Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Swan.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My background is in Occupational Therapy, I graduated from the University of Utah with my master’s degree in 2018. I worked in the hospital setting for 5 years, and in the first year of my career I spent over 150 hour becoming a Certified Lymphedema Therapist. I was providing traditional occupational therapy services and lymphatic services all over the hospital, from ICU to rehab. I ended up specializing in stroke recovery. In 2022 my husband and I were trying to start a family, resulting in multiple pregnancy losses. In 2023, we decided to take a break, not only for my mind and body, but also because I had made the decision to leave my full time hospital position and begin my own mobile occupational therapy clinic. I spent time outside of my 40-hr work week building the back end of the business: LLC, liability insurance, business bank account, designing logo, etc. etc. It was February of 2023 that I had my last day at the hospital and began operating Hillside Home OT providing in home services for a variety of diagnoses, essentially I was up against traditional outpatient clinics and business was…..slow. I started offering Manual Lymphatic Drainage (MLD) services thinking I could get some business coming in to start with the slow beginning. Also, my passion for lymphatic work was something I didn’t want to give up when leaving the hospital setting. The MLD took off, and the need/want for this type of work was becoming clear to me. It was not much later, in March of 2023, that I found out I was pregnant with my rainbow baby. As the pregnancy progressed I kept working to get my business off the ground – I joke that I had by baby baby and my business baby to care for. Pregnancy was transformative for me. My appreciation for the lymphatic system, and women’s health overall, deepened greatly. The gaps in women’s healthcare were also made abundantly clear through this experience. Throughout those 9 months I continued to work and market, up until I was about 8.5 months along. December 2023 I gave birth to a healthy baby boy, and during ‘maternity leave’ the journey into motherhood gave me this amazing new perspective on not only life, but my career and business. In those early months of postpartum I started to envision my business being centered around my passions: women’s health, the lymphatic system, and the pregnancy and birth space. I filed a DBA and Lymphatic Works Company was born. I was now only offering manual lymphatic drainage sessions, focusing on providing education and hands on treatment to promote overall health and function. I never could have imagined ending up here, but I am so grateful for where I am and can truly say I LOVE the work I do.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There were many challenges both personally and professionally. Working in healthcare often leads to a high level of burn out which I experienced. It was challenging helping others all day long when I myself was suffering from mental and physical symptoms of burnout. The decision to leave the security of full time work was not made lightly and there was a lot of fear in the early months of the business, not knowing if anything would come of it. Getting pregnant right as the business started was also a challenge, that placed extra pressure on me to succeed and working through the ever changing symptoms of pregnancy was not always easy – especially in the beginning when a lot of “sweat equity” was required with no financial return.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I run a mobile clinic offering 60-minute Manual Lymphatic Drainage (MLD) sessions in the comfort of your home. I specialize in caring for women during pregnancy and postpartum, however, the work I do is beneficial in so many areas: post-surgical/scar healing, auto-immune disease, cancer recovery, post-concussion healing, and overall health/wellness. I think that I stand apart from others because of my medical background, I provide a lot of education during sessions, and make a customized plan with clients, even teaching self-management techniques to help with lymphatic health and overall health in the long term. My goal is to provide more than just an hour long self-care session, but also insight into your own health and better understanding of your body.
What’s next?
I hope to expand the business more into online content/education about the lymphatic system and collaborate with the other amazing entrepreneurial people that I have met in the women’s health space to plan social and educational community events.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lymphaticworks.co
- Instagram: @lymphaticworksco
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelswanot/
