Poking in the 'Noke: The How and The Why of The Calm Clinic and Caravan

I sold my successful acupuncture practice and started a nonprofit providing free and reduced-price acupuncture off a school bus converted into a mobile clinic. I wouldn't turn back for anything.

May 15, 2025

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of giving a couple of speeches about what I do. For something relatively simple, providing free and reduced acupuncture in and around Southwest Virginia, it is complicated to explain. Before I wrote the first speech Rachel, President of our Board of Directors suggested I start with my Why. Many of you may already be familiar with finding your Why, but for those who aren’t, the Why is the deep motivation behind a choice. Understanding it will help me explain what I do.

Exploring my Why explains why I decided to sell a successful acupuncture practice to drive a big pink bus around the Appalachian mountains in Southwest Virginia giving free acupuncture.

In 2013, I lost my first close friend to opioids. Adam.

Adam was an Energizer Bunny of love and laughter. And then he wasn’t. After he died, I started offering $10, 5 Needle Protocol acupuncture treatments in my waiting room—no questions asked, and if you couldn’t pay, that was okay. The 5 Needle Protocol is an acupuncture treatment developed in the 1970’s to combat the heroin epidemic. The treatment, which used 5 acupuncture points in each ear, is often referred to as AcuDetox, though it treats more than detox. For me, giving this treatment in my waiting room was a small start. The seeds of my Why were being watered by the tears of the loss of my friend.

As my practice grew so did the opioid epidemic, wrapping itself around Southwest Virginia, curling through our families, enveloping our friends. It settled into our mountains and spilled into our streets. And we learned that no one was immune—some stats on the beautiful city where I live. In 2023, almost 20% of Roanoke city residents lived below the poverty line, significantly higher than the national average of 11.1%, gun violence rates were 6 times the national average. Roanoke City had the 2nd highest emergency calls for overdoses. Currently, 37% of our city’s population are asset limited, income constrained, employed (ALICE), which means they are not able to meet their basic needs. 18% of children in Roanoke City suffer from food insecurity. There is a great need for the whole person healing that acupuncture provides, but not enough access to it.

In 2013 as I began building my acupuncture practice, people were suffering around me. In my practice, I treated patient after patient trying to manage pain without opioids—patients paying cash, $80 a session, just for some relief. In my personal life, I was watching friends and family members, newly clean, struggle to access the services they needed. There was never enough time, never enough money, never enough childcare, never enough transportation. The city has a lot of resources, but getting to them? That’s another story.

Then COVID hit. And from my office, which happened to be located in the zip code with the highest overdose rates in the city, I watched as the opioid crisis and the pandemic became intertwined. I treated community workers and healthcare workers drowning in a sea of despair.

One day, I came across an article in The Cut titled During Coronavirus, Is ‘Wellness’ Just Being Well-off? As I read I got furious. That fury became fuel—enough fuel to start a mobile clinic. I called Sue, a retired physician who had worked in a mobile health clinic, and I asked her, “Can you help me figure out how to make acupuncture more accessible to everyone?”

She said, “Yes”, and now she has a bus named after her.

Our bus Sue.

That’s the Why.

Now, let me tell you the How.

I am lucky I have a husband who is a construction artist. Everything he creates is functional and beautiful. When I said I wanted to convert a school bus into a mobile clinic, he said, “You can’t do that!” But his wheels began to turn. It took him about 4 months, lots of strategizing between us, and plenty of YouTube How To’s to figure out how to best convert a 36 foot Frieghtliner school bus into a beautiful, functional clinic. Our mobile clinic has four reclining treatment chairs that can easily be taken on and off though they mostly stay on. Sue also has a bathroom and two treatment tables in the back that can be converted into a queen-sized bed for overnights.

The Wellness Wagon, which will soon be named the Calm Clinic and Caravan, is for everybody. After a year of cultivating partnerships with local community services, we hosted our first Wellness Rodeo in December 2021. Our Wellness Rodeos are monthly events in medically underserved areas in and around our city. Each month, I send out an email to over 20 community partners, and we set up a rotating crew of services, all in one place, so people can move from organization to organization without leaving their neighborhood, without finding childcare, and without taking a day off work. And while we’re there, we encourage the staff of our partners—those who spend their days serving others—to get on the bus and receive treatment too.

But we aren’t just here for the medically underserved. We’re here for everybody. Local businesses and organizations bring us in to treat their teams. We go to colleges, the Sheriff’s Office, car dealerships, city agencies.

At our first Wellness Rodeo in 2021, a man came with a friend to get clean needles from a partner organization. The mobile clean needle units are rock stars, they draw in the most attendees at many stops. The man picked up a bag of food from another partner. He got on the bus for acupuncture and on the way out he signed up with yet another partner organization to go to a recovery center in Tennessee. The next month, the man came back to us to get another acupuncture treatment and to tell us he’d been clean for over 30 days.

For the first year and a half my private practice patient’s tips funded the bus. They paved the way for where we are today. Each month $800 - $1000 would come in because people wanted to do something. They wanted to help. My office manager, Mike, became trained in 5 Needle Protocol and ran the bus and I kept the money coming in through private patients. In 2023 The Wellness Wagon became a 501c3 and in 2024 I sold my private practice. I learned how to write grants and how to ask people for financial support.

There’s another stop that, to me, perfectly paints the picture of what we do.

Last year, we were part of a drive-through Narcan event sponsored by the local health department. At one point, I looked around the bus—it was full. A woman waiting for clean needles from the mobile clean needle van had just found out she was pregnant and decided to get acupuncture while she waited for her new kit. A staff member at a local treatment facility, who was also receiving 5 Needle Protocol, was talking with the pregnant woman about getting into a recovery center. A community healthcare worker sat with acupuncture needles in and her eyes closed, resisting the urge to check on her teenager, who was sitting behind her receiving acupuncture too.

And in the back of the bus, there was a man who was in town on business. He’d wandered over, wondering what was going on in the church parking lot across the street from his Airbnb. He was skeptical but took a place on the bus.

After 10 minutes, he was quietly snoring.

In our beautiful mountain city with its outsized need, community service organizations have realized that we must work together to create change. Over the past few years, a vast network of partners have saved thousands of lives and provided care to thousands of families suffering from the effects of poverty and addiction. Change is being made. Our gun violence rate has dropped 65% and overdose rates are slowly declining.

As for our little non-profit, we have big dreams. We are in the process of opening a community acupuncture clinic. We’ll continue our community outreach and also have a brick-and-mortar clinic where 5 Needle Protocol will be provided for free and full acupuncture treatments will be provided at reduced cost. We believe in bringing holistic healing to the people who need it most, compassionately and consistently.

That’s the How. That’s the Why. That’s the Wellness Wagon, soon to be The Calm Clinic and Caravan.

To help us keep this bus rollin’ and expand our services to a brick-and-mortar clinic you can donate HERE. To keep up with our travels you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook.