Flourish Natural Medicine www.FlourishNM.com www.GorgeNaturalMedicine.com books about Tai Chi and Chi Gong. “I started to become interested in Eastern philosophies,” she says. Mayo didn’t have a single epiphany about changing careers. “I had to grow to it,” she says. But she did know exactly what it was she was growing toward: acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Although there was an acupuncture school not far from where she lived, Mayo learned about the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland— one of the oldest Chinese medicine colleges in the U.S.—and knew that was where she wanted to go. “It had a very strong herbal school,” Mayo says, along with a reputation for thoroughly training students in all aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. With the support of her husband, she flew to Portland to visit the school. She applied and was accepted, and within four months Mayo and her husband had packed up and moved to Portland, where she enrolled in the four-year master’s program. Mayo graduated in January 2012 (having had her first child while in school), and she and her family moved to Hood River, where they had been coming to bike and relax for several years. After initially sharing space in another acupuncturist’s office, Mayo established her clinic, Family Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine, in downtown Hood River a year-and-a-half ago. Since then, her practice has continued to expand as she sees patients for a growing variety of issues. Treating patients who are going through cancer treatments is one area of her practice that Mayo sees growing. As part of her master’s program, she worked at the Quest Center for Integrative Health in Portland, treating women who were suffering from the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. “Because of their treatments, acupuncture was one of the only things we could do,” Mayo says. Many of her patients found relief from nausea, neuropathy, fatigue and anxiety with acupuncture. “Some patients would continue to come long after their chemo ended because they believed it was beneficial.” Mayo also sees a lot of pregnant women, whom she treats for pain, preparation for labor and for breach babies. She doesn’t do any manipulation to help turn a breach baby, but rather treats the mom to create “the optimal conditions for the baby to turn,” she says. Treating pregnant women has led to another expanding area of her practice: kids. Increasingly, a woman she’s treated during pregnancy will come back after her baby is born seeking help with things like ear infections and gastrointestinal distress—and, as the child grows, allergies and other ailments.
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the gorge magazine // FALL 2014 73