From Saving Lives to Helping People Thrive

I spent decades keeping people alive in the ICU. Now I’m teaching them how to never end up there in the first place.

As I unpack my dark blue Patagonia bag — one of my favorites that’s been with me through countless adventures — the moment feels different.

This time, I’m not unpacking memories from some faraway land.
I’m emptying undergarments that carried me through seven consecutive 13-hour overnight ICU shifts.

Since 2020, I’ve worn hospital-issued scrubs exclusively. This habit is one I will likely never change. But what I wear underneath still matters — my own small effort to feel human in an environment that often strips that away.

As I toss my garments into the wash, I catch the scent of my own sweat — the byproduct of adrenaline, hormones, and human struggle. My mind wanders and drifts to one patient in particular.

A 69-year-old man with diabetes — a patient who should never have ended up in my ICU. If only someone, anyone had ever taught him what a proper human diet looks like, his entire life could’ve unfolded differently.

Instead, diabetes slowly stole his kidney function, dulled the feeling in his feet, and eventually took parts of each foot — rendering it hard for him to walk, and impossible for him to live independently.

Now, he suffered a fall that led to a hip fracture.
That alone doesn’t usually warrant ICU care.
But the IV fluids he received post-operatively made things worse. His blood pressure fell instead of rising — the telltale sign of right heart failure, a condition too often missed and underestimated.

So here we met — in my ICU — after a fall, a fracture, and a cascade of failures set in motion decades ago by metabolic dysfunction that was never properly addressed.

This is where my two worlds collide.
I treat the extremes of human illness in the ICU — yet I know that roughly 75% of what I see is preventable.
It’s enlightening and soul-destroying all at once.

As I rinse the week from my undergarments, I realize I’m also washing off the weight of another truth:
We are failing people long before they ever reach the ICU.

I’ll always value the skillset and perspective that critical care provides me — years of training and practice in precision, discipline, and calm under chaos to have the privilege to render care and impact human lives most often in their deepest depths of despair.

But every time I complete a stretch of shifts in the hospital, my conviction to do even more deepens.
I don’t just want to help people survive the brink.
I want to help them build lives where they never get there in the first place.

That’s why I created this space— The Healthspan Rebellion.
A place to learn how to thrive — not just live longer, but live better.
Because metabolic mastery isn’t just science.
It’s self-respect.
And it’s time we take back both.