CityView Magazine

62 | Feb/Mar • 2010 Your Health W hen their son Austin began experiencing regular headaches, Dean and Denise Schmude did what most parents would do: They took him to see a doctor. But test after test revealed nothing that explained their son's pain. Austin was healthy and normal. Physicians prescribed medications, but they caused unwelcome side effects. The headaches persisted. Two years later, 11-year-old Austin still gets headaches, but the Schmudes have discovered something that brings him relief: acupuncture. It has been a standard practice in Chinese medicine for 5,000 years and common in many Eastern countries, including Korea and Japan, for both people and animals. But in the United States, the medical establishment refers to acupuncture, naturopathy, therapeutic massage, chiropractic treatments and other remedies as alternative or complementary medicine. That could be changing – and right here, in Fayetteville. Kelly Gallop is a fourth-generation acupuncturist who quietly lives and works out of a red brick ranch house off Cliffdale Road. Born Hui Sun in South Korea, her father worked as a village doctor. So did his father and his father before that. They all performed acupuncture on their patients, plus their prized animals. In Korea, cows are more than livestock; they are valued and important family possessions, and Gallop recalls many childhood nights when her father would leave his bed to care for a patient or one of their animals. Now, Gallop is the wife of a retired soldier and a diplomate in Oriental medicine. She completed a five-year program in Oriental medicine in Los Angeles and opened her practice in 2005. "I enjoy it very, very much," she said. "My patients, when they're feeling better, that's what keeps me going." On a rainy afternoon, Gallop, dressed in a polka dot dress and wool slippers, stood over Dean Schmude, Austin's father. The Schmudes began taking Austin to see Gallop shortly after arriving in Fayetteville more than a year ago from Las Vegas. After seeing a dramatic difference in his son, Dean, a communications officer at Pope Air Force Base, opted to try it himself. On a rainy Friday, he climbed up on Gallop's table. Gallop began by asking questions and feeling for pain, moving her hands along Dean's shins. Before she inserted a single needle, she had Dean spend several minutes lying still in the quiet room, focusing on deep breathing. When they were ready, Gallop cleaned several places on his body with an alcohol swab and then inserted the first needle near his left wrist. She turned the AN ART ANCIENT Story by Nomee Landis | Photos by Amy Free

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