The Workday Ends. The Mission Doesn’t.
How a life-changing medical crisis transformed my understanding of purpose, ambition, and the relentless work required to build something meaningful.
One Job Done. On to the Next.
There is a moment at the end of the workday when most people are ready to close the laptop, exhale, and be finished.
For me, closing one laptop often means opening another.
I finish one responsibility, take a moment, and shift into the work I am building for myself—and, more importantly, for the people I hope it will eventually serve.
Writing. Speaking. Advocating. Building. Connecting. Pitching. Following up.
Then doing it again the next day.
It isn't glamorous. Much of the work that goes into building something meaningful happens when nobody is watching. There are emails that never receive responses, opportunities that don't materialize, introductions that lead nowhere, ideas that need to be reworked, and plenty of "no" before the right "yes" finally arrives.
But I have learned something about myself over the last several years:
When something matters deeply enough to me, I work for it.
When Survival Changes the Assignment
I didn't set out to build my current life this way.
In 2023, what began as a routine medical procedure became septic shock, cardiac arrest, months of hospitalization, multiple surgeries, amputations, reconstruction, and a life I barely recognized when I emerged from the immediate crisis.
Surviving was extraordinary.
But survival wasn't the end.
There is an entire world that exists after the moment everyone celebrates because you made it.
There is rehabilitation. There is pain. There is disability. There is grief. There are medical appointments and surgeries and setbacks. There are changes to relationships, careers, families, finances, confidence, identity, and independence.
There is also the strange experience of watching the rest of the world move forward while you are still figuring out how to live in a body and a life that have fundamentally changed.
That part of the story deserves to be told, too.
And eventually, I realized I didn't simply want to tell it.
I wanted to do something with it.
Turning Experience Into Action
That realization has taken me in directions I could never have predicted.
I wrote Through the Ashes to tell the story of what happened—not only the medical crisis, but what it meant to rebuild afterward.
I began speaking and advocating because I wanted conversations about sepsis to extend beyond mortality statistics. I wanted people talking about the lives survivors return to and the support patients and families need after critical illness.
My advocacy expanded into patient safety, disability, recovery, and the importance of bringing the patient voice into rooms where healthcare decisions are being made.
And then I began building.
Phoenix Health Compass and Phoenix Navigator grew from questions my family and I experienced personally:
Where do patients turn when they need to understand their options?
How do families make sense of an incredibly complicated healthcare system when they are already overwhelmed?
How can technology make healthcare information easier to navigate without replacing physicians or pretending that technology knows more than it does?
And as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in healthcare, how do we make sure innovation remains accountable to the people it is supposed to serve?
Those questions have become part of my mission.
Purpose Still Requires Work
There is a romanticized version of purpose that suggests once you discover yours, everything somehow falls into place.
My experience has been very different.
Purpose gives me a reason to keep going. It doesn't remove the work required to get there.
- Building something requires persistence when nobody knows your name yet.
- It requires sending the email.
- Making the introduction.
- Submitting the application.
- Taking the meeting.
- Reworking the idea.
- Asking for the opportunity.
- Following up.
- Learning that something you thought was finished isn't finished at all.
- And sometimes hearing no.
There have been moments when I have had to remind myself that rejection isn't necessarily a verdict on the mission. Sometimes it is simply the wrong person, the wrong opportunity, or the wrong time.
So I keep moving.
One conversation can lead to another. One introduction can open an unexpected door. One person who understands the vision can become an advocate for it.
You cannot control every outcome.
You can control whether you keep showing up.
Ambition Can Look Different After Adversity
Before my medical crisis, I might have defined ambition differently.
Today, ambition isn't about proving how much I can accomplish.
It is about making the life I nearly lost count.
I know what it feels like to have plans disappear overnight. I know what it means to rebuild from circumstances I never chose.
That has given me an urgency I didn't have before.
If there is something meaningful I want to create, I don't want to spend years waiting for someone to give me permission to begin.
If I believe patients deserve better tools, I want to help build them.
If survivors need greater visibility, I want to speak.
If healthcare leaders need to hear directly from patients, I want to be in those conversations.
If my story can help another person understand sepsis, patient safety, disability, or life after critical illness differently, I want to tell it.
And if I don't know how to accomplish something yet, I am willing to learn.
That may be one of the greatest lessons adversity has given me.
I no longer confuse not knowing how with not being capable of figuring it out.
The Woman Behind the Mission
There is another part of this journey that I think women, especially, understand.
We rarely have the luxury of becoming only one thing.
I don't stop having responsibilities because I am building a company.
I don't stop being a professional because I am an author.
I don't stop being a patient because I have become an advocate.
And becoming a survivor did not erase the other parts of who I am.
All of these identities coexist.
Some days, that means moving from my professional responsibilities directly into a meeting about Phoenix. Another evening may be spent preparing for an interview, writing an article, working on a speaking opportunity, reviewing the platforms, answering an email, or following up with someone I met weeks earlier.
There isn't always a dramatic moment announcing that progress is happening.
Sometimes progress looks exactly like the photograph accompanying this article:
A woman sitting quietly at a computer, doing the next thing.
I Am Still Building
I don't write this from the finish line.
That matters to me.
Phoenix is still being built. My advocacy is growing. My speaking work is expanding. Through the Ashes is reaching new audiences. I am continuing to meet people across healthcare, technology, media, sepsis advocacy, and patient-safety communities.
There is much more I want to accomplish.
I want to work with healthcare and patient organizations that believe lived experience belongs alongside professional expertise.
I want to speak on stages where conversations about patient safety, sepsis, disability, recovery, and healthcare innovation are happening.
I want to work with journalists, producers, and podcasters willing to tell the complicated stories that exist beyond survival.
I want to collaborate with healthcare innovators who understand that responsible technology should strengthen the patient's position—not diminish the human relationship at the center of medicine.
And I want Phoenix Health Compass and Phoenix Navigator to become meaningful resources for patients and families navigating moments when healthcare feels impossibly complicated.
I don't know exactly where every one of those paths will lead.
But I know I am willing to do the work.
One Job Done. On to the Next.
There are nights when I am tired.
There are days when progress feels slower than I want.
There are opportunities I will pursue that won't work out and doors I will knock on that won't open.
I'll keep knocking anyway.
Because surviving changed my understanding of time.
I don't want to spend mine waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect connection, or someone's permission to pursue something I believe matters.
So when the workday ends, I shift.
One responsibility completed.
One more email.
One more conversation.
One more opportunity.
One more step toward what I am trying to build.
Because when you want something, believing in it is only the beginning.
You work for it.
And when the work is connected to something larger than yourself, the mission doesn't simply disappear when the workday ends.
Sometimes, that's when it begins.
