traditional medical system. If my seasoned perspective and voice can be helpful to at least one reader who wants the best health for themselves and their family, then my effort is worth it.