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If I were reading this story, I suppose my first question would be “Why would a talented doctor with a flourishing practice sell it all and transition to Colleyville at 45 years of age with two kids in upper school?” My goal is to transparently answer that question in a way that hopefully educates and inspires those who choose to read on.
Up until 2018, the story goes as you would expect. In 2010, we purchased a practice and dove head first into our community and our practice grew. Initially, we loved Frisco and assumed we would stay there forever. It was the kind of place you would feel lucky to raise young kids, and we genuinely loved taking care of our friends, teachers, neighbors, and anyone else in our community that needed help.
Once the Cowboys headquarters came to town, the rules seemed to change overnight. All of a sudden, massive companies like Toyota, JP Morgan, and the PGA of America were shopping for land. Rumors even swirled about Disney and Universal Studios. I have to say, I thought those were a little far-fetched at the time, although as I write this, Universal is actually building a theme park a few miles from my old practice.
Along with the growth also came a change in the town dynamics itself. In a matter of a few years, Frisco lost that smaller community feel that brought us here almost a decade prior, and we were starting to wish we could stop the exponential growth somehow. While Frisco continued to be a very valuable community in many regards, we no longer felt the connection to it we once did. To make matters worse, professionally I was still advancing my education and skill level but was quickly becoming frustrated because the areas of dentistry that I felt passionate about wasn’t something that our community needs supported.
At the beginning of 2019, we first discussed the idea of selling our practice and just going where the patients that needed the restorative abilities I have are. But how do you sell a perfectly stable business knowing it will challenge the financial security of your family, and upset the balance your wife and kids have with the community, friends, and school? Ultimately, I decided that we needed to just stay put even if I wasn’t happy.
In 2020, Covid hit, and everyone in the medical field struggled to find our way. We were patient and made it to the fall intact. While difficult, there were some positives that didn’t escape our attention. The period where the state only allowed us to see emergencies was the most joyful time I had had in dentistry in several years. It was pure patient care. Thanks to the PPP loans during the shutdown, we weren’t worried about overhead or hygiene coverage or anything other than treating oral emergencies for people that needed help.
This feeling caused Michelle and I to discuss selling the practice again in the early part of 2021. I still didn’t do it. I can say with 100% certainty that what kept us—kept me—from making a change, was fear. Fear of the unknown, of social repercussions, of the feelings we impose on ourselves. So we kept on grinding. I wasn’t sure what the future held but I wasn’t going to quit on my wife and daughters, or our staff, or our patients, just so I could be happy at work. It’s just a job after all; is being happy while you’re doing your job really that important?
I’m here to tell you that it is. In fact, it’s more important than the paycheck it produces. We are a spiritual family, but regardless of whether you believe in God, some other deity, or simply that the universe is bigger than just us, one truth remains true: you can choose your destination, but not your path. And ours was about to be redirected in a way that we could never have seen coming.
In June of 2022, Michelle and I got Covid for the first time, and I quarantined from the office like I was supposed to. After a week at home, I was still struggling with stamina but had no signs of infection, so I went back to work. I made it a few days before my body shut down again and I ended up back in urgent care. I was told that now I had the Flu on top of Covid. Again, I served my quarantine but really needed to get back to work.
A Monday morning in late July found me back in the office again, but this time I only made it a few hours before I was back at the doctor feeling like I could barely function. Now I was also struggling with digestive issues and couldn’t tolerate solid foods amongst other less than desirable GI issues. My doctors told me I was likely dealing with some sort of long Covid situation and I needed to step back from the office for a while to rest. Regardless of my concern for our business, I had no choice but to listen.
For the next two months, I lost weight, had no energy, and struggled to sleep more than an hour or two at a time. The weakness got so bad that by August of that year, I was afraid to drive a car for fear that I would hurt myself or someone else. When October rolled around, I was finally improving, but gains were slow. I still didn’t have the physical, mental, or emotional capacity to give sound medical advice or render invasive treatment for an eight hour shift, let alone for a week at a time. We brought in several doctors to help us stabilize the office and keep it running.
In November, we made the hard choice to sell the practice and focus on my health. We had thought about selling the practice for years, so what was different now? Remember the fear I mentioned earlier—I simply was so tired and beaten down physically and emotionally that I didn’t care how scared I was before, or that I was in that moment. I simply wanted to heal and be a dad and husband again. Dentistry could come later if I could return to full health. For better or worse, it was time to give up control and allow the ocean’s tide to take us where we were supposed to be.
We kept the office running until the sale closed in January of 2023 and I spent a few months helping the new owner get started. Once that was completed, I put 100% of the limited energy I had each day into finding a doctor that could help me understand what happened to me and how I could regain my life again.
Almost by happenstance, I was referred by my sister-in-law to a doctor that specializes in environmental and auto-immune issues, but I figured, what the hell do I have to lose at this point? My first appointment lasted about two hours and was extremely detailed. When I finally sat with the doctor he took one look at me and said, “I know what’s wrong with you!” He said, “You have an underlying mold problem that your body was trying to handle, and COVID turned the volume from 2 up to 10. If you’ll let me, I’ll prove it to you.”
Well, as you can imagine, my doctor brain is running full speed now. It took me a few minutes but I finally let my guard down. I apologized for being so skeptical and said I was the patient this time so just tell me what to do. After a battery of tests, it was clear that I was chock full of mycotoxins (toxins created by black mold spores). He told me we could get my body detoxed but it would take 9-12 months.
We also had to make sure we got away from the mold or I wouldn’t be able to heal. Michelle and I couldn’t imagine where it would be coming from, so we had our house tested. It revealed that our house was in fact the issue, but we couldn’t understand why the mold spore counts inside the walls of our home were catastrophically high when we had no signs of water damage.
After tearing apart four rooms of our house, we finally found the culprit. A sewer vent pipe in our laundry room was cracked and leaking sewer gas into the interior wall space of our entire house. Sewer gas is made up of hydrogen sulfide (which is poisonous) and black mold spores from the city sewer. Our home was basically a bubble of toxic gas and we were breathing it in small doses daily as it leaked into the home via tiny gaps in the wall and various plumbing fixtures.
When the affected room was opened, our house smelled like we lived in the sewer itself, and it took 10 days for our remediation company to clear the gas from the house. In the summer of 2023, Michelle, myself, the kids, and our labradoodle Maggie, spent 12 weeks living from a suitcase wherever we could find a place while our house was repaired and the air quality tested. This is where the aforementioned tide really started to shift.
In August of 2023, we finally got to go home. The mold detox treatments were taking effect, and by October of that year, I started to believe that I could return to my full physical and mental capacity if I just stayed the course. Treatment consisted of detoxification supplements like Glutathione, months of time spent in a hyperbaric chamber, and neurocognitive therapy to retrain my brain on the correct neural pathways to allow it to function at full capacity.
By January of 2024, I was still completing the remainder of my work with the mold doctor but knew that I was going to be the person I was before, so I began searching for the right way to re-enter dentistry in a way that fostered joy and allowed me to focus on serving the community in the way my family feels is important. You see, if I was going to go through all of that, I certainly wasn’t going to restart my career without doing it in a way that was fulfilling in more ways than the ones attached to dollars and cents.
We made a list of the things we wouldn’t compromise professionally, spiritually, and emotionally so that each opportunity could be put through that filter. Over the course of four months, I looked at dozens of practices, and when Dr. Halpert’s practice in Colleyville came across my desk, we knew we found the place where we could serve our staff, patients, and community like we had always desired.
What had been an impossible decision for so many years now seemed like a seemingly obvious decision. This isn’t to say that it is a piece of cake starting over. However, it has rekindled my passion, desire, and joy in elite-level patient care. This journey showed me that I was meant to do what I do for a living. That I have something valuable to give to the world. That it is okay to be unhappy, but not okay to just let it destroy the joy you have for serving others and living a life that means something. Simply put, I am having fun again, and the smile on my face is genuine, which is worth more than these words can ever express.
We would obviously love for you to choose Creekside Family Dentistry for your dental care needs. But more than anything, we would love to be a place for those that are scared to say yes to the things they think they need. Or for those that feel like their doctor doesn’t understand the impossible choice some dental maladies present. We want to be that kind of place you still hoped existed. The one that doesn’t lie to you, or attach a dollar value to the time you are allowed to spend with me. While we restore smiles, we also like to build up the soul of the person in the process.
I am so grateful that we can tell our story to anyone that wants or needs to hear it. So if you made it this far, I can only say my sincerest thank you for the time you spent reading it.
Dr. Nuosce
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