My Validation in Healthcare
Validation makes all the difference. Especially validation in healthcare.
(Initially published in the Confidence Nutrition Newsletter on 7/1/26. If you’d like to subscribe to the monthly newsletter & be the first to hear about updates and upcoming appointment openings, you can do so here.)
My story starts way back in 2004.
I had just started at SIUE and was working as a pharmacy tech at a local retail pharmacy.
Amongst all of this exposure to new people, I caught whooping cough. It was terrible. I would cough so hard that I’d vomit.
Ever since then, I’ve had noisier, heavier breathing than would be expected for someone of my age (especially back then), excess mucus/phlegm, and the need to clear my throat often. (It’s all very attractive.)
I often sound short of breath, but I never feel “starved for air”, as I’ve heard people with asthma describe.
In the on-campus Starbucks, I even had a friend turn around in line and say, “Kelly, I thought that was you! I heard you cough!” Awkward.
In the past 22 years, I’ve sought treatment and validation in healthcare. I’d seen pulmonologists and had pulmonary function testing, but nothing much ever came out of it. I was given albuterol inhalers, but they didn’t do much.
One report said that it seemed I had emphysema… Did it not seem weird to anyone that a non-smoking, then 27-year-old, who had never lived in a house with smokers, would have developed emphysema?
I had mentioned it to other doctors, as well. They’d tell me that my lungs sounded clear and to try Zyrtec. That also didn’t work.
I’d all but stopped mentioning it to doctors, figuring it was just collateral damage from whooping cough, until…
I caught strep throat this February.
It came on literally overnight and was so painful, I couldn’t even swallow ibuprofen to try to ease the pain. I went to a local urgent care the next morning. They were so helpful, not only providing me with antibiotics, but also oral lidocaine to ease my throat and a steroid shot in the office to help with the swelling.
About 3 weeks later, I kept waking up coughing overnight. I had a morning off, so I went back to the same urgent care.
Turns out I had strep throat (again or still? Unclear.) and pneumonia.
The urgent care PA told me that, aside from the lobe of my lung with the pneumonia, my lungs sounded okay, but, if it was okay with me, she wanted to listen to my throat because my throat sounded congested.
I found my validation in healthcare!
I gave her a brief rundown, that I had experienced “throat congestion” for the past 22 years, and she encouraged me to look into it again after I was recovered from the strep and pneumonia.
The fact that she took an extra minute out of her day to listen to my throat on a hunch, even though we already had a diagnosis of why I was at urgent care, was the best, most validating feeling that I think I’ve ever had.
There really was something going on in my throat!
My next appointment after that was with my daughter’s asthma doctor. I came in and they did in-office spirometry.
The NP said she had only seen a result like mine in a textbook and sent a STAT referral to ENT.
No one had ever suggested meeting with an ENT before.
I met with a local ENT about 2 weeks after meeting with the asthma NP. They did a scope in the office, through my nose, to look at my throat.
After just a few seconds, the ENT physician diagnosed me with “subglottal stenosis”. Basically, just under my vocal cords, my trachea is narrowed. He said it was the size of a 10 year-old’s.
No wonder my breathing was always so loud and heavy! My body was working hard to get enough air through a narrowed trachea.
My local ENT referred me to a specialist at Wash U. I met with them about a month later. He confirmed the diagnosis and got me set up for surgery, a tracheal dilation.
They’ll use a balloon to widen my trachea.
Hopefully, that will result in quieter, easier breathing and improved exercise tolerance.
My tracheal dilation was June 30th, 2026. That’s why I’m out of the office the rest of this week. Hopefully the next time you talk with me, you won’t even notice my breathing.
BUT…
None of this would have happened if that physician’s assistant at an urgent care, who I had never met before, hadn’t noticed and cared enough to ask about my throat.
In my >10 years of working in an outpatient setting, I know that everyone is going through something.
It’s often something that they don’t share openly with the rest of the world, whether it’s due to shame or embarrassment, maybe they don’t know that their experience is out of the ordinary, maybe they don’t want to be seen as “complaining” when there are others in the world that have worse-off circumstances than they do.
Maybe, like me, they’ve tried to tell people, but nothing ever comes of it.
While I can’t diagnose anything as a dietitian, I am more than happy to be an advocate for my clients to address symptoms that you’re having.
I’m happy to request labs or fax your primary doctor to request a referral to a specialist on your behalf.
What does that have to do with nutrition?
We all eat better when we have the capacity to do so.
After 22 years of impaired breathing, I can’t wait to see how my life will change. I can only hope to bring my clients a fraction of what I’m feeling now and bring them validation in healthcare.