🎙️ The Healthcare System Missed Her Disease Until Her Lung Collapsed | Aaliyah Maura

🚨 DISCLAIMER: This content is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. The results discussed have not been independently vetted, and any claims made by the guest have not been verified. The views expressed by the guest do not necessarily reflect those of the host or this show. Endometriosis symptoms can be dismissed for years—but for Aaliyah Maura, the consequences became life-threatening when Stage IV endometriosis affected her diaphragm and chest and contributed to the complete collapse of her right lung. Beginning at ten years old, Aaliyah experienced painful periods, back pain, nausea, and episodes of feeling as though she might pass out. Despite knowing that something was wrong, she struggled for years to obtain an accurate endometriosis diagnosis. Her journey eventually revealed Stage IV endometriosis involving her reproductive organs, diaphragm, and thoracic cavity. What she initially believed might be a hernia turned out to involve significant fluid accumulation, shortness of breath, and a collapsed lung associated with thoracic endometriosis. 🎙️ In this episode of the Financial Freedom Podcast, Aaliyah shares how she learned to trust her body, ask better questions, seek additional opinions, and find an endometriosis specialist who listened to her concerns. When one physician presented a hysterectomy as the answer, Aaliyah did not immediately surrender her reproductive choices. She continued researching, requested additional evaluation, sought a second medical opinion, and ultimately underwent excision surgery with a specialist in Atlanta. As a licensed marriage and family therapist working in a primary-care setting, Aaliyah brings both professional expertise and lived experience to the psychology of patient self-advocacy. She explains why patients may remain silent around authority figures, how fear of being labeled “difficult” affects doctor-patient communication, and why speaking up can matter in healthcare, relationships, and the workplace. If you are searching for answers to questions such as “Are my painful periods normal?”, “Why are my symptoms being dismissed?”, “When should I seek a second opinion?”, or “How do I advocate for myself at the doctor?”, this conversation offers practical insight and encouragement. In this episode, you will discover: ✅ Early signs and symptoms that Aaliyah knew were not normal ✅ How endometriosis affected her diaphragm, chest, and right lung ✅ What patients describe as medical gaslighting or medical dismissal ✅ Green flags to look for in a thoughtful healthcare provider ✅ Why curiosity and critical thinking matter in complex medical cases ✅ How to become an informed participant in your healthcare decisions ✅ When additional testing, a referral, or another opinion may be appropriate ✅ The benefits and limitations of using AI for health information ✅ How Aaliyah approached fertility preservation when considering treatment ✅ Why self-advocacy does not automatically make someone a difficult patient ✅ How she transformed her experience into a message for the TEDx stage ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Medical disclaimer 00:22 Introduction 01:47 Meet Aaliyah Maura 02:45 Painful periods and the earliest warning signs 03:48 When endometriosis contributed to a collapsed lung 05:03 Navigating unexplained medical symptoms 06:43 Doctors, patients, and collaborative healthcare 08:35 Green flags in a thoughtful healthcare provider 10:00 Treating the whole person—not only the symptom 12:45 AI, Google, and finding health information 14:15 The hysterectomy recommendation and excision surgery 16:30 Fertility, faith, research, and second opinions 17:42 Turning her journey into a TEDx Talk 19:30 Why women must advocate for themselves 20:45 Stop rejecting yourself before others can 23:15 How to connect with Aaliyah Maura 23:47 Final takeaway and outro Financial Freedom for Physicians, Copyright 2026

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 2:29Speaker 06

  Before we begin, quick disclaimer. Nothing in this episode should be considered investment advice. Results discussed have not been independently vetted. Any claims made by the guests have not been verified. The content is for educational purposes only. The views expressed by the guests do not reflect those of the host or the show. Imagine experiencing debilitating pain from the age of 10. Pain so severe that you feel nauseated, lightheaded, and close to passing out, only to be repeatedly told that what you're experiencing is normal. For today's guests, those symptoms are anything but normal. Aleah Maura is a licensed marriage and family therapist, TEDx speaker, and advocate for women finding the courage to use their voices.

• 3:14Speaker 06

  After years of unexplained symptoms, Aleah was diagnosed with stage four endometriosis that had affected not only her reproductive organs, but also her diaphragm and chest. By the age of 27, complications had contributed to the complete collapse of her lung. When one physician presented a hysterectomy as a solution, Aleah made a life-changing decision. She would not accept that recommendation without asking more questions and exploring every reasonable alternative. Her persistence eventually led her to a specialist and a treatment plan that preserved the possibility of becoming a mother. In this conversation, we discuss the difference between respecting medical expertise and surrendering your personal agency.

• 3:57Speaker 06

  We explore how to recognize when you are being dismissed, what to look for in a thoughtful healthcare provider, when to seek another opinion, and why advocating for yourself does not make you a difficult patient. Aleah's message reflects far beyond the doctor's office. It's about speaking up, taking up space, and refusing to reject yourself before anyone else has the opportunity to say yes. Here is my conversation with Aleah. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Financial Freedom. I'm here with Aleah Maura. She's a fellow TEDx speaker. We were in the same cohort. She's got an amazing story to share about the dangers of the healthcare system. We think it's a perfect system. It's not, and I'm happy to have her on. Aleah, welcome.

• 4:43Speaker 07

  I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

• 4:46Speaker 06

  Congratulations on your TEDx talk. I think it's gonna be possibly an editor's pick. Amazing. Introduce yourself and we'll dive into the questions.

• 4:53Speaker 07

  My name is Aleah Maura. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist, currently practicing at a primary care physician clinic. I help patients process life with chronic health illnesses. I've worked with couples, children, survivors of domestic violence, and I'm here to share my journey with endometriosis, how I had to learn how to advocate for myself.

• 5:16Speaker 06

  Well, go back to the beginning. There is universal thought that doctors know it all, that our healthcare system is perfect, and it's not. Start there and what were the first signs that you experienced with your condition?

• 5:30Speaker 07

  For sure. I ended up getting diagnosed with stage four endometriosis that had not only impacted my reproductive organs, but also impacted my lung and diaphragm, thoracic endometriosis. Years ago, when I was 10 years old, I was having very painful periods, to the point where I was having back pain. I felt nauseous, like I was gonna pass out. I would tell doctors, hey, this doesn't feel right. I know that periods can be painful, but this feels like another layer. This feels like a bit much to be a regular period symptom. That's how things started and ultimately led into 2023, when I ended up having a collapsed lung because of the endometriosis.

• 6:14Speaker 07

  I thought I had a hernia because I had so much fluid in my abdomen that my belly button was protruding forward. I'm thinking I have an umbilical hernia, but I was also having shortness of breath. I wasn't able to eat. As it turned out, I had so much fluid as a result of the endometriosis that my right lung was completely collapsed. So much fluid that was causing my belly button to be protruding forward. I had to go to the emergency room. I initially went in for a CT scan to look into a hernia. I had a gastroenterologist tell me that, oh yeah, this probably is a hernia. We'll do a CT scan to check. They stopped the CT scan and told me, ma'am, go to the emergency room. I had to wait for my mom to come to the imaging area

• 6:58Speaker 07

  and take me to the emergency room because what I thought was a hernia was much larger than that.

• 7:04Speaker 06

  I hear these stories. My wife, she had gallbladder and they missed it for years and they thought it was irritable bowel syndrome. Stories of people going to the ER. One of my friends, they thought it was kidney stones. They did a workup for kidney stones. It was negative. Sent him home. It was a different condition. A lot are now staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Nothing against them. In terms of people navigating the healthcare system, they can't pinpoint a specific issue. Where's the first place they should start? In your case, you had a lot of symptoms and it was hard to put things together. How should they approach this as opposed to going from emergency room to emergency room?

• 7:42Speaker 07

  I think that one of the first things that you can do is trust your voice. Trust what you feel. Doctors may be the experts in medicine, but you are the expert in your own lived experience. Although doctors would tell me, oh, this was fine, or this was normal, or they were trying to normalize something, my body kept experiencing symptoms that made me think this feels very extreme. At the time, I was a child, so I didn't push back. But throughout my life, especially with my lung being involved, there was no way I could accept being the reality. If something doesn't feel right, say something. If providers dismiss it, it can be tempting to take what they say at face value and say, oh, they went to school, they should know best.

• 8:27Speaker 07

  I want to encourage you to resist the temptation to do that. Find someone who will listen. The other part is finding providers that will listen to you and be thorough. Being thorough is an underrated trait in a good doctor. Even if they don't know the answer, helping you to figure out who can help you figure out what the answer is is so important. Someone who's willing to listen, request the lab work, request the imaging, a referral. It's okay if you don't know the answer, but part of being a good provider is getting patients connected to the right people who are gonna be able to give them the right help, even if that may not be you.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  I've tested the medical system myself. I've gone in with a condition. I'm thinking in the back of my head, this doctor has no idea. They will talk at you and talk over you, won't let you talk. In the back of my head, I know what's going on and you explain it to them, they just don't get it. It's amazing. A lot of doctors, they're so focused on one way of thinking because that's what the training did. They can't think, they can't put things together. Would you recommend someone, if they have an issue or condition, they should view doctors as consultants as opposed to them giving them the answer? They're giving their opinion. Is that what you're saying these days?

• 9:41Speaker 07

  I think one of the beliefs that we have about our healthcare system and what the authority figures in general. That could be a lawyer, that could be even a therapist, that could be anybody in any form of authority. We think that what they say goes, almost like their god, that they're the supreme. Instead of seeing it as this powerful authority figure, we should change our mentality into thinking about it as a collaborative process. Yes, doctors go through extensive training. They go through undergrad, medical school, residency, fellowship, depending upon what their specialty is. But that doesn't take away from the fact you are the only person that can speak for yourself. No one can advocate for yourself like you can. You know what a baseline is for your own body.

• 10:26Speaker 07

  You know what feels off, you know what feels weird, you know what doesn't feel right. You have to communicate that part because nobody else can communicate that on your behalf better than you can. Especially if they're saying that you should be fine or that things are okay, but yet you're still experiencing symptoms. That's paramount for you to make sure to keep knocking. The answer is not to stop knocking. The answer is to go to a different door. I can't stress that enough. As a therapist, I recognized throughout my journey that this was something that I was experiencing as a patient in healthcare. But I see it all the time in patients when they know that something doesn't feel right, but they don't say something.

• 11:08Speaker 07

  Even at work, right? They feel like they're deserving of a promotion, but they don't advocate for it. Or there are relationships that are unhealthy and they don't speak up to their partner and say, hey, that bothered me or hey, I don't like this. So I think it's so important for you to find providers that you feel like you can trust. That's part of the green flag is finding providers that are going to be curious. Curiosity is so important because part of good healthcare is being able to critically think and be like, almost like a detective or an investigator. If you go into a situation assuming what the outcome is, it's going to make you less likely to ask certain questions. That's called confirmation bias. If you're going into it thinking, oh, this is a cold, this is a flu, I know what this is.

• 11:52Speaker 07

  You're going to be less likely to consider outcomes that differ from what that initial suspicion is. Important to find providers that are curious, personable and who have good bedside manner and who are not going to treat you as a number or as a diagnosis, but who are going to see you as the whole person. Because I think doctor training can be very symptom focused, but not necessarily the root of the issue or systemic thinking. In my case, because I had endometriosis, not just in my reproductive organs, but in my diaphragm or in my plural cavity. That meant that I needed a systemic approach. That was part of the reason why it was so hard for me to find good care.

• 12:33Speaker 07

  A lot of doctors were not thinking holistically. They were thinking very symptom focused or very narrow. But the human body is the system. It's interconnected. There's tissues, there's organs, there's organ systems. Even as a therapist, I talk to my patients about the interconnectedness between the mind and the body. You don't experience your emotions outside of your body. Suppressed emotions can show up as sickness, cancer, autoimmune disease, high blood pressure. If symptomology is interconnected, then how we treat people has to be interconnected.

• 13:05Speaker 06

  Do you think this phenomenon is this idea where the doctor is right? And is that an American phenomenon or in Eastern cultures? Or will you find the same problems in our healthcare system? Is that a symptom of what's wrong with our healthcare system?

• 13:20Speaker 07

  I want to make sure not to step on too. I am not an expert in the American healthcare system. But throughout my process, I did learn a lot about our healthcare system. I learned about our FDA and how food is regulated. And I absolutely feel like the way that we regulate or the lack thereof is different. It's very unique in comparison to other countries. We don't have universal healthcare. Our healthcare is very profit focused. Our FDA permits a lot of chemicals, a lot of ingredients that other countries have banned. There's just so many nuances that again, I'm not an expert, but I do think that the way that we approach healthcare in the United States is not really advantageous to really treating people and curing them.

• 14:05Speaker 07

  It's capitalism. It's focused on money. And I think by default, it creates competing priorities when our systems are based on profit. And I think it doesn't really do the individual the best service, unfortunately. So I think that, and even in other countries, like they practice things more holistically. So it's not just so focused on what is this one symptom, but it's understanding the root cause. It's understanding, okay, how are these systems working together? It's understanding what are natural remedies? What are herbs? What are food? What about lifestyle? Like, how do these things work together? Unfortunately, there's a lot of capitalism. It's great that we, the pursuit of happiness.

• 14:49Speaker 07

  It's the theoretical concept that it sounds good in theory, but how that trickles down into our society doesn't always yield the best outcomes, especially for patients, unfortunately.

• 15:00Speaker 06

  We call it in circles, the medical industrial complex. You know, how our military defense, our government, our financials, education, the food systems, it's all centralized. My next question is a lot of people are going to AI these days. A lot of patients don't trust their doctors. They're Googling things. They're going to chat GPT and Claude. How do you think that's affecting people's choice of doctors, how they get informed, how they make decisions?

• 15:24Speaker 07

  Technology can be advantageous, but it can be problematic. When we're using technology as a human substitute, even as a therapist, I had to do CE's recently for my license. I did a CE on how AI is being integrated into the therapy realm and how technology can be good for assessment. It can be good for quantifying things, but it can never replace the empathy. It can never replace the human touch. There are nuances to being intuitive, that gut feeling that I can't replicate. Hallucinations with AI may give incorrect information, biases, even racially, because it's programmed by humans.

• 16:04Speaker 07

  So these are integrated into the system. If somebody's in a suicidal crisis, AI is not going to be totally respond. It's not going to know what to do. It can be useful maybe for fact checking possibly, or maybe to help you pull more research at one time without having to go through so many different databases, but it cannot replace the human touch. If I'm with patients and they may say something, but their body language says something else, AI is not going to be able to pick up on that. I use AI with my notes for my patients. The guys will interpret things incorrectly because it's listening for what's being said. But that human connection, that human touch, it doesn't have it.

• 16:45Speaker 06

  I was talking with my colleague. He was saying people don't trust him anymore because now you have all these sources. The doctor's judgment is getting supplanted, improving access to information, but you have to filter it out. In your case, you left and went to Atlanta, Georgia, found a doctor there.

• 17:01Speaker 07

  I actually did have to have surgery. What wasn't true was that I did have a physician tell me that I needed to have a hysterectomy. That was the part that was not accurate. I was able to find a provider in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a specialist in endometriosis. He performed excision surgery. That is what's considered the gold standard of endometriosis treatment. It isn't a cure because it is possible that the mitral implants could potentially grow back. By being able to remove it from the root, it creates the most optimal outcomes based on what research is currently or what the best available information treatment is at this point. I remember asking him, I was like, what made you interested?

• 17:45Speaker 07

  Because he's a man, so I'm thinking you don't have periods, you don't deal with fertility or any of these things. And so he was just like, I remember being in residency and I was seeing women who would go through excision surgery versus the women who didn't and how their prognoses were starkly different in comparison. But he was like, I wanted to be able to help and I wanted to be able to be a part of that. I'm grateful. I'm thirty years old. I don't have children. I have always desired to be a mom and I was not willing to give up that option. I was so young. I was 27 years old. Imagine your 27 year old daughter or your 27 year old sister. That's the only option. I couldn't accept that.

• 18:27Speaker 07

  Had I gone through all of my research and all of my journey and that was the only option available, then it might have hit different, but I felt like there was no way that we had exhausted all possible options. I put a pin in the other physician and I continued to look around. I continued to do research. I had a doctor who referred me to other people. So I was looking at research articles. I was asking for imaging. I was asking for different lab work. And ironically, during the consultation with the physician who mentioned the hysterectomy, he mentioned the other physician that I ended up going to, and I felt like that was confirmation. That was the right person for me. I'm just so grateful that I didn't accept what was told to me.

• 19:12Speaker 07

  I'm a Christian, so my faith is important to me, praying about it, seeking other options, seeking the Lord, getting clarity on what exactly is the issue, what needs to be done. I ended up finding a woman who went to my church, who had endometriosis. She had a hysterectomy and she was still dealing with issues. That was the final straw for me. Cannot be the final solution. This woman still dealt with these issues even after the fact. Thankfully, in her case, she had a child, but I didn't. So I was like, there's no way that I'm going to give up this fight. I'm going to continue to research. I'm going to continue to figure this out. Like I said, if that had ultimately been the only alternative, then I would have been more willing to consider it, but I did not feel that we had exhausted all of the possibilities.

• 19:57Speaker 06

  We have a couple of minutes remaining. Talk about taking your journey to the TEDx stage. Why TEDx and what do you want this visibility to do for your message?

• 20:08Speaker 07

  I'm doing my best to answer each of them. As far as why the TEDx stage, I remember learning about TED when I was in middle school. I was exposed to TED very early. I remember thinking, man, that looks like a super amazing achievement to be able to do that. That's when the seed was planted many years ago. In January of this year, I was on threads and I kept seeing the application on my feed. I kept seeing it and I kept scrolling past it. I was like, man, I'm too young. They wouldn't pick me, yada, yada, yada. But I kept seeing it. And so eventually I was like, okay, let me just open it and see what they have. Let me see what the application requires.

• 20:49Speaker 07

  And when I saw that the date was my birthday, I was like, this feels like this could potentially be aligned. Then I thought about my endometriosis journey and all that I had gone through. I had shared my journey with people and so many people were like, you need to be posting on social media. People need to hear this. You need to write the book. You need to make sure that people know about your journey because this is so inspirational. And I was like, you know what? I think I have something, a big idea worth spreading. I felt like I had something worth sharing, but I didn't really know how to communicate it in a TEDx worthy way. I did the bootcamp and I was able to hone in on what idea am I challenging? What idea am I pushing up against?

• 21:32Speaker 07

  And it was this idea that doctors are the supreme authority. It's that doctors know everything and that you should accept what they say. My entire journey proved why that's not true. And that's what ultimately led me. I've always had a servant heart. I've always had a helping heart. Hence, I'm a therapist. I help people every day. But I wanted people to know that it's okay to push up against the expert. I wanted people to know that being assertive doesn't mean that you're a problem or being assertive doesn't make you mean. I wanted people to know that, especially as a woman, you have the right to take up space. You have the right to go after what you want. If something doesn't feel right inside, say something.

• 22:15Speaker 07

  If something feels off with your healthcare journey, you have a right to ask questions. That's how I was able to figure out that these doctors don't know how to help me because I was asking questions that made them have to critically think. When the critical thinking moments came, they could not rise to the challenge. And that let me know, okay, they're not competent enough to help me in my specific case. Not that they're not competent overall, but that what I need and what I'm looking for, they just don't have it. So I want to encourage other women to be able to take space. I am in the process of writing a book about my journey and I would love to be able to help my story and my lessons to have more visibility because I think that my story can help so many women. Endometriosis is a global issue.

• 22:59Speaker 07

  It doesn't just impact women in Houston, women in Texas, or even women in the United States. My doctor who helped me, he had a patient from South Africa. He had a patient from Ireland. There are so many women who are going through this journey and I want to help women across the board be able to advocate for themselves, use their voice, not just in healthcare, but in their relationships. At work, I want to encourage other women to be able to advocate for themselves and to know that their voice matters.

• 23:30Speaker 06

  I want to talk about this because there's so many different ways you can utilize that visibility. And a lot of people believe what you are believing. You just scroll past it. And a lot of people think a TED Talk is a lecture and you have to be a celebrity or an athlete or a president.

• 23:46Speaker 07

  The notoriety.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  Dispel that myth and why getting on this TED stage can really help promote your message.

• 23:53Speaker 07

  One of the things that I kept thinking about was this idea that who's to say that I am too young? Who's to say that I don't have anything worth sharing? I'm going to let them tell me no, but I don't want to tell myself no because then that's self sabotage. Who knows, right? You think you can or you can't, you're right. That phrase is so paramount. Whether you think that you have the capacity to do it or not, you're right. The thing that separates successful people, the only thing separating them from regular people is their belief in themselves. That's it. They aren't necessarily the most talented or the most gifted. It's just they refuse to quit. They refuse to be told no. I had that mentality going into it and there were moments when I was shaking.

• 24:36Speaker 07

  That first Zoom call, I had my camera off. I was shaking just to introduce myself because I was intimidated. I was like, do I deserve to be here? Do I deserve? Do I have anything to say? People are in their careers. They're middle aged. They're 40, 50, 60, and here I am, 29. What do I have to say? But I was like, you know what? I may be inexperienced in thinking like some of them. My story matters. My credentials matter. I matter. Granted, I got to where I was because I was pushing up against what's commonly accepted. So why not? Why stop there? Let's just keep the party going. That's ultimately how I got to where I was. Rejection can be hard, but what's for you is for you.

• 25:19Speaker 07

  Going back to me being a Christian, one of the scriptures that I held on to was, "Do not despise small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. Your gift will make room for you and bring you before a great man." I've experienced that many times in my life and you may not have all that you want, but you have all that you need. Use what you have. Be a good steward of what you have. That will open up the doors. You just being a good steward of what you already have, that's enough.

• 25:47Speaker 06

  How can people connect with you?

• 25:49Speaker 07

  I am on LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram. I did recently launch my landing page. You can also get in contact with me, www.aleamar.com. Very simple, very to the point. Those are the three platforms that will be easiest for you to reach out to me.

• 26:06Speaker 06

  Thanks so much for coming on and I really look forward to the talk being released and the launch party. All of the TEDx speakers are going to get invited to my launch party too.

• 26:16Speaker 07

  I can't wait. I was on the side of the stage hearing your talk and I was like, he does a great job. So I'm excited to see it from the audience view. I'm excited to be here and thank you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure.

• 26:28Speaker 06

  Keep up the great work.

• 26:29Speaker 07

  Thank you. You as well.

• 26:31Speaker 06

  Let's zoom out. If you're a physician, founder, or high income professional and you feel like you're working harder every year, but not structurally free, you're not alone. The mistake is an effort. It's architecture. This show exists to help you convert expertise into scalable leverage faster and with fewer expensive missteps. Here's the diagnostic I mentioned before. If your income requires your constant presence, if your capital isn't compounding outside your profession, if your highest value talent is doing low value tasks, you don't have a growth problem. You have a leverage design problem. And if you want to fix it with clarity instead of guesswork, I offer a limited number of one-on-one leverage strategy sessions each month.

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• 27:37Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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• 28:18Speaker 03

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• 28:30Speaker 03

  Give the feeling. Shop in-store and on lululemon.com.

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• 28:56Speaker 05

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