Why I started Solace and Why It Might Be Exactly What You've Been Looking For

A letter to anyone who has ever left a doctor's appointment feeling more confused than when they walked in.

I want to start with something most doctors don't say out loud: I've been on your side of the table.

I know what it feels like to sit in an exam room and have a doctor speak at you instead of with you. To leave with a printout you barely understand and a follow-up appointment three months away. To Google your symptoms at midnight because no one took the time to actually explain what was happening in your body or why it mattered.

The gap between what a doctor says and what a patient actually experiences is something I think about every single day. Because I've lived it. And it's a big part of why I built Solace Primary Care the way I did. This is how I have envisioned myself to practice medicine.

I know what it means to be a patient

Going through postpartum recovery changed something in me not just personally, but professionally. I understood in a palpable way how vulnerable it feels to be in a body that's changing in ways no one prepared you for. How easy it is to feel like your concerns are being minimized. How much it matters to have a provider who actually listens and actually explains.

"When I became a patient myself, I stopped seeing healthcare as something that happens to people. I started seeing it as something that should happen with them."

That experience reshaped how I practice. When you sit across from me, I'm not just running through a checklist. I'm thinking about what it feels like to be you and be in your shoes not just what the labs or numbers say.

I stay at the edge of what medicine knows

The science around women's health particularly perimenopause, hormone replacement therapy, and how hormonal shifts affect everything from mood and sleep to cardiovascular health has evolved so much in the last several years. It takes a LONG time to see guidelines change based off of new data and studies. We have to make active efforts to stay up to date with medicine and what is changing. Despite all the new information we have now about these conditions, a lot of patients are still being told "that's just part of getting older," or handed a print out and sent home or told to work on their stress/exercise.

I've made it a priority to stay current on the emerging research: what HRT actually does and doesn't do, who's a good candidate, what the most current evidence says about risk and benefit, and how to have real, informed conversations about all of it. You deserve a doctor who keeps learning so you don't have to figure it all out alone.

You are not a 15-minute appointment

The traditional primary care model is broken in a very specific way: it gives doctors almost no time to actually know their patients. Doctors in a traditional model have patient panels of 2000 plus patients and get appointment slots of 20 minutes with patients being booked back to back. So you end up seeing someone who barely remembers you from your last visit, who's already thinking about the next patient, and who is trying to fit your entire health story into a few minutes.

Solace is built differently. I have more time with each patient because I keep my panel small on purpose. That means I can be the kind of doctor who knows your name, your history, your concern and who has enough space in the visit to actually address them.

What I can't put on a website

Some of what makes a doctor the right fit for you isn't something you can read about. It's something you feel in the first five minutes of a conversation. It's whether you leave feeling heard, or feeling dismissed. Whether your questions were welcomed, or just tolerated.

I can tell you that I care deeply about my patients. I can tell you I've done the reading, done the training, and built this practice around a different philosophy of care. But whether that resonates for you? That's something we'd have to discover together.

If you've been looking for a primary care doctor who has been where you've been, who stays current, who has the time, and who genuinely believes that good medicine starts with a good relationship, I'd love to talk. I am accepting new patients via telemedicine right now until I confirm my sublease and will be then seeing patients in person starting September 1 in Newport Beach, California.

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