Navigating Diagnosis with Career Coach Jenna Valovic | Ep 07

Have you ever felt like doctors are not invested in trying to solve your medical issues with you? Do you ever feel like you’re being passed along from specialist to specialist? Have you felt so sick and struggling to get a diagnosis that you also resigned yourself to living a life you don’t want – and how can you change that?

In this podcast episode, Dr. Kate Herts speaks about navigating diagnosis with career coach Jenna Valovic.

Meet Jenna Valovic

Jenna Valovic is a Certified Professional Career Coach with a Master’s degree in Leadership and Organizational Development. In her coaching practice, Jenna is happiest when helping clients explore the full breadth of what is possible and encouraging them to build a life that is in alignment with their boldest, most audacious dreams. She prioritizes helping clients build careers that are in integrity with their values. Jenna enjoys marrying her background in corporate executive recruiting with her Positive Psychology and somatic training as a vinyasa yoga teacher, breathwork facilitator, and meditator.

Visit Jenna’s website and connect on Instagram and LinkedIn.

In this Podcast:

Jenna’s personal story
Uncovering the diagnosis
Jenna’s lifestyle changes
How are things now?
Jenna’s advice to listeners

Jenna’s personal story

Jenna also struggled with chronic illness in her late childhood and early teenage years.

She had mysterious stomach problems and spontaneous high fevers that seemed to come out of nowhere.

It wasn’t until I put my body under so much stress because I was working a busy job and I was in the process of getting a graduate degree, and I was also marathon training for the first time, and quite simply my body just broke … I suddenly stopped sleeping, I had such a vast array of symptoms … and I became really sick almost overnight, and I went to every medical professional that I could think of because I was utterly desperate.
Jenna Valovic

Jenna feared that her life as she knew it was over due to this sudden illness.

She went from doctor to doctor trying to find answers, and it took a long time for her to get a diagnosis.

Uncovering the diagnosis

Jenna spent months researching on her own to figure out what was going on with her body, and so that she could also be relatively informed when she spoke with various doctors.

I spoke to every professional that I could find. I really had to drive the process and there’s so many points at which if I had trusted what is being told by a Western medical professional, I would have just honestly given up and resigned myself to a very limited life.
Jenna Valovic

Everything pointed to thyroid problems, so Jenna focused her research on it. She found functional medicine and finally got a diagnosis. However, Jenna realized that it wasn’t just about her body needing medical attention; her life needed attention too.

She realized that the way that she was living was too stressful and intensive on her body and that she had to change her lifestyle completely if she wanted to make a full recovery.

It really [asked] me to take an honest look at my life and the way that I had been living … Pushing it to the max … Doing everything I could possibly squeeze in and thinking about whether or not that was in service to my long-term goal of having a body that could last.
Jenna Valovic

Jenna’s lifestyle changes

As it would for anyone, it can take a long time to reconcile with the fact that your lifestyle is not in alignment with your values, and Jenna went through the same thing.

We often put so much effort into what we think we want and it can be hard to let those things go when we realize that they’re actually harming us more than they’re helping us achieve our dreams.

One of the biggest changes that I made was that I quit my job. I left the company that I had been at for the better part of 10 years and I did something that I always wanted to do, which is I put myself back in school to become a therapist!
Jenna Valovic

Once Jenna removed the main stress factor which was her job, she started to focus more on the smaller challenges of her lifestyle, which were to tackle her sleeping issues and to reduce stress in her daily life.

Additionally, Jenna had her apartment checked for mold and it was below the average safety recommendation, which could also have been affecting her already struggling health, so she moved into a new home which also improved her well-being.

How are things now?

In full honesty, Jenna shares her feelings at the beginning of this big change, which was her fear that things would never feel “normal” again.

I didn’t particularly want the life that I was living and I can now say that I am honestly mind blown at how much can change and even in such a short span of time, when you find a treatment that works well for you. I’m at a point now where I can do everything that I want to do … I’m doing really good most of the time! And I’m able to do everything that I want to do, and it really is something that I’m beyond grateful for.
Jenna Valovic

Finally, even though in the beginning Jenna was mourning her life before, now things are much better, and she feels settled, happy, and more healthy now.

Jenna’s advice to listeners

You need to be taking proactive steps with your health. If you have a chronic illness, this can still be done by making sure that you go to your doctor’s appointments, researching, and taking time to rest, because rest is a part of health.

Doctors have so many patients, so don’t leave everything up to them. Take responsibility and a proactive approach to your well-being.

One of the biggest lessons for me was not just taking one particular person’s word for it but really doing my own due diligence and find someone who could help me fight when I wasn’t strong enough to do it myself.
Jenna Valovic

Find or build a team around you that is composed of your friends, family, and medical practitioners that you trust.

RESOURCES MENTIONED AND USEFUL LINKS

Visit Jenna’s website and connect on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Find out more about Dr. Shelby Harris, CBT-I Expert, Dr. Isabella Wentz, Hasimoto’s Expert, and Dr. Allison Fox, Functional Medicine physician.

CONNECT WITH ME:

Email me at: kateherts@healthpsychny.com

ABOUT DR. KATE HERTS:

Dr. Kate Herts completed her Bachelor’s of Arts at Brown University, her Master’s degree in Public Health at Harvard University, and her PhD in Clinical Psychology at UCLA. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Founder and CEO of The Health Psychology Center of New York, a group practice of expert psychologists providing evidence-based therapies tailored to meet the specific and urgent needs of teens and young adults with chronic medical conditions. Dr. Herts’ vision is to ultimately create a global wellness community for mental health practitioners, patients and family members dedicated to creating a better world for all people with chronic illness.

On this podcast, Dr. Herts gets personal about her experiences growing up as a lesbian millennial woman with a serious chronic illness; what she has learned from her patients and colleagues as a health psychologist; how she has built a meaningful life through it all; and how you can do it, too.