When my friend Joyce (my DD for the day) and I arrived at the squat, gray, medical office building across the street from a nail salon and a donut shop, I wondered if we were in the right place. After all, we had driven down the San Francisco peninsula and into the heart of Silicon Valley, where Teslas grow on trees. We were surrounded by the sovereign territories of Google, Apple, and Facebook. I used to work down here, when I worked in tech. My company offered both free shuttle services and a private SF Bay ferry for employees to ride to work.
We entered a waiting room that was quiet, dark, and sparsely decorated, with vinyl armchairs, a pleather couch, and some magazines. Where was the tranquil fountain, the yoga studio, the bamboo decor? I didn’t even smell burning incense or freshly-brewed herbal tea. But when I was asked not for my insurance card, but for my credit card, that’s when I knew: This was the right place. Despite the marked absence of Buddha statues, I had entered the world of American alternative medicine.
This clinic, called Summit Alternative Medicine1, came highly recommended by my acupuncturist, who has for years served as my complicated illness coordinator extraordinaire. The role involves Googling new treatments and texting former patients while I'm facedown on a table, impersonating a pincushion. He’s rarely steered me wrong, but I’d been burned by places like this before, so whenever he’d suggested it, I shrugged him off. A long string of nasty migraines is what, ultimately, convinced me to take the leap of faith.
Though I was unfamiliar with most of the treatments listed on Summit’s website, they did have one thing I wanted to try: IV Ketamine. Ketamine is a hallucinogenic sedative that's more commonly used for depression and anxiety, but some people with intractable migraines and other chronic pain, such as myself, have found it helpful. Ketamine for migraine is rarely covered by insurance plans, so it's best to try other, more affordable options first. But I go through migraine treatments like tissues, like toilet paper. So when it came to ketamine, I was, arguably, overdue.
My initial video consult with Summit was a thousand bucks, paid in full before scheduling. The doctor, who called in from a real-life yurt, recommended I come into the clinic for a day-long, all-you-can-eat buffet of treatments for migraines, with ketamine for dessert. Perhaps I would be interested in one of their multi-day treatment packages? The gold “Stress Relief” package was only $14,500, and was the “best value” compared to going a la carte.
Back in the waiting room, I wondered where the other patients were. No one else was there, and as it turned out, I saw no other patients throughout my entire visit. I had, however, received multiple hints that I was on the poorer end of Summit’s clientele. Perhaps there was a separate entrance near a secret helipad for the pro athletes, musicians, and other celebrities flying in from mega yachts and movie sets—an entrance that bypassed people wearing Costco flannel shirts and comfy Costco traveler pants, such as myself.
The receptionist handed me a consent form that listed treatments like limb bagging, fat grafting, and rectal ozone therapy. (ROT, I later discovered, comes highly recommended by Gwyneth Paltrow, though it's very much not recommended by gastroenterologists.) It was easy for me to laugh at such strange-sounding treatments because they reminded me of the many suggestions I’ve received over the years for curing migraines: piercing my tragus, wearing amber jewelry, taking a hot bath, getting a breast reduction, putting cabbage on my head. Hypnosis, sensory deprivation chambers, EMF-blocking hats. Hormone therapy, every form of marijuana. Snake venom.
On the other hand, I’ve entertained more of these ideas than I’d care to admit, and certainly more than I’ve had the time or energy to actually try. This is because desperation functions like rose-colored glasses—it makes everything seem worth a go. And if you come to a clinic like Summit, how extra-desperate does that make you? So as I scribbled my name at the bottom of the paper, I hoped I wouldn't go the way of Gwyneth.
My room, called Moon Gate Two (no joke!), had a small window, a sink, and two recliner chairs. A brochure display offered many options for light reading. “Say No to Incontinence!” said one, while another listed themes of the various ketamine “journeys” on offer. The options included “I am Well,” “I am Love,” and “I am Here.” Knowing that some people have out-of-body experiences while on ketamine, the “I am Here” journey struck me as particularly ironic.
Another pamphlet was covered in pictures of butts. I couldn’t make out any clear differences between the various butts, though some were labeled “BEFORE EMSCULPT” and others, “AFTER EMSCULPT.”
Joyce and I set our backpacks down beside our chairs. Between us we’d packed books, snacks, journals, headphones, and a crochet kit that Joyce had started while I was in the hospital a few months earlier.
We ate our packed lunches quickly (leftovers for both of us), expecting a doctor to come in at any moment. None came. After we’d cycled through all our usual topics multiple times, someone came to take my temperature, then someone else to offer coffee.
I’d settled into my book when a nurse rolled in an IV pole, decorated with two bags of mystery fluids.
"This one is $300," the she said while pointing to a bright yellow bag, "and the other is $150. Do you want both? Most people do both." When I asked what was in the bags, she looked confused, as if she was a Starbucks barista and I’d just asked her for a Big Mac.
“Look, there goes fifty cents—or maybe a dollar?” Joyce said as another drop of clear liquid crawled down the plastic tube plugged into my arm.
The mystery IV bags turned out to be many of the same vitamins that I took every day at home, dissolved in water. I bought them on an impulse, like you would a pack of gum or a People magazine at the grocery store, and I quickly regretted the lapse in judgment. After four years of chronic migraines, what made me think that a little extra zinc or B12 would do the trick? Never again, I told myself. I needed to get my head in the game.
About two hundred dollars had already made its way into my veins when a lean, middle-aged doctor came in, with a few nurses and a teenaged girl shuffling behind him. The nurses wore scrubs, the teenager, jeans. The doctor had carefully combed hair and the look of someone who rarely smiles. He introduced himself as Dr. Bradley.
I had heard of Dr. Bradley—or, more accurately, the Dr. Bradley. He was the founder of Summit, and widely considered the best of the best for treating mystery medical conditions. My acupuncturist told me that people flew in from all over to meet with Dr. Bradley, and that he charged—am I remembering this right?—five thousand dollars for a one-hour consult.
Dr. Bradley’s eyes expertly bypassed my face, settling instead on my California Highway 1 baseball hat, which I had placed on the counter.
"Oh, California, nice," he said in a voice as flat as a pancake. "Anyway… this is my friend's daughter, she's doing a sort of internship, mind if she watches?" He didn’t overexert himself by either looking at or gesturing toward the girl.
“Uh, ok,” I said, sensing that this was the only acceptable answer to the question.
Then another nurse appeared, to fetch Dr. Bradley. He and his entourage exited as quickly as they’d entered, without saying a word. Joyce and I exchanged a look as they left.
Upon Dr. Bradley’s departure, I realized it had been three hours since my appointment began. My husband Cory messaged me to ask how things were going, but I wasn’t sure how to explain to him that Summit and Moon Gate Two seemed to be at the epicenter of a time-dilating vortex. What year would it be when I got out of here? Would Cory still be alive?
I’m not sure how long Dr. Bradley was away. Could it have been an hour? No, maybe more like 20 minutes. Perhaps even 10? Whenever it was that he came back in, he was alone, and he looked put out.
“What are you here for today?”
When I told him I wasn't sure what I was there for besides ketamine—I mean, was there a menu I could take a look at?—his jaw tightened into a sharp corner.
“I’m not going to give you a consult. Those are scheduled separately, and they’re an additional fee."
"I already had a consult and was told only to come in."
"Then you should have called the front desk with your questions."
I had called the front desk—three times, actually. This was not because I’m a particularly Type-A person. I actually hate making phone calls. But my interactions with Summit so far had, on the whole, failed to instill confidence. First, the administrative staff cancelled my initial video visit, claiming that I hadn’t provided all the required intake paperwork. Despite the fact that I submitted all the forms days earlier, I found myself begging for forgiveness, and quickly filling out all the information again to get my appointment back (having already taken my thousand-dollar booking fee, they really held all the cards).
Next, they sent a bunch of urine test kits for someone named Charlie to my house, with a form containing all of Charlie’s personal information. Charlie, if you’re reading this: Please advise if I should send your pee receptacles, or if I can just keep them. After all, I’m always looking for more Tupperware, and yours happen to be the perfect size for freezing individual portions of soup.
This is why I thought it best to call ahead with my questions. Each time I had, the receptionists sounded incredulous, and they told me to save my inquiries for my appointment.
But I didn’t tell Dr. Bradley any of this, because I didn’t want to complain, and I wanted him to like me. After all, it was just a thousand dollars, a significant patient privacy violation, and many hours spent worrying if I was a victim of an elaborate medical ruse.
All I told him—very casually, very nonchalantly—was this: “Oh, ya, I think I did call the front desk. Just a few times, though.”
Dr. Bradley’s face became suddenly severe, like that of a crotchety old school teacher. Was I sure I had called? How many times? He looked poised to smack me across the knuckles, or to wash my mouth out with soap. He left in a rush—perhaps to find a ruler.
Joyce put down her notebook (she had found nothing from this conversation worth noting) and picked up her complimentary coffee. The coffee was in a big, white mug with Dr. Bradley's name printed on it in Comic Sans.
This was the first time I’d met a doctor who seemed to—how should I put it?—hate my guts. I’ve had doctors give me bad advice (like the one who said I was dehydrated when I was, in fact, having debilitating migraines), and I’ve had weird doctors, too (though really, who doesn’t want to sing along to Jesus Christ Superstar while bleeding from the back of the head?). I’ve even had a doctor who called in drunk to a morning video visit. But having an angry doctor (whom I’d pissed off entirely by accident, no less) was a totally new experience for me.
I make every effort to avoid this situation by staying on the good side of my medical providers, especially when their jobs involve needles. I’m polite, I arrive on time, I make small talk, I don’t yell at them for stabbing me in the face even though it really hurts. I even send holiday cards.
One of the things Dr. Bradley was most known for: highly specialized injections for chronic pain. So, though I understood that the Hippocratic oath is a thing, I hope you’ll pardon me for having been just a little bit nervous about Dr. Bradley. I figured I’d need to paper over this doctor-patient relationship with holiday cards for at least for a few years.
The Dr. Bradley mug was empty and I’d started back into my book (a Mary Karr memoir, in which she voluntarily checks herself into an insane asylum) by the time our next visitor arrived.
Dr. Haywood—the same doctor who did my initial video consult from a yurt—had bronzed skin, a kind face, and the general look of someone who grows their own arugula. After sauntering into the room, he jumped up on the counter, sat beside my hat, and balanced his laptop on his knees. He occasionally ran a hand through his messy, shoulder-length hair as he detailed treatments like an eager maître d' sharing house specials. He spoke with a surfer bro voice.
“For sure your nervous system is fried,” he said, his feet dangling lazily near my shoulder, “so we’re going to do a reboot, like a defrag, right? We’re going to reboot the sympathetic nervous system. I think the computer analogy is pretty good, right?”
This “reboot,” he explained, was to be achieved by shooting a bunch of numbing agent into my neck. Dr. Bradley would be the one doing the shooting, because his skills in this particular area were “exquisite.” My job, I imagined, would be to lie flat on a table, trying to look simultaneously apologetic and litigious as Dr. Bradley approached me with a needle, asking me through gritted teeth if I was sure I had called the front desk.
Next up on the menu: exozomes.
“Exozomes are stem cell growth factors, right?” Dr. Haywood said, as if this explained anything whatsoever. Their job was to go up into the brain and “make things better.” That’s what a lot of the pro athletes came in for, exozomes.
Joyce had started taking notes.
Then the nerve bath, said Dr. Haywood. We’d bathe my nerves in a regenerative solution called placental matrix (“the best nerve juice around”). Or we could use peptides, which are cheaper but still “really powerful” (and commonly used for their skin-whitening properties, according to Google).
And don’t forget about ketamine! Though by that point, I nearly had.
Dr. Haywood proposed starting with an ultrasound diagnostic, to look for nerve impingements or swelling. (“You just lie facedown and we put ultrasound jelly on your neck, right?”) Then we could decide about the reboot, the exozomes, and the nerve juice before moving on to the ketamine.
"Was that a good cop, bad cop act?" Joyce asked after Dr. Haywood left to make arrangements for the ultrasound.
The ultrasound diagnostic was performed by a third doctor, Dr. Davis, in a room down the hall from my Moon Gate Two. A bluetooth speaker blasted a James Bond theme song as I sat down on the exam table. Joyce, meanwhile, settled into a chair with a life-sized skeleton standing beside it. The skeleton was turned around and hunched over in such a way that if it had had an actual butt, even an EMSCULPT-ed butt, it would have looked quite offensive.
Dr. Davis was overflowing with the confident, secure disposition of a wildly successful white male. He had broad shoulders and a manicured smile—the type of smile you'd expect to see on a billboard for a car dealership or personal injury law firm, emblazoned with a catchy slogan and memorable phone number.
"Is this your mom?" Dr. Davis asked, nodding toward Joyce.
I looked over at Joyce, confused. I was confused because Joyce not only looks younger than me, but is also Asian. I am not.
Dr. Davis performed the ultrasounds to the dulcet tones of "Crazy Train." This nerve is swollen, he said. So is this one, clearly. C1, C3, C4, C5, L1, L2, T11, T12. All tender, all enlarged. He showed me some of my nerves on the ultrasound screen. None of the tiny gray lines looked swollen to me, but this was my first time looking at nerves.
“I’ve seen forty, maybe fifty thousand patients with headaches,” Dr. Davis said as he pressed the probe into my neck, “and I’ve cured them all. Except for one, my nephew. But his headaches went away after I told him to lift weights.”
My calculations indicate that Dr. Davis was claiming to have healed 6.4 people every day on average for thirty years, not counting weekends. This would rank Dr. Davis above Jesus Christ, strictly speaking, but Jesus didn’t live much past age thirty, and there are no recorded instances of Jesus healing headaches. Are headaches harder or easier to heal, from a miracle-working perspective? Perhaps Dr. Davis vs. Jesus is too much of an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Dr. Davis pressed on my diaphragm and told me to take a deep breath. And another. And another.
“Hm, the left half is paralyzed. Have you ever noticed that? I’ve seen this problem a million times. It causes heartburn.”
“But I don't get heartburn."
"You do, you just don't realize it."
Joyce had started looking up the songs playing over the speakers. This one was something by Black Sabbath.
“Are you ready to not be disabled?” Dr. Davis asked after finishing the exam. “Because I can cure you right now!”
Dear reader, I wish could tell you that I laughed in his face, or marched right out of the room, or flipped him the bird. That would have been the logical thing to do, given that I know that chronic migraine disorder is an incurable neurological disease with many complicated causes. (Some people can achieve significant improvements in their migraine disease, to the point that they can drop the “chronic.” But such successes are both rare and hard-won, and these people can still get migraines.)
For the first year of my illness, I searched desperately for the quick fix, for the one treatment that would reverse my brain’s complete and utter betrayal. I tried what I thought was every treatment, every drug, every diet. Some things helped, but nothing brought my old life back to me. Eventually, I realized that nothing money could buy ever would. So I learned—slowly, and with much anger and sadness—to let go of what I had lost, pick myself up again, and keep on living.
Or at least, this is what I thought I’d learned, until Dr. Davis said he could cure me.
Because what if he was right? What if I could and throw out all of the prescription drugs, all of the pain-relieving ointments and oils, all of the neck massagers and pillows and sunglasses bought on a whim? What if Cory and I could travel again? What if we could backpack around Europe, or see Asia for the first time? This is what other young, childless people do. Maybe after traveling the world, we’d decide to stop being childless.
Dr. Davis proposed injecting various nerves with the nerve juice that Dr. Haywood had described to me earlier. When I asked him to explain exactly what he would do, he took out his phone and opened an anatomy app.
"See, that's a nerve," he said, zooming in on a thin yellow line. "Is that C5 or C6? I can't tell."
He tapped the screen, pinched, panned, opened each menu, but found no labels.
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter."
He dragged his finger to another nerve, then a muscle in the neck, then a vertebra, then back to a nerve—was it the same nerve? And there was the diaphragm.
Tap, tap, zoom.
“This is connected to that, see? Oh well you can't see it right now, but imagine if this wasn't there. Let me see if I can highlight it. No, I can't. But you get the idea.”
Dr. Davis put away his phone, then left to find Dr. Bradley. I sat down next to Joyce and wiped the ultrasound goop out of my hair with a wad of Kleenex. The rock music kept on blaring.
The spell was broken when Dr. Davis left the room, and I slowly floated back down to earth. I still wanted him to be right, because I wanted to be cured, but on the other hand, I also wanted him to be wrong, because I didn’t want to further inflate his ego. When told the price of this miracle cure ($15,000 minimum), I finally touched the ground. That’s also when I realized that Dr. Davis, like any good car salesman, had failed to offer a money-back satisfaction guarantee.
We were back in Moon Gate Two and it was, somehow, five pm. I was having an impromptu (and hopefully, complimentary) consult with all three of the doctors I’d met that day, though only two of them were present. Dr. Haywood and Dr. Davis took turns leaving the room to consult with the disgruntled Dr. Bradley about the plan, but they did not bring him into the room.
Was Dr. Bradley really still mad at me? Though I found this hard to believe, he later admitted he was so “triggered” by my alleged attempts to call the office with questions, he had spent the afternoon interrogating each of the receptionists about my claim. (They all denied it under duress, leaving me both bewildered and, I gathered, in a lot of trouble.)
After some deliberation and secret exchanges with Dr. Bradley, Dr. Haywood concluded: “If it weren't already so late in the day, you'd have time to try multiple things, right? But we’re like closing soon, so you should stick with just the ketamine.” He said this as if this wasn’t at all the original plan.
As a nurse laid me down on a massage table in a room decorated with Himalayan salt lamps, a yin-yang flag, and a Hindu elephant god statue (finally, the vibe I had expected), she started playing a new-age soundscape from her phone. Then, she pushed a syringe of clear liquid into the bag of saline on my IV pole.
The drug started to drip, drip, drip—how many bucks per drop? Three or four, I figured. This had better work!
Drip, drip, drip.
As I waited to feel something, I thought of Dr. Haywood, Dr. Davis, and Dr. Bradley…
Drip, drip, drip.
Exozomes, the skeleton, and rectal ozone therapy…
Drip, drip, drip.
Crazy Train started playing in my head.
Drip, drip, drip.
Come to think of it, could I have been on ketamine this whole time? Maybe I’d gotten it first thing, right when I walked into Summit. Perhaps this entire day had been one long trip.
Drip, drip, drip.
It was half past seven when Joyce and I finally packed up our things and left Moon Gate Two for good. But that did not end my first day at Summit Alternative Medicine.
No, my first day at Summit Alternative Medicine ended with us standing outside the squat, gray building, staring helplessly through a metal gate at Joyce’s parked car. The garage had, apparently, closed an hour earlier, the front door to the building had locked behind us when we left, and nobody was answering the phone. 🧠
This story is non-fiction, but certain names and identifying details have been changed.
… and too often neither they or the reception staff have paused a minute to consider what lead you to phone them or make it to their door.
Me too!