204: Before Your Next Surgery or Supplement: What I Learned From a Patient I Couldn’t Save

This episode isn’t easy to write show notes for, because it isn’t an easy episode. It starts with a story about a patient who was walking, talking, and eating just weeks before he passed away — and it ends with a question every Christian woman managing chronic fatigue, autoimmune symptoms, or unexplained illness needs to sit with: who actually has the final say over your body?

This episode is for the woman who’s tired of following protocols that don’t fit her, tired of conflicting advice from doctors and the natural health world alike, and ready to bring her health decisions back to God first. If you’re done spinning your wheels and ready to take real, faith-grounded steps toward healing, this one’s for you.

The Story That Sparked This Episode

Alexandra shares a recent and personal experience from her work as an RN: a patient in his mid-60s who was healthy and active just a month before his death. After a surgery led to complication after complication — more hospitalizations, an ICU stay, and eventually hospice — he passed away within hours of comfort measures beginning.

She’s careful to say she doesn’t know his full story, and she isn’t claiming the surgery was unnecessary. But the experience raised a question she couldn’t shake: how often do we move forward with a medical decision simply because it’s what’s expected, without truly asking God first?

What Conformity Really Means

Using the Merriam-Webster definition, conformity is “action in accordance with some specified standard or authority.” Alexandra unpacks how this shows up not just in health decisions, but in nearly every area of life:

Prioritizing money over family
Numbing out with entertainment, food, or substances
Choosing to be right instead of choosing peace
Assuming a decision is safe simply because an authority figure endorsed it

She’s honest that this isn’t a “pointing the finger” message. It’s a call to examine a blind spot she believes the church has largely inherited: an unquestioning trust in doctors, protocols, and procedures — without pausing to bring the decision to God.

The Trap Works Both Ways

One of the most important points in this episode: conformity isn’t just about blindly trusting conventional medicine. It’s just as easy to blindly trust the natural health world.

Alexandra shares her own experience with fish oil, a supplement that’s worked well for her for over a decade but upsets her husband’s stomach. Every body is different. Just because something is popular in the natural health community, whether that’s a supplement, a diet, or a protocol, doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

The goal isn’t to swap one authority (the doctor) for another (the wellness influencer). The goal is to go to God first.

Where This Message Comes From

This isn’t a new theme for the podcast. Alexandra shares that the heartbreak she felt watching the world’s response in 2020, and the pattern of “following the experts” without discernment, is part of what led her to write her book, Discover God’s Health Wisdom: Exposing Lies and Myths That Keep You Sick, and to start this podcast in the first place.

After years working inside the pharmaceutical industry and seeing its inefficiencies and conflicts of interest firsthand, she’s not anti-medicine. She’s pro-discernment. Medications and surgeries have their place. But so does asking God before assuming they’re the only path forward.

Time-Stamped Highlights

00:01 — A patient’s sudden decline: walking and talking one month, gone the next
01:28 — How the book Wealthy and Well Known led Alexandra to the word that describes what breaks her heart most: conformity
02:57 — The definition of conformity and why it’s the root issue behind so much chronic illness and exhaustion
03:25 — What 2020 revealed about blind trust in “the experts”
04:50 — How conformity shows up far beyond healthcare: money, entertainment, conflict, and numbing behaviors
05:47 — The blind spot Alexandra sees in the church around medical authority
06:47 — Why conformity in the natural health world is just as real a trap as conformity in conventional medicine
07:44 — The fish oil example: why “it worked for me” doesn’t mean “it’s right for you”
08:41 — A reminder that both scientists and the medical community have been wrong before, and will be again
09:07 — Alexandra’s invitation to take the next step if this episode resonated

Key Takeaways

No single authority, not a doctor, not a supplement brand, not a wellness influencer, was ever meant to have the final say over your body.
Discernment matters more than default. Whether a decision looks conventional or “natural,” it’s worth asking whether it’s actually right for you.
Every body is different. What worked for someone else, even someone you trust, isn’t a guarantee it will work for you.
Bringing decisions to God first isn’t about rejecting medicine or rejecting natural remedies. It’s about refusing to hand over ownership of your health to anyone but Him.
Chronic fatigue, autoimmune symptoms, and unexplained illness often call for more than a new protocol. Sometimes they call for a pause and a real conversation with God about the path forward.

Ready to Stop Spinning Your Wheels?

If this episode stirred something in you, whether it’s frustration with the merry-go-round of protocols and opinions, or a quiet sense that it’s time to stop outsourcing your health decisions to whoever spoke last, you don’t have to figure this out alone.

Alexandra offers a More Energy Strategy Session to help you get clear on what’s actually driving your exhaustion or chronic symptoms, and what a next step rooted in wisdom and faith could look like for you.

If you’re done waiting and ready to move forward, visit herholistichealing.com/services to book your session.