Meet Theresa Kulikowski-Gillespie, PA-C

My Personal Story

I have a passion for mindfulness, functional medicine, and deep healing because of my life experiences. The things that I have seen, heard, and experienced guide my work, and it all comes from an authentic desire to alleviate suffering and optimize our time on this Earth.

First Love: Gymnastics

I grew up in a military family, born at Madigan Medical Center in Tacoma, WA, where my dad was stationed in the Army as a nurse. We then moved to Germany, and this is where I met my first love, gymnastics. I was all of 2 1/2 years old, and although you had to be three to start classes, because I kept running in on my older sister’s practices, they allowed me to start a little earlier.

Gymnastics became my life!

In 1984, soon after we moved back to the United States, I watched Mary Lou Retton vault her way to Olympic glory, and I made up my mind that I was going to do the same! This started my 12-year trek up the elite gymnastics mountain, and in 1996, I did indeed make it to the Olympic Trials only to fall one spot short of making the team, becoming the first alternate for the team that went on to win gold in Atlanta.

I was bound and determined to make the 2000 team, only to tear the ACL in my knee the following year, training for Nationals. This injury prompted a change in goals, and I accepted a full-ride scholarship to compete for the University of Utah where I went on to win an all-around and two balance beam titles.

I continued to deal with injuries throughout college, however, tearing my other ACL my sophomore year and ending my career with a torn rotator cuff and spinal cord tumor.

All of my surgeries and physical therapy, along with my interest in the role of the mind in optimal performance, inspired me first to pursue my undergrad in Exercise Science and Psychology and then to get a third major in pre-Physical Therapy.

Next Stop: The Army!

Despite being quite broken in body and mind following my gymnastics career, I refreshed after a couple of years off. I decided to pursue a medical career as a physician assistant. I went back to the University of Utah from 2005 to 2007 and received a degree in physician assistant studies. After working a couple of years as a physician assistant, I followed in the footsteps of my dad and joined the Army myself!

At the age of 29, I commissioned as a 1st Lieutenant (skipped 2nd Lieutenant because of my experience as a PA) and dove into Army life. (You can read my whole Army story in Beyond the Battlefield.) I was a hard charger, winning the physical training award in my Officer Basic Course, and really feeling at the top of my game. Unfortunately, things started to shift during my deployment to Iraq.

Mid-tour, I received the Anthrax shot, and I immediately noticed weird symptoms and an uptick in my anxiety. I was already anxious in a combat zone, but it felt like it amplified a lot overnight. Then, right before I came home, I contracted a novel gastrointestinal virus. It took a couple of weeks to recover fully, but I was back to working out and working and felt like things were ok.

Until they weren’t.

Navigating Chronic Illness

Within the next year, I noticed a slow decline in my health. I was doing high-intensity CrossFit workouts, and at first, I was crushing it. I loved pushing my body, and these were the types of workouts that lit me up!

Within a few months, however, I noticed more injuries and slower recovery. I would occasionally have a day where I just had to rest all day, and that wasn’t like me.

I got out of the Army in 2012, and the low-grade symptoms continued. I was working part-time at the Veterans Administration Hospital and didn’t have the reserve to work full-time. I then got married and moved halfway across the country to CA, and the symptoms worsened.

I was growing more sensitive to different things. For example, I had the flu shot and then ended up in the ER a day later with a massive panic attack and a hangover effect for days. I wasn’t able to run anymore or do heavy lifting, so I was stuck with light-weight workouts and longer walks. My capacity to drive any distance was slowly dissipating, as well.

I then got pregnant with my son in 2013, and although plagued with horrifically intrusive thoughts (potentially triggered by the Tdap vaccine third trimester) and severe depression, I was able to walk still, drive a little, and work. Physically, I was doing “ok,” but mentally, I was taking a dive.

Following a 27-hour traumatic delivery with my son and an emergency C-section, my body was just never the same. I tried jumping back into walking, but my legs felt like 1,000 pounds, and anytime I tried to exercise, my muscles felt heavy and toxic.

I tried going back to work three months post-partum, and I very vividly recall the day I rode my bike home from work. It was only about a mile, but there was a steep hill up to our house. I got home and just felt weird. I couldn’t get my breath, and my body felt so weak.

The next day, I woke up and thought I was dying. I had immense air hunger. My muscles were twitching like popcorn. I was so weak yet couldn’t sleep. I would eat a bit of food, and my whole body would buzz. I couldn’t stand more than a minute or two without feeling like I was going to collapse.

I had crashed. Big time.

It was terrifying. I had no idea what was going on in my body, and this started the now 11-year journey with chronic fatigue syndrome.

After tons of labs, imaging, and doctors’ appointments, I was sent to the Stanford Chronic Fatigue Clinic and diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, possibly secondary to Epstein-Barr Virus. I was started on low-dose naltrexone (LDN) and Valtrex. The Valtrex just about did me in, so I had to stop it, but the LDN helped a little to at least get my sleep back on cycle and is something I’ve stayed on for the last 10 years.

I’m happy to share any more of my journey with you over the last decade, but long story short, we’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars, driven thousands of miles to different appointments in hope of support, tried hundreds of various supplements, medications, and interventions, and although better than I was at the beginning, am still on this healing journey.

It has brought me into functional medicine, both as a patient and a provider, and deepened my meditation practice so I am now a certified mindfulness meditation teacher.

It’s important to me to share what I have learned over these years, stay open to learning from others, and build a tribe of chronic illness warriors that can support each other on our healing paths. I do believe in infinite possibilities, and I know the only way to keep going on this marathon of chronic illness is through self-love and the love from others who can hold us up when we can’t do so ourselves.