Some people struggle their whole lives, trying to find a passion that they can do every working day of their life and call it their job. Few find it. Most go job to job, either just doing the job that needs to be done, or even enjoying it, but not finding passion in it.
I am one of the rarities that knew what I wanted from a very young age. My mom said as young as 3. I was always playing nurse or doctor to the neighborhood kids and when a family member was sick, I took on the task of “doctoring” them. At age 12 I started studying medical books. At 14 I worked as a Candy Striper in the only local hospital that would take on someone so young. By the time I was 16 and at a “hirable age,” I had taken the CNA course 3 times! What else was I to do to keep my skill sets up until I was old enough to be hired? Graduating from high school, I immediately went to nursing school. I worked in hospitals both in California and New Hampshire. In my late 20’s and beyond, I started to med school, but then went down another path and sought out natural healing. Getting my doctorate in Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture, then a doctorate in Naturopathy, I have enjoyed that so much more.
I moved to the Coeur d’Alene area in 2003 and opened Vital Health in 2004. I love my practice! It is truly my happy place! Where else can you go, where every single day, someone is thanking you for giving them their life back? For feeling energy they haven’t felt in years or even decades? For being out of pain? For living life without a basket full of medications because we were able to heal their problem and medications were no longer necessary?
What we do is unique. Where conventional medical practices are being required to isolate what you are seeing each doctor for, one problem per visit, we are the opposite. We want to know EVERYTHING going on with you. We don’t believe in hypochondriacs. We believe even the just “annoying” symptoms mean something. All put together, they give a picture of what is wrong in the body – we’re not just talking symptoms here, but underlying issues.
We believe in the body’s innate sense of healing. We believe in the body’s own innate intelligence. When we cut ourselves, we don’t direct the body how to heal it. It knows how on its own. Our job is to figure out what is interfering with the body’s ability to correct the situation – what deficiency is there or what is blocking the body’s ability to heal? As health detectives, once we’ve found the problem, we can apply a solution. This is the joy of what we do – the discovery and then the results!
©2018 Holly A. Carling, O.M.D., L.Ac., Ph.D.
