My path into this work wasn’t something I planned. It was something I lived.

A few years ago, my health began unraveling in ways that didn’t make sense. I was dealing with joint pain, hair loss, dry eyes, muscle spasms, vertigo, anxiety attacks, shortness of breath, and POTS. After many ER visits and seeing eight different specialists who couldn’t figure out what was going on, I turned to functional medicine and learned that I was dealing with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) triggered by exposure to water damaged buildings. Even though I have a medical background, I suddenly I found myself in a world of unfamiliar labs, acronyms, environmental testing, protocols, conflicting information, and more questions than answers. Shortly after I got sick, my three children all developed CIRS.

I did what I tend to do when something matters deeply to me: I learned everything I could.

I know what it feels like to stare at lab results you don’t understand. To discover your home is making you sick and wonder what to do next. To spend hours researching remediation information because you’re terrified of making the wrong decision. To leave an appointment and realize you have twelve more questions. I know what it’s like to wonder, Is this new symptom from CIRS? Is it my environment? Is it my treatment? Am I getting worse? Is this normal?

And I know how incredibly overwhelming it is to try to figure all of this out while your brain and body are already struggling.

That experience is what ultimately led me here.

Why “The CIRS Canary”?

The canary has special meaning to me.

Historically, canaries were carried into coal mines because their small bodies responded to environmental danger before the miners could detect it themselves.

Living with CIRS can feel a lot like being that canary.

Your body may be responding to something in your environment long before the people around you understand why you’re sick. Symptoms that seem disconnected begin telling a story. And once you finally understand what your body has been trying to tell you, so much starts to make sense.

That’s where The CIRS Canary was born.

Making CIRS Make Sense

One of the hardest parts of CIRS is that healing often means addressing both our bodies and our environments at the same time. That can quickly turn into an overwhelming list of things to manage: appointments with practitioners, medication and supplement schedules, lifestyle changes, environmental testing, conversations with inspectors and remediators, and decisions about what needs to happen first.

And when you’re already sick, even figuring out the right order of operations can feel like a full-time job. What needs to happen now? What can wait? What actually matters most? How do you make decisions about your home while also trying to move forward with treatment?

That’s where I want to help—by taking something that feels complicated and overwhelming and helping you break it down into manageable next steps.

You don’t have to figure out everything at once. Sometimes you just need help making sense of what’s in front of you and deciding what comes next.

I created The CIRS Canary to be the kind of support I wish I’d had when I was trying to put all the pieces together.

My role isn’t to replace your doctor or practitioner. It’s to help you become a more informed, organized, and confident participant in your own care.

Together, we can make sense of the CIRS framework, organize your labs and health history, talk through environmental and remediation concerns, understand the reasoning behind different parts of the process, prepare questions for your practitioner, and untangle the overwhelming pile of information that often comes with this illness.

Most importantly, you have someone beside you who understands the language of CIRS and understands what it’s like to live it.

My approach is calm, practical, and grounded in education rather than fear.

You don’t need to understand everything today.

You just need to understand your next step.

From Lived Experience to Formal Training

My personal experience with CIRS sparked a deep desire to understand this illness, not only for myself and my family, but so I could eventually help others navigate it with more clarity and less overwhelm.

That passion led me to pursue formal training through the CIRSx Institute, where I have completed certification as a Level One CIRS Coach & Consultant. My training focuses on understanding the CIRS Shoemaker framework, biomarkers and testing, environmental illness, treatment concepts, and how to support individuals as they navigate the many moving pieces of CIRS recovery.

After completing my CIRS Consultant certification, I am continuing education through the CIRSx Institute’s Medically Important Remediation (MIR 101) certification program, with a deeper focus on the environmental side of CIRS—including understanding buildings, contamination, remediation, and what it takes to create an environment that supports recovery.

For me, this work brings together two things that matter deeply: lived experience and continued education. I know CIRS from the inside, but I also believe that personal experience alone isn’t enough. I’m committed to continuing to learn and helping clients understand the CIRS process while working alongside their healthcare practitioners.