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I graduated from Iowa State University college of Veterinary Medicine in 1980 and opened Highland Park Veterinary Clinic in 1981. In 1994, I sold my practice and continued to do relief work for several years.
After being personally treated by an acupuncturist in the late 1990’s I became interested in Chinese Medicine and took the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS) Basic Acupuncture Course, passing the IVAS Board of exam in March, 2003. I have also taken several of the IVAS Herbal Medicine Modules.
I added Homotoxicology to my treatment modalities in June, 2005. In August, 2005, I began my Veterinary Chiropractic classes and plan to complete the program in May, 2006.
I currently live in Des Moines with my husband, Tom, and three small and very spoiled dogs: Howie, Riley, and Baby. I also have three grown children who pop in from time to time.
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When I was in clinics my senior year of veterinary school, I asked one of the clinicians if it was really necessary to be vaccinating our pets every year. His answer was an unqualified “yes”. However, it was the beginning, for me, of a certain discomfort with the medicine I had been taught. Allopathic medicine can be extraordinary medicine. In acute medical emergencies, when surgery is needed, and in other areas, allopathic medicine has much to offer. But it is only one of the tools in the box and it at times has the capacity to cause side effects that can be worse than the initial symptoms.
Holistic medicine, for me, has answered many of the questions that my prior medical training couldn’t address. When the nature of disease is looked at from the perspective of the entire patient: His past medical history, emotional state, lifestyle, and spectrum of symptoms, and pattern can emerge that points to single, underlying root cause for all of that patient’s problems, past and present. We can then address not only symptoms, but the underlying cause of all of that patient’s symptoms.
I also feel as if I now have innumerable approaches to a given problem. There are hundreds of acupuncture points, and countless combinations of these points. There are myriad herbal formulas and dozens of anti-homotoxic compounds. There is chiropractic adjustment for mobility issues. I always feel that I have more to offer my patients.
This is also a gentle medicine. My patients are treated on a couch or a rug in an environment reminiscent of home. It is quiet and painless medicine, and feels personally better in my hands than allopathic medicine did.
And there is always the ability to integrate this medicine with allopathic medicine, giving my patients the best that all worlds have to offer.
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