Dr. Sarah Kelly opened the Kelly Clinic in Richmond, Texas to provide comprehensive care for patients with complex health issues. She was born with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that was not diagnosed until she was an adult. Through her own health struggles, she realized patients needed a doctor who could spend more time understanding their full medical history and symptoms. The Kelly Clinic allows Dr. Kelly to provide thorough evaluations and coordinate care for patients' multiple conditions, without the limitations of short appointment times in large practices. Her goal is to make a difference for others affected by invisible disabilities like her own.

1. Making a Difference One Patient at a Time
By DIANA NGUYEN dnguyen@fbherald.com | Posted: Wednesday, November 2, 2016 9:16 am
Dr. Sarah Kelly is on a mission to make a difference in people’s lives —
one patient at a time.
Sarah, who wanted to be a doctor since she was 8 years old, has been
struck with a twist of fate since birth. But she was unaware of it for
decades.
Sarah inherited Ehlers­Danlos Syndrome, a rare collection of connective
tissue disorders that alters the biology of collagen (the most abundant
protein) in the body, which can lead to multi­systemic symptoms.
“There are about six different types, No. 6 being the most common,” she
explained. The kind that Sarah has is Hypermobility Type III.
Those with this type deal with joint hypermobility as the dominant strait
— affecting both large (elbows, knees) and small joints (fingers, toes)
— joint dislocation, bruising, chronic pain and muscle spasms.
“We have not found the genetic mutation for that specific type, but we
have the genetic mutations for the other types,” Sarah noted.
Sarah explained that the reason it’s so difficult for a lot of patients to
deal with EDS is because it’s a collagen disorder.
“The collagen in the body is abnormal and collagen is like nature’s glue.
It’s everywhere in the body. It’s in the organs, the blood vessels, the
skin, the joints... The disease ends up over time affecting almost every
organ system in the body.”
She pointed out it’s very common for people dealing with EDS to
accumulate a lot of unusual, rare diagnoses.
“Nobody really puts it together,” she said. “They are going to specialists
who are looking at the problem with their own unique vantage points.
It’s like trying to look in a window of a house and get a view of what’s
inside the entire house. Nobody’s looking at the whole house.”
During her time in medical school training, Sarah herself tried putting the pieces together.
“I had developed some really unusual problems, some of them more common than others. But together, the whole
picture didn’t make a lot of sense.
“I started seeking out a good diagnosis for it. I went to some geneticists, some dermatologists and laid out my history
and got a feeling for what they thought it might be.
“Some started saying, ‘This might be a connective tissue disorder.’ There are a variety of connective tissue disorders.”
Making a difference one patient
at a time
Dr. Sarah Kelly, of the Kelly Clinic, located
at 5503 FM 359 Suite C in Richmond,
stands in front of her office door with a
zebra­print ribbon chalk illustration. Kelly
was born with Ehlers­Danlos Syndrome, a
rare genetic connective tissue disorder, and
wasn’t officially diagnosed until 2012. The
zebra­print ribbon represents awareness for
rare diseases/disorders and carcinoid and
neuroendocrine tumor awareness.

2. Over time, Sarah became sicker and sicker. She had a bilateral hip disease at one point during her residencies, and had
to have her hips reconstructed, a shoulder repaired, and a hysterectomy performed along with a number of medical
disorders.
“I ended up going to a rheumatologist in 2012 and she confirmed that this was EDS,” she recalled. “And still, even at
that point, I didn’t really fully appreciate how much that diagnosis would affect my life.”
The beginning of the Kelly Clinic
When Sarah started out in medical school, she initially enjoyed internal medicine and pathology.
“My plan was to do forensic pathology and work with public health,” she said of her previous goals. “I actually got all
the way to forensic pathology. I did internal medicine, I became board certified, I did a pathology residency in New
Mexico, and [my husband, John and I] came here [to Texas] to do forensic.”
Halfway through a one­year fellowship in forensics, while she and her team were conducting investigative analyses,
she realized they were putting all the pieces together too late.
“Why couldn’t we approach people like I had been approaching myself and my own problems while they were alive?”
she asked. “Why couldn’t we try to put together all the pieces in common diagnoses and address that, the underlying
cause of people’s variety of symptoms?”
Sarah soon became increasingly dissatisfied with forensic pathology and decided to do primary care.
“This came hand­in­hand with some deterioration of my own disease and having more and more joint­related
problems,” she said. “I took some time to take care of myself, take care of my two younger children and locate a
community that I really wanted to settle in and practice in.”
Over the course of a couple of decades, she and John discussed how they were going to develop a practice.
“It started out as a dream and then eventually became more and more of a reality,” Sarah said.
“We felt like we could really do this and design a practice entirely around how to help patients in the best way.”
Enter the Kelly Clinic. Established in Richmond and officially opened in September, the husband­and­wife team strives
to “provide award­winning, quality medical care in the neighborhood we all love and call home.”
“Taking care of patients in today’s age is becoming increasingly more complex as science and technology develops,”
Sarah said. “I think everybody can agree that the revolving door clinics that go on, don’t work, especially for people
with complex problems.
“People who have a variety of diseases going on and a variety of organ systems affected, need somebody to sit down
with them and really talk through and tease out the fine details of what’s going on with their health.
“The way health insurance is now, we’re just not able to do that and keep afloat in a clinic. I just don’t think that
patients who have these complex problems, sitting in a room with a doctor for 15 or 20 minutes is really going to get
them the best care.”
Sarah pointed out the difficulties that go along with a large clinic or hospital. “They spend a lot of time chasing down
the insurance companies trying to get payment,” she said. “If we eliminate that, we eliminate someone who has to
code, someone who has to bill, someone who has to get invoices. It’s just us and our assistant.

3. “We do the vital signs, another thing for this position that’s really important for us to do. It’s a lot of time getting your
vitals taken where we could be interacting and learning more about each other.
“I’m more comfortable with, ‘People should just pay for what they need.’ The payment between patient and doctor
should be more about how much time is spent, just like lawyers, electricians, like any other service. I feel like it’s more
accessible to the average person and that’s important to me.”
Dealing with Ehlers­Dan Syndrome
Sarah soon learned that EDS is a lifelong genetic disease she has had her entire life. “I was born with a clavicle
fracture,” she said. “I had a tough couple of decades with the disease without knowing what I had. But it was really
more of an evolution. I suspected that I had it long before I got the diagnosis because I was suffering complications
without any of my doctors recognizing it.”
After the births of her two children, she started experiencing numerous more problems. “Often, people with EDS, their
joint mobility gets even more lax so they become more hypermobile, meaning they get more joint pain, more fatigue,
they tend to have problems with their pelvis. I was very typical in that manner.”
As a result of her ongoing pain, Sarah wanted to give her experiences and what she’s learned “back to the folks who are
struggling with that now so they don’t have to go through the same hard processes.
“If it was hard for me as a doctor, I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone who doesn’t have medical or scientific
knowledge.
“I just really want to give that back to folks who are struggling with the disease that they’ve been told is all in their
head. My heart goes out to those who have this and don’t have the same resources as I do.”
Since then, Sarah has made it her life’s mission to make a difference in invisible disabilities and the lives of those
affected by them. She and John hope to make a difference in the community with the Kelly Clinic.
“It’s been a huge undertaking,” she said. “We’ve been blessed by meeting people like Jenae [Niko] who helped us and
lots of other people seem really enthusiastic about what we’re doing here. It’s been really great to be able to be
practicing this in the way that I dreamed of since I was an 8­year­old saying I want to be a doctor.
“It’s been hard, really hard. I refuse to believe that I can’t take all this knowledge and lots and lots of training and help
people in a way that doesn’t affect my own health. It’s all about balance. I just hope to be able to bring that balance to
other people, to be able to have the benefit of all of my misfortune.”
For the longest time, the hardest part for Sarah was wondering why this was all happening to her.
“I’ve come to the realization, ‘This is why. This clinic.’ We’re a little bit of therapist meets doctor meets integrative,
holistic. We want to wear many hats.”