I went to this place for about 2 years. I loved the general staff here. They were amazing. Very…read morekind and personable. They made me feel safe and welcome, so I always took a handful of business cards; handing them out whenever I could.
I never had a good interaction with P. Aking, however.
Since the very first day I met her, she was very stand-offish. She would never answer any of my questions, giving vague word salad or just outright refusing to answer. I agree with another recent review here about R. Aking. You could use this description interchangably between the two with no difference:
"Dr Rodd Aking is the worst. He is mean and dismissive and does not listen at all. He already knows everything, and nothing you do is right."
Padma always made it a point to try and make me feel small. She would use the same manipulation techniques commonly used by abusers to try and keep me quiet and controlled. As a man with autism and authority issues, I would naturally always push back.
This tension eventually culminated in an incident that happened 2 days ago, in which I suffered a panic attack during the height of my treatment.
It seemed like a normal day, apart from the fact that there was a new "don't leave your chair" policy.
The central air wasn't running (it has problems all the time) so I began to overheat. I ended up vomiting into the trash while waiting for staff to bring me a fan. Padma came in to observe. I asked her if this was normal. She gave a vague answer. I couldn't quite understand what she was saying due to her thick accent, and all I wanted was to be comforted after a horrible panic attack. She left without giving me a simple answer.
While she was out, I got up out of my chair to get a hug from another patient. After she sat down in her chair, I sat down on the floor in front of said patient to keep talking, because I was still coming down from the panic attack.
Padma came back in and demanded I sit back in my chair. I sat back down and gently explained that I understood it was for safety reasons, but I really just needed some help grounding myself. Due to dissociative amnesia, the details are fuzzy, but this reply resulted in yet another argument. I told her I couldn't keep arguing because the influence from the treatment was so strong.
After staring at me silently, with a judgemental look on her face, for what seemed like minutes, she instructed one of the patients to tuck away her bag strap, as it's a trip hazard, before turning to walk out. Keep in mind, I am still HEAVILY influenced by spravato at this point, so I make an offhanded comment about her being unusually paranoid, speculating the possibility of a lawsuit.
At that point, she turns back around and threatens to separate me from the group for "disturbing the others." Keep in mind, the other people in the room were in the middle of helping walk down my panic attack and were not at all disturbed by me. I said without thinking "it seems like the only person I'm disturbing is you." in a flat tone. It was not meant in a malicious way. I have a hard time with words and this lack of a filter has always been a problem for me, being on the spectrum.
She then told me that I would have to talk to her in her office after the treatment and left.
For the next 10 minutes, I tried and failed, to calm down from thinking about talking to Padma in her office. I couldn't handle the anxiety anymore, I was frustrated, I wanted to get it over with, so I walked into her office. Her door was open. She lied to me and said she was in a meeting or something(she was typing in a word processor and very clearly had time to talk,) and forced me out.
I finished the session and went home without a single word from her.
Today, at the very end of the buisness day, they called my roommate to tell him that I'm now banned from the clinic. They gave no warning, no explaination, no exit plan for treatment, nothing.
This clinic is run by two manipulative and greedy people who will be incredibly pleasant to you as long as you ask no questions and pay their fees on time. If you have even the simplest question like "whats the difference between esKetamine and normal Ketamine," they will get offended and tell you to "just google it."
DO NOT GO HERE.