The Disappearing Years

The Garage

Her mom was selling the house. There was nowhere to go. $927 a month in disability. A daughter who needed her to figure it out. And absolutely no idea what she was doing. This is Episode 7 of Diagnose This. The one where things turn. Not because everything was suddenly fine. Because she decided to show up anyway, one more time. She signed a six-month lease on a $700 a month office because six months was all she could commit to. The disability check was $927. She was terrified. The goal was $1,000 the first month. She made $3,000. She kept going. None of it was on the dance card. All of it started in a garage. What you’ll learn about: * The improv class, the bag with her face on it, and the worst nightmare that happened in five seconds * Signing a six-month lease on $927 a month because she was too scared to commit to a year * $1,000 goal. $3,000 first month. $240,000 first year. No investors. * The converted garage, the bunk beds, the 20 miniature ponies with special diets * Meeting David — and why falling in love again was one of the bravest things she ever did * Closing the clinic before COVID, moving to Mexico, and 150Xing revenue in seven months Stay connected between episodes. Follow us everywhere here → https://get.thedrz.com/beacons [https://get.thedrz.com/beacons] #DrZ #DiagnoseThisPodcast #FunctionalMedicine #FounderStory #BuildingFromNothing #StartupJourney #EntrepreneurLife #SingleMomEntrepreneur #WomenInBusiness #FunctionalMedicineClinic #ChronicIllnessEntrepreneur #OriginStory #BusinessGrowth #RevenueGrowth #COVIDPivot #MovingToMexico #GarageStartup #ConvertedGarage #BootstrappedBusiness #HealthcareEntrepreneur #PodcastClips #WellnessBusiness #FunctionalHealth #ImprovClass #FemaleFounder #MedicalEntrepreneur #ClinicOwner #StartedWith927 #FromNothingToSomething #EntrepreneurMindset

The Disappearing Years

She had a seven-figure business. A bestselling book. A daughter she was raising alone. Things were finally good. Then a UTI became a kidney infection. The kidney infection became seven specialists and eight prescriptions. The prescriptions didn't work. And one day she woke up and couldn't get out of bed. This is Episode 6 of Diagnose This. The one Dr. Z calls her disappearing years. Three years she's carried shame about for almost two decades. She's putting it down here. She went inpatient three times. She had ECT — electroconvulsive therapy, bilateral, 20 rounds — because nothing else was working and her mom was desperate to save her kid. She lived on $927 a month. She was told by Social Security she'd never work again. For 18 months, her brain told her every single day, calmly and logically, that she shouldn't be here. She was a single mom. She stayed. But it was close. Closer than she's ever said out loud. The disappearing years weren't wasted. They were education from the inside out. The kind she doesn't wish on anyone. And they are the entire reason Diagnose This exists. Inside the episode: * Four rounds of antibiotics, a kidney infection, and the collapse nobody saw coming * Seven specialists. Eight prescriptions. None of it working. * ECT, inpatient, and the shame she carried for almost 20 years * 18 months of a brain telling her the most logical conclusion was not to be here * The book she made for her daughter in case she didn't make it * Stand-up comedy in the middle of the darkest years — and making the semifinals * The moment she decided nobody would ever make decisions about her health again Stay connected between episodes. Follow us everywhere here → https://get.thedrz.com/beacons [https://get.thedrz.com/beacons] #DrZ #DiagnoseThisPodcast #FunctionalMedicine #FounderStory #ElectroconvulsiveTherapy #ECT #ChronicIllness #InvisibleIllness #DepressionAndChronicIllness #PrimaryImmunodeficiency #PatientAdvocacy #MedicalGaslighting #WomenEntrepreneurs #FunctionalMedicineDoctor #OriginStory #StandUpComedy #SingleMom #HealingJourney #ChronicIllnessAwareness #MentalHealth #HealthPodcast #MedicalJourney #InvisibleDisability #AutoimmuneAwareness #TraumaToTriumph #WomenInBusiness #PodcastLife #FunctionalHealth #HealthAdvocate #ResilientWomen #DisappearingYears

The Girl Who Said Goodnight

It was the way she said goodnight. That was it. Just something slightly off in the tone. And she leapt off a mattress on the floor and shoved her foot in that bathroom door before it could lock. She was right. This is Episode 5 of Diagnose This. And it is one of the most important episodes Dr. Z has filmed — because this is the one where the pattern finally has a name. Dr. Z was 18. Summer. University of Oregon. Elmo boxer shorts. A sorority sister she barely knew said goodnight in a way that made something fire in her gut. She got her foot in the door. Called 911. Rode in the ambulance barefoot. Stayed with that girl for two days because the university president looked at an 18-year-old with no training, no credentials, and no plan and said: I'll leave her in your hands. She also shares something in this episode she has never said out loud before. Something that happened to her that same summer. Something she's carried for two decades. She's putting it down here because she's tired of holding it. And because she doesn't want anyone else to feel like they have to hold it either. The girl on the mat. Terry. The tire. The robbery. The bathroom door. Every single story this week has been the same story. She sees what other people don't. And when nobody moves, she does. This is the episode where that finally makes complete sense. What Dr. Z discusses this episode: * The tone of voice that told her something was catastrophically wrong — before anyone else knew * What she did when a university official handed her a crisis and walked away * What happened to her that same summer that she's never said out loud until now * Why there was no justice — and what the best they could do looked like * The through line that became the entire reason she's building what she's building If you've been told "it's all in your head" - Dr. Z was that patient. Seven specialists. Eight prescriptions. Her brain electrocuted 20 times for what turned out to be an infection. Years on disability at $927/month while doctors kept saying her labs were fine. Dr. Z built DiagnoseThis because she needed it and it didn't exist. This isn't just a podcast. It's the platform she desperately needed when she was sick, dismissed, alone, and searching for answers at 2 AM in a garage because no one else was asking WHY. Join us in the DiagnoseThis Community - where dismissed patients finally find the answers the system never gave them. 👉 https://community.diagnosethis.com [https://community.diagnosethis.com] Keep going: Follow DiagnoseThis on all platforms → https://www.instagram.com/_diagnosethis/ [https://www.instagram.com/_diagnosethis/]→https://www.facebook.com/diagnosethisofficial/ [https://www.facebook.com/diagnosethisofficial/]→ https://www.tiktok.com/@diagnose_this [https://www.tiktok.com/@diagnose_this] #drz #diagnosethispodcast #functionalmedicinefounderstory #suicideprevention #sexualassaultsurvivors #whennobodymovesimove #toneofvoiceintuition #invisibleillness #patientadvocacy #medicalgaslighting #womenentrepreneurs #originstory #functionalmedicinepodcast #chronicillness #primaryimmunodeficiency

The Body, The Instinct, and The Tires

Two tires. An armed robbery. A concussion that took a year to recover from. A thesis she wrote about the worst night of her life and still hasn't read 30 years later. This is Episode 4 of Diagnose This. And it's the episode where the thread starts to become visible. Dr. Z has been diagnosing situations from tones of voice and window seats her whole life. The girl on the mat at 11. Her dad at 16. A tire through a sunroof at 20. A plane leaving Dublin. Two men in ski masks walking into a restaurant where she's sitting two tables from the door. Every single time, she saw it before someone else did. Every single time, when nobody moved, she did. This isn't an accident. It's a pattern. And this week she starts naming it — the through line she's been living since she was a kid, the skill that eventually told her something was catastrophically wrong with her own body, and what she built from it when nobody else was paying attention. In this episode: * The tire through the sunroof at freeway speed — and the child in the seat beside her * Graduating cum laude with a concussion, a thesis she still hasn't read, and a Hello Kitty boombox in a truck built for Texas * The armed robbery, the unlocked door, and why she was the only one who moved * The plane leaving Dublin, the black streak on the wing, and what came next * The one thread running through every single story — and what it eventually became If you've been told "it's all in your head" - Dr. Z was that patient. Seven specialists. Eight prescriptions. Her brain electrocuted 20 times for what turned out to be an infection. Years on disability at $927/month while doctors kept saying her labs were fine. Dr. Z built DiagnoseThis because she needed it and it didn't exist. This isn't just a podcast. It's the platform she desperately needed when she was sick, dismissed, alone, and searching for answers at 2 AM in a garage because no one else was asking WHY. Join us in the DiagnoseThis Community - where dismissed patients finally find the answers the system never gave them. 👉 https://community.diagnosethis.com [https://community.diagnosethis.com] Keep going: Follow DiagnoseThis on all platforms → https://www.instagram.com/_diagnosethis/ [https://www.instagram.com/_diagnosethis/]→https://www.facebook.com/diagnosethisofficial/ [https://www.facebook.com/diagnosethisofficial/]→ https://www.tiktok.com/@diagnose_this [https://www.tiktok.com/@diagnose_this] #drz #diagnosethispodcast #functionalmedicinefounderstory #chronicillnessoriginstory #traumaticbraininjury #invisibleillness #womenentrepreneurs #patientadvocacy #charactercode #whennobodymovesimove #instinct #originstory #functionalmedicinepodcast #buildingfromnothing #resilience

Terry

Her dad's name was Terry. He's not the villain in the story. He's also not the hero. He was just her dad. And losing him was one of the most complicated things she's ever had to sit with. This is Episode 3 of Diagnose This. Dr. Z goes back to the night everything changed, the night she was 16, in pajamas, glasses on, backed up against the wall by her own father. The night she called 911 because nobody else moved. The night he looked at the cop with a black eye already forming on her face and said: I never laid a fucking hand on her. She didn't talk to him for seven years after that. When he finally came back, really came back, sober enough to stop blaming everyone else, it almost felt like getting a dad again. He held her newborn daughter at Thanksgiving and didn't put her down once. Four months later he was gone. Congestive heart failure. Fifties. Same age she is now. She lost him twice. And her brother too, in a different way, before either of them turned 31. This isn't a story about trauma. It's a story about what gets wired into you when you're the only one who moves. And what it costs when nobody else does. Inside this episode: * The night her dad came home in a rage and what she did when nobody else moved * Seven years of silence, and what it actually took for her to let him back in * Getting a dad back, four months before losing him for good * Her brother, the other loss most people don't know about If you've been told "it's all in your head" - Dr. Z was that patient. Seven specialists. Eight prescriptions. Her brain electrocuted 20 times for what turned out to be an infection. Years on disability at $927/month while doctors kept saying her labs were fine. Dr. Z built DiagnoseThis because she needed it and it didn't exist. This isn't just a podcast. It's the platform she desperately needed when she was sick, dismissed, alone, and searching for answers at 2 AM in a garage because no one else was asking WHY. Join us in the DiagnoseThis Community - where dismissed patients finally find the answers the system never gave them. 👉 https://community.diagnosethis.com [https://community.diagnosethis.com] Keep going: Follow DiagnoseThis on all platforms → https://www.instagram.com/_diagnosethis/ [https://www.instagram.com/_diagnosethis/]→https://www.facebook.com/diagnosethisofficial/ [https://www.facebook.com/diagnosethisofficial/]→ https://www.tiktok.com/@diagnose_this [https://www.tiktok.com/@diagnose_this] #drz #diagnosethispodcast #functionalmedicinefounderstory #chronicillnessoriginstory #familytrauma #invisibleillness #patientadvocacy #medicalgaslighting #whennobodymovesimove #losingaparent #complicatedgrief #womenentrepreneurs #beforethediagnosis #functionalmedicinepodcast #originstory