Desert Companion - August 2016

BEST DOCTORS

TOP DENTISTS

Our exclusive list of the valley’s best general practitioners and medical specialists. Read this, stat!

Open wide for our extensive roundup of Southern Nevada’s most skilled dental professionals. No biting!

08 August

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exploring Charleston A sweeping yet intimate look at real lives on the other boulevard — the one that traverses the city’s cultures, history and rich diversity B y S t ac y J . W i l l i s

+ A mother’s heartbreaking quest to find mental-health care for her son the ultimate linguine throwdown

Pot: What we can learn from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain high

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Thank You Thank you for working long hours.

Thank you for making people in our community happier and healthier.

Thank you for letting Subaru help you save lives every day.

Thank you for not letting anything on the road ahead stop you from doing what you LOVE. For all you do, Subaru of Las Vegas supports you, and thanks the entire medical communityin the Las Vegas Valley.

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For more information on Fall 2016 certificates, courses and travel programs, please view the catalog online at ced.unlv.edu/cat2016 or call 702.895.3394.

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EDiTOR’S Note

Closing the gaps

T

here’s a saying: The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. You could say the same for healthcare. For all our mind-blowing advances in medical tech, the magic wand of technology somehow hasn’t been able to erase the barriers that keep millions of Americans from accessing quality, affordable healthcare. Sure, we can cry for a systemic overhaul until our throats are sore. In the meantime — in the real world, on a human scale — more deceptively modest endeavors are making a big impact.

I have in mind organizations such as Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada, which recently added a dental clinic to its suite of medical services for the poor. On p. 23, Jason Scavone profiles the program from the vantage point of Jefferey Engle, a client. After Engle’s teeth began to fall out due to diabetes, his self-esteem plummeted and selfimage crashed. He eventually took a job as a graveyard-shift security guard, only cementing his sense of isolation. To him, the Volunteers in Medicine program not only provided him a new set of teeth, but a renewed sense of possibility.

That alone is a worthy goal; but more importantly, with new research uncovering the link between oral health and total wellness (imagine! your mouth is a freeway onramp for bacteria!), the program is an investment in Engle’s future health as well.

Elsewhere in Nevada, technology is helping to bring aid to those facing a different kind of barrier: distance. In “No country for sick men” (p. 74), Heidi Kyser dives into a healthcare crisis confronting rural Nevada, where hospitals, doctors and specialists are often hours away — a headache for check-ups and a nightmare for medical emergencies. But here, too, generous and enterprising minds are finding ways to bridge the gap. In programs such as Project ECHO, specialty docNext tors use the equivalent of Skype on MOnth steroids to confer with rural physiOur culture guide is cians on their patients. They’re not your fall to-do list! just treating the sick; they’re shar-

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ing knowledge one-on-one with physicians otherwise farflung from urban medical centers.

Finally, the healthcare gap takes a deeply personal toll in “‘I swear I will!’” (p. 46), a story about a mother’s epic struggle to find help for her suicidal son — in a city, she learns, with an alarming shortage of mental health resources for children. After countless phone calls, false starts and dead ends, it was only through a lucky break that this mother was able to save her son. How many others aren’t so lucky?

I’d be remiss not to call out this issue’s high notes, of course: Our annual Best Doctors (p. 81) and Top Dentists (p. 87) list some of the valley’s top medical and dental talent. And, finally, for a completely different dose of medicine, Dan Hernandez checks in with the recreational marijuana industry in Colorado (“Green and gold,” p. 36), and considers what Las Vegas might learn as our grand experiment with medical marijuana possibly blooms into something much bigger.

* * * * * Last but not least, I’d like to wish a fond farewell to Desert Companion Publisher Melanie Cannon, who is leaving the position to spend more time with her family. She was much, much more than a name on the masthead. Melanie, the founding publisher of this magazine, was the tireless prime mover behind Desert Companion’s rapid evolution from an annual cultural guide to the valley’s flagship magazine that truly reflects, celebrates and explores (and, yes, sometimes wrestles with) the experience of living in Southern Nevada — and one that does it with integrity, a vital watchword that Melanie branded onto the soul of the publication. Her departure leaves a void, no doubt — but she also leaves a solid foundation upon which incoming Desert Companion Publisher Flo Rogers will continue to build a great magazine.

Andrew Kiraly editor

Follow Desert Companion www.facebook.com/DesertCompanion www.twitter.com/DesertCompanion

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Vo lU m e 1 4 I s s u e 0 8

Features other boulevard

An immersive journey among the people, culture, history and workaday world of Charleston Boulevard

By Stacy J. Willis

81 best

74 rural

Turn your head and check out our curated list of the valley’s top medical practioners

Across vast tracts of sparsely populated Nevada, trained medical professionals are few and far between. But new technologies and old-fashioned gumption are helping some communities improve health care. By Heidi Kyser

doctors

87 Top

dentists

Open wide for our list of highly rated dental healers

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medicine t h e a r t s fac t o r y: B i l l H u g h e s

64 life on that

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56

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departments All Things

36 business

55 Dining

106 The Guide

23 health A new life

Does Las Vegas have anything to learn from Colorado’s experience with legal marijuana?

With the issue coming to a vote in November, we sent our correspondent to Denver to find out.

By Daniel Hernandez

56 the dish Having a

Hot August culture!

hoot at The Owl

By Jason Scavone

112 End note

58 eat this now A

Fallen Angel

By Andrew Kiraly

thanks to dental care 26 trending Pet

sharing gives you paws 28 zeit bites New

school construction — a handy map 30 Profile Raising a

bar, fighting cancer 32 object lesson

Nice glass!

34 Open Topic My

chomptastic experience at UNLV’s dental clinic

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August 2016

46 mental health When my son exhibited suicidal tendencies, I thought help would be easy to find. I was wrong.

By Anonymous

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on the cover PHOTOGRAPHY Bill Hughes

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FA L L S H OWS O N S A L E N OW

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An Evening with Bob Newhart

Deepak Chopra: The Future of Wellbeing

Celtic Thunder: Legacy

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p u b l i s h e D B y n e vada p u b l i c r ad i o

Mission Statement Desert Companion is the premier city magazine that celebrates the pursuits, passions and aspirations of Southern Nevadans. With awardwinning lifestyle journalism and design, Desert Companion does more than inform and entertain.

We spark dialogue, engage people and define the spirit of the Las Vegas Valley.

Publisher Melanie Cannon Associate Publisher Christine Kiely Editor Andrew Kiraly Art Director Christopher Smith deputy editor Scott Dickensheets senior designer Scott Lien staff writer Heidi Kyser Graphic Designer Brent Holmes Account executives Sharon Clifton, Parker McCoy, Favian Perez, Noelle Tokar, Markus Van’t Hul sales assistant Ashley Smith NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Couture Marketing 145 E 17th Street, Suite B4 New York, NY 10003 (917) 821-4429 advertising@couturemarketing Marketing manager Lisa Kelly print traffic manager Karen Wong Subscription manager Tammy Willis Web administrator Danielle Branton ADVERTISING COPY EDITOR Carla J. Zvosec Contributing writers Noah Cicero, Cybele, Mélanie Hope, Dan Hernandez, Jason Scavone, Greg Thilmont, Stacy J. Willis Contributing artists Bill Hughes, Anthony Mair, Chris Morris, Sabin Orr, Michael Waraksa Editorial: Andrew Kiraly, (702) 259-7856; andrew@desertcompanion.vegas Fax: (702) 258-5646 Advertising: Christine Kiely (702) 259-7813; christine@desertcompanion.vegas Subscriptions: (702) 258-9895; subscriptions@desertcompanion.vegas Website: www.desertcompanion.vegas Desert Companion is published 12 times a year by Nevada Public Radio, 1289 S. Torrey Pines Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89146. It is available by subscription at desertcompanion.vegas, or as part of Nevada Public Radio membership. It is also distributed free at select locations in the Las Vegas Valley. All photos, artwork and ad designs printed are the sole property of Desert Companion and may not be duplicated or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. The views of Desert Companion contributing writers are not necessarily the views of Desert Companion or Nevada Public Radio. Contact Tammy Willis for back issues, which are available for purchase for $7.95.

11 Sunset Way | Henderson, NV 89014 | 702-990-4433 10530 Discovery Drive | Las Vegas, NV 89135 | 702-802-2841 10920 S. River Front Parkway | South Jordan, UT 84095 | 801-302-2600

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August 2016

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Louis Castle emeritus Patrick N. Chapin, Esq. emeritus Richard I. dreitzer, Esq. Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, LLP Elizabeth FRETWELL emeritus City of Las Vegas bOB GLASER BNY Mellon don hamrick Chapman Las Vegas Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram

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I hold water to a higher standard.

The All-Star Standard.

My name is Corey, and my job at the Southern Nevada Water Authority is to make sure water delivered to your home meets or surpasses all state and federal drinking-water standards.

At home, my job is to make sure my family drinks plenty of clean, healthy water.

At the SNWA, we keep a very close eye on water quality, conducting hundreds of thousands of analyses every year to verify the quality of our drinking water. And that makes both of my jobs a lot easier.

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Alex, a runner and mother of two, lived for years with a malfunctioning heart valve. She always took the necessary precautionary steps with her cardiologist to watch for any changes in symptoms, such as feelings of fatigue, fainting, and shortness of breath. Alex felt healthy, until one race in 2012, which she struggled to complete. Something wasn’t right. She decided to have her case reviewed by a Best Doctors cardiology expert. The expert recommended an immediate valve repair, noting that Alex’s condition had become severe and was endangering her heart. She had the surgery and is on the path to recovery, grateful for the services Best Doctors provided.

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16 This craftsman knows how to keep it glassy page 32

he alth y mouth, health y l ife

Community

Watch your mouth A new dental-care program for the poor is more than cosmetic. It’s a vital key in preventive health care B y Ja s o n S c av o n e

J

effery Engle was working in animal control for Carson City in 2009 when he was diagnosed with diabetes. He started having trouble with his vision, and he had no energy. He couldn’t keep up with the position, so he moved to Las Vegas where he took a job working security.

After he was diagnosed, Engle’s teeth started breaking off in little pieces. In the ensuing years, he’d lose a piece here, a whole tooth there. Everyone’s had those nightmares where all their teeth fall out. Living it has to be a horror. By 2013, he

i l lu s t r at i o n c h r i s m o r r i s

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ALL Things

community

Hear more was down to four teeth. He took a job working graveyard and started growing out his mustache so no one would have to see the state of his mouth.

“It’s embarrassing,” the 51-year-old says. “I got divorced five years ago and I haven’t dated in the last five years due to my teeth. It’s embarrassing having people thinking maybe you’re on meth. I haven’t taken drugs or anything in my life. It got to the point where it was really embarrassing just to talk to anybody.”

He was making too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance. It was a grind just to pay for insulin and blood pressure medication, all while his mouth was in constant pain and he was drained from fighting off infections.

Engle’s niece, a former registered nurse, suggested he apply to be a patient at Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada. The clinic is open to people whose household income is less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level (currently, that means $23,760 for one-person households, scaling up according to the number of people under one roof ) and have no private or public health insurance.

At a $9-an-hour job, Engle fit the bill.

He joined up two and a half years ago, and was eligible for medical services and prescriptions at the Paradise Park Clinic on Harrison Drive. But that still didn’t help out the situation with his teeth.

After Volunteers in Medicine added a second location, the Ruffin Family Clinic on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, in September, though, comprehensive care became possible. The clinic expanded to offer dental services in April, and the clinic is going so far as to integrate social and behavioral services by the end of the year.

Engle was tapped to participate in the

"I had no idea until I went in there. I started crying.

I didn’t think this would ever happen at this point in my life. I thought the rest of my life would be spent as a toothless old man."

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Why do

new dental program, but he wasn’t some people medical director Dr. Rebecca prepared for the degree of care go to Mexico Edgeworth puts it, “When for dental their teeth are rotting out of he was going to receive. Dentists work? Hear their mouth, I will never be at the clinic pulled his remaining a discussion able to fix their diabetes.” teeth (which he called a relief, on “KNPR’s There’s a growing body of even making eating easier) and State of research that confirms that oral Nevada” are in the process of doing a full at desert health is a vital component of restoration, providing him with companion. overall health. The clinic offers implant-supported dentures. com/hear a broad swath of services, but “When they first told me about more once things escalate to the it, I thought maybe they were going level of surgery, cancer or other major to check out my teeth or clean the few maladies, there’s a point where it goes broken teeth I had left,” he said. “I had beyond the scope. The hope is that by no idea until I went in there. I started providing comprehensive, preventive crying. I didn’t think this would ever care, it doesn’t get that far. happen at this point in my life. I thought “Health begins in the mouth,” Wyatt the rest of my life would be spent as a says. “Anything that’s going on in the toothless old man." body taxes your system to cure it. If The program currently has six local you have periodontal disease, your dentists who volunteer, headed by Dr. body is constantly trying to get rid of Lydia Wyatt, who has been practicing that infection. Your body is trying to dentistry in Las Vegas since 2004. The heal it. That motor never gets turned clinic also involves students from Roseoff to rest. It’s taxing, much like man University and UNLV’s School of cardiovascular disease. Your blood Dental Medicine where up-and-coming cells carry these antibodies in it and it dentists can learn in a real-world setting. makes the blood cells thick and heavy.

Open wide It makes your arteries have to push The Ruffin Family Clinic is a bright and work hard to get that thick blood and winding complex that houses through the whole system. That makes new equipment, an on-site pharmacy, your heart work harder. Some of the multiple examination rooms, and now bacteria that live in our mouth we a four-room suite for dental exams, now know have high associations with including X-rays. More than 5,300 ulcers, with colon cancers. Recently, appointments were given to patients within the last year, there’s been a in 2015, and that number is expected huge correlation with Alzheimer’s disto top 6,500 this year, including dental ease. It’s complete care, and dentistry appointments. has to be part of it to be successful.”

It’s all in the service of providing comEngle had molds of his mouth taken prehensive care, including mental health July 8. Once he gets his temporary services, to underserved patients. Those dentures and strengthens his jaw, he’ll types of patients can often encompass be able to get posts placed so he can recent immigrants who wouldn’t yet snap the implant-supported ones into qualify for Medicaid; those who are place in his mouth, and live with a fully disabled who are receiving disability restored set of teeth. If he doesn’t want income but haven’t become eligible for to stay there, that means he can start Medicare, which typically takes two taking jobs that aren’t on the night shift. years to kick in; patients who didn’t pay He can live in the daylight again. into the Medicare system earlier in life; “They’re the greatest bunch of peoand the working poor. ple,” he said of the clinic’s staff. “They Those types of people may already sit and listen to you. They seem to really be suffering from ailments that are care, be concerned about everybody. I’ve exacerbated by an inability to do things never had a bad experience there. It’s like eat a proper diet. As the clinic’s always been really positive.”

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Send Rover right over Local startup Let's Join Paws aims to match owners of lonely pets with people who need a furry friend By heidi kyser

W

hat do cars, homes, snowboards and Spot all have in common? They’re part of the sharing economy — through Lyft, Airbnb, Spinlister and Let’s Join Paws, respectively.

That last one, a pet-sharing service, is based right here in Southern Nevada.

“People would have had trouble wrapping their brains around it a few years ago,” says Henderson resident Cheryl Moss, who cofounded Let’s Join Paws with her husband, Russ Petersen, in 2014. “But today, we share our homes, our cars. It’s easier to understand.”

Moss works in the appraisal department at Bank of Nevada. For years, she says, she thought about what she’d do in life after banking. Inspiration struck while watching an episode of the Dog Whisperer.

In it, a family piled into the car, drove down the street and dropped their dog off at a retired neighbor’s house.

“The dog had two homes,” Moss says.

“The retiree got the benefit of having the dog’s companionship, and the family got some company for their dog.”

She and Petersen launched Let’s Join Paws at the Animal Foundation’s annual Best in Show fundraiser two years ago.

Three website designs later, Moss says it’s finally operating the way they imagined.

People willing to spend time with dogs join for free; those looking for someone to spend time with their pets pay a fee ranging from $19.99 to $83.88 a month, with services increasing proportionate to fees.

In an ideal scenario, a pet owner who has to leave his pet at home alone

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connects with someone in his area who would love to spend time with a pet but can’t commit to owning one — for health or financial reasons, say. The two meet, check each other out, and, if it seems like a good fit, arrange to “share” the pet. (What happens after that is their responsibility, Moss notes.) When one neighbor is sick, the other could volunteer to care for his cat. If a dog barks a lot during his owner’s long workday, a volunteer could alleviate the dog’s loneliness.

Pet owners will immediately imagine the risks involved. A car or apartment can be insured and repaired, but can a stranger be trusted with a member of the family?

“The critical piece is the vetting process,” Kenny Lamberti, director of strategic engagement for the Human Society of the U.S., says. “You’d have to make really sure there are safeguards in place, but that’s true of dog-walkers and -sitters, too. Lots of pets struggle with a change of environment, or being left with someone they don’t know. The most important consideration would be the dog’s well-being, safety and quality of life, and not the humans’.”

That said, Lamberti acknowledges the therapeutic effect of having a furry critter around and the potential benefit to everyone involved if a good match is made.

He says he’s heard of similar concepts in recent years, but it’s not a common service.

Existing apps such as Rovr are for paid professionals, and Moss says Let’s Join Paws is not transactional. It’s meant to work as it did for Barbara Caddoo.

After a stroke and car accident put Caddoo in the Kingman hospital last year, she couldn’t speak, so no one could figure out why she refused to return to Las Vegas for urgently needed treatment. Hospital staff called a contact in her phone, J.C. Melvin, CEO of Keller Williams Realty Southwest.

Melvin and his wife drove to Kingman and, after a couple hours with their friend of 34 years, figured out that she wouldn’t come home without her dogs Pookie and Muffin, who’d been placed in a Kingman shelter. Melvin promised to bring Pookie and Muffin back to Las Vegas, and Caddoo agreed to get in the ambulance.

But what to do with the dogs then?

Melvin had no idea. Through a mutual friend, he connected with Petersen and found a family that fostered Caddoo’s dogs during her eight-month convalescence, even taking them for weekly visits to the facility where she was healing. Recently, Caddoo, Pookie and Muffin were reunited.

“I was impressed with Let’s Join Paws,” Melvin says. “I know that without it those dogs would have been either put down or otherwise gone, and Barbara would never have seen them again. … And they were everything to her.”

I L LU ST R AT I O N B R E N T H O L M E S

THE 2 016-2017 SEASON Subscriptions and single tickets on sale now. Attractive group pricing available.

Tickets starting at just $30 • lvphil.org • 702.749.2000

SATURDAY, SEPT. 10, 2016 Opening night soars with vivid lyricism

SATURDAY, DEC. 3, 2016 SUNDAY, DEC. 4, 2016 A traditional holiday celebration

SATURDAY, MAR. 4, 2017 SUNDAY, MAR. 5, 2017 Star Wars and beyond

SATURDAY, OCT. 8, 2016 SUNDAY, OCT. 9, 2016

SATURDAY, NOV. 5, 2016

Symphonic blockbusters

A trilogy of powerhouse composers

SATURDAY, JAN. 14, 2017

SATURDAY, FEB. 4, 2017

Inaugural performances of three works

A fantastic and celebratory concert

SATURDAY, APR. 1, 2017

SATURDAY, MAY 27, 2017

Evocative, poetic and life-affirming

Theatrics and daring abound in this hearty program

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Lake Mead

EDUCATION

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8 Washingotn

Alta Charelston Oakey

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Sahara

Desert Inn Spring Mountain Flamingo Tropicana

7 Patrick

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Sunset

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Your guide to new school construction

Windmill

The Clark County School District wasted no time taking advantage of legislation that Cactus granted it 10 years of bonding authority for 6 new school construction and renovation.

Here’s what the resulting $4.1 billion is being spent on so far: One 34-elementary-school-classroom addition, noted in red ; two replacement elementary schools, designed to accommodate 850 students each ; and six new, still-unnamed elementaries designed for 850 students each Heidi Kyser

1. West Prep Academy 2050 Sapphire Stone Ave., Las Vegas How big: 54,554-square-feet (addition to existing campus) How much: $15 million (funding from the 1998 Capital Improvement Program) When: June 2017

2. Lincoln Elementary School 3010 Berg St. N., North Las Vegas How big: 105,992-square-feet (replacing original built in 1955) How much: $28 million When: June 2017

3. Rex Bell Elementary School 2900 Wilmington Way, Las Vegas How big: 107,842-square-feet (replacing original built in 1963) How much: $28 million When: June 2017

4. Antelope Ridge and Desert Foothills How big: 101,620 square feet How much: $27 million budget When: July 2017 5. Arville and Mesa Verde How big: 100,532 square feet How much: $28 million budget When: May 2017

6. Chartan Avenue and Pioneer Way How big: 100,399 square feet How much: $29 million budget When: May 2017 7. Dave and Wood Galleria How big: 101,620 square feet How much: $29 million When: June 2017 8. Lamb and Kell Lane (adjacent to Ruben P. Diaz Elementary School) How big: 100,913 square feet How much: $24 million When: July 2017 9. Maule and Grand Canyon How big: 100,532 square feet How much: $24 million When: June 2017

cocktail theater

The Velveteen Rabbit bar on Main Street will be the setting for director Troy Heard’s version of the Jazz Age murder mystery, The Cat’s Meow. Steven Peros’ play is based on the real death, in 1924, of a guest aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht, in the company of glamorous Hollywood figures. The production will flow throughout the bar, as though viewers were at the party. We asked Heard about the show. ¶ What about this play lends itself to this immersive staging? Stepping into Velveteen Rabbit is like falling into a rabbit hole: It’s dark, quirky and unique. You feel like you’re in a private club. That’s what made The Cat’s Meow a perfect fit.

You feel like you’re at an exclusive party hobnobbing with the elite, and that’s exactly what it would’ve been like aboard Hearst’s yacht. ¶ Are there special challenges created by the site regarding such basics as positioning the audience? During rehearsal, we were very conscious of “spreading the love” — if one part of the bar had prime viewing of a scene, we made sure the next scene favored the other end.

But the audience response after our workshop was great. Folks said that even if they couldn’t see one moment, they still caught it, and it added much to the cocktail-party atmosphere.

7p, Sundays August 7-September 4, Velveteen Rabbit, $25, brownpapertickets.com/event/2567899

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P h oto g r a p h y R i c h a r d B r u s ky

CONTROL YOUR DIABETES WITH This convenient and free program, offered by the Southern Nevada Health District, acts as a virtual health coach to help you manage your diabetes with nutrition tips and recipes, medication reminders, the ability to set weight and exercise goals, and more!

Sign up for Care4life at www.gethealthyclarkcounty.org.

Made possible by funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Derek Stonebarger

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skin cancer diagnosis was bad enough. Far worse was that it spread to his throat. Doctors had feeding tubes in his stomach, but the chemo-induced regurgitation still took its traditional route. After surgery to remove cancer-infested lymph nodes, this was tremendously painful. But in the middle of that, Derek Stonebarger had a bit of a revelation: Sign a lease now, and what’s the worst that can happen?

Lot of upside there, really. So, in the midst of treatment for cancer that saw him go to UCLA on a day’s notice in September, Stonebarger got his plans on lockdown for ReBar, a new spot on Main Street where everything is for sale, from the glasses you drink out of to the décor on the walls to the stools you’re sitting on. Just, uh, don’t take that too far. We’re pretty sure it stops with the girl at the end of the bar.

Stonebarger helped turn Atomic Liquors from historical down-and-out watering hole to historical hipster spot in 2013. But the idea for ReBar had always been with him, starting from the revelation at 14 years old that he could fix up old cars and flip them for profit.

“I’ve always done that with antiques,” Stonebarger said. “It’s always been a side project of mine. I’ve flipped stuff, and I love the bar business. I spend a lot of money myself when I get drunk, so I figured other people probably do too.”

Stonebarger signed the lease on the former Amberjoy’s Vintage Closet location in November, smack in the middle of chemo and radiation. Let it never be said that your Saturday morning housecleaning with a hangover is that productive.

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Some of the stock in the joint goes way back — there are light fixtures from the Riviera and buffet booths from the Silver Slipper. It’s a Craigslist Chic aesthetic, but there’s still quite a bit of forward-looking planning going into the operation. The cocktail menu will be limited to a handful, but each one will be tied to a local charity.

The Preservation Press, for example, will kick a portion of the proceeds to the Nevada Preservation Foundation.

When the call came in from UCLA that they wanted to start treatment the next day, Stonebarger had to drop everything and get out to Los Angeles.

That is, as one would imagine, more than a little spendy.

“In order to do that, I spent a substantial amount of money, but who cares, I’m about to die,” Stonebarger said. “With what I had left I said I’m going to throw it all at this idea. I’ve wanted to do this forever. I don’t want to wait another moment of my life to do it. It was like, I’m going to get this place open, even if this cancer is going to beat me. I think of things differently now. I think I’m willing to take more risks, and do what I’m really passionate about with the rest of my life, no matter how long it is.”

Jason Scavone

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Object lesson

Keeping it glassy Robert Shield is a master craftsman of a dying art form B y A n d r e w K i r a ly

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I

t’s kind of an epiphany when glass craftsman Robert Shield matter-of-factly points to a glittering orb in his display case and says, “ ... and that’s a vintage marble I made from dichro glass ...”

Wait. You mean, like the marbles I played with, collected, fawned over as a kid, rapt at how each seemed to contain its own tiny blossoming cosmos? Yes, there it is, a speckled supernova trapped in a gleaming sphere. And he made it!

To the soft-spoken Australian expat, it’s another example of the magical things you can make with glass — and, he says, a delicate token of a dying art form. Shield is the owner of the Hall of Antiquities shop in the Boulevard Mall and Studio Royal Glass Blowing Academy. He’s one of only a few glassblowers in Southern Nevada.

Shield’s attraction to the craft was part romance, part pragmatism. As a kid living in the Gold Coast of Australia, he used to watch with fascination the glassblowers plying their craft in the markets and malls. And, after several years as an apprentice in a glass art factory, upon leaving he was at a career crossroads.

“It was either going from the glassblowing apprenticeship to a studio or becoming the manager of a McDonald’s franchise,” he says. (Noting that most people nowadays would sooner buy cheap, mass-produced glassware from China than a handcrafted piece of art, he jokes that, hm, maybe he should’ve taken the McDonald’s gig.) Which isn’t to say that he didn’t suffer for his art along the way; when Shield first arrived in Las Vegas in 1994, he drove a cab for five years to pay the bills while he built his glassblowing business. “I had a studio in Henderson where I would teach students between rides, or after I finished my shift.”

He’s been at the Boulevard Mall for about a year and a half now, but the majority of his business is from teaching glasscraft to eager new students.

His charmingly cluttered shop is full of eye-catching curios and antiques, but it’s his glass creations that inspire double-takes. Here are a few of his favorite things.

P h oto g r a p h y c h r i sto p h e r s m i t h

This is a replica of a horse and carriage that Shield made and sent to Prince Andrew and Sara Ferguson in 1986. “I had it sent from Sydney as a wedding gift.” He shipped it unsolicited, and he got a legit thank-you letter from Buckingham Palace in return. It took about 10 hours to make. He also made a glass tiger for — you guessed it — Siegfried and Roy.

This modest-looking glass leaf represents the gateway to glasscraft. This is the first thing students learn to make before moving on to bottle stoppers, pendants, icicles and marbles. “Glassmaking is a dying art,” Shield says. “But I try to keep it alive. That’s why I do my Groupons and Living Socials for teaching classes.” When they get advanced enough, many students clamor to learn how to make — you guessed it — pipes.

Bird’s nest. “My very first piece was a little bird’s nest,” Shield recalls. “I did hundreds, thousands of them (for practice).” His latest obsession is his “La mer” series — coral, dolphin, octopi — which he hope will sell briskly when the Boulevard Mall opens its SeaQuest aquarium.

Glass swan. Don’t let the delicate curves fool you. These represent workaday creation that harkens back to his glass factory days in Australia.

“When I started in the factory, we made handblown swans all day. Not many glassblowers do hand-blown swans from a hollow tube.”

This is a marble Shield made from dichroic (or the more slangy “dichro”) glass, which is glass combined with metal oxides to give it a sparkling, iridescent look.

Marbles are made through a painstaking process of shaping, layering, and then placed in a round mold and heated one more time in a kiln before being polished.

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ALL Things

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h e a lt h

Tooth and consequences How the UNLV dental clinic fixed my mouth

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By Noah Cicero

uring the summer of 2013, while I was living at the Grand Canyon, my left top molar cracked; a good-sized chunk just disappeared. I wondered if I had I eaten it. Can a person eat chunks of their teeth and live? I kept living. Two years later, in August 2015, now in Las Vegas, the cracked tooth began to hurt. Then my face started to hurt, and eventually I had a pulsating headache. I didn’t know what to do.

I had Obamacare (Nevada Medicaid and Nevada Check Up card). But the Nevada Medicaid and Nevada Check Up Card doesn’t cover routine dental care like fillings and root canals, only extractions. After the pain became unbearable, or at least terribly annoying, I went to a local hospital to see if I could get an extraction. The hospital was state-of-the-art. People were helped quickly and everyone was friendly. As I waited, two young men handed me a pamphlet for the UNLV Dental Clinic. Then a doctor gave me

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a prescription for pain pills. Because I have the Nevada Medicaid and Nevada Check Up Card I didn’t have to pay for the emergency-room visit, but a few weeks later I received a receipt for its cost: approximately $1,800 for 20 minutes. I didn’t think it would be so much. If the bill had been $400 or $600, I would have thought, Whatever, rich people can pay it.

But at $1,800, I felt bad. I didn’t mean to take so much money, rich people.

When I got to the UNLV Dental Clinic, the waiting room was full of sad, poor people. People were complaining. One said the doctors messed up her teeth.

Another looked like he had spent years living in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas.

I was brought to a room, and they X-rayed my teeth. A young man, who looked so tired he could have fallen right to sleep, begged me not to get my tooth extracted. I was too young to lose my teeth, he said, and it would only cost $800 total for a root canal and a crown. He wanted to help me, he believed that I could find the money, that I should keep my tooth. I believed him. “Okay,” I said, “let’s do it.”

The young man quickly fixed the infection and put some globs on the crack to seal it. Then I had to register and commit to several appointments in order to get help from the clinic. I agreed to the whole thing. I needed my tooth fixed, and also it seemed interesting to me, all these young science people doing things. I’m a humanities person, and all my friends are humanities people. This would be a new experience.

What I learned later was that dental students seek out patients who are reliable. In order to graduate, they must have a certain number of experiences doing each procedure. They need patients who will show up to multiple appointments, on time, over several weeks. But the people who need the clinic’s services have very limited income. Most receive government aid and a lot rely on public transportation. The students often talked about how a patient didn’t show up. I must have looked reliable that morning.

ILLUS T RAT ION b r e n t h o l m e s

When Nick pulled out the mold for my crown, he looked at it in his hand with a huge smile. I understood then: This was his art, his beauty.

Science kids have their art, too.

The first step was scheduling two three-hour examinations. I was given a new doctor, a young man with glasses and a caring smile. I will call him Nick.

Nick started by giving me one X-ray after another. I lay in silence while he said “lingual” and “mesial” over and over, “lingual,” “mesial,” “lingual,” “mesial.” It’s the mantra of dental students.

After six hours of studying my teeth, making molds and noting every piece of calculus, it was time for the root canal.

This was done by the tired young man I met earlier. He looked a bit less tired now. It took two three-hour visits.

I had to keep a rubber bag thing on my face, and a block in my mouth. For three hours. The student didn’t seem happy about root canals on upper molars. I felt bad for the guy. It seemed like he was fighting a small war with my face.

After the root canal Nick gave me a crown, which took three more sessions.

I wasn’t worried about the students messing up my teeth. Nick showed such confidence and enthusiasm, I believed he could do it. Every time I felt pain, they gave me another shot. Surprisingly, I rarely felt in pain. When Nick pulled out the mold for my crown, he looked at it in his hand with a huge smile. I understood then: This was his art, his beauty. Science kids have their art, too.

In March, the Western Regional Examination Board, which is like the bar exam for dental students, came to Las Vegas.

I was asked to participate, but I had to show up, I needed to show up, on time.

If a patient misses this appointment, the student has to go to Los Angeles or Phoenix to take the tests. I was scheduled for an SRP, a super tooth-cleaning, which for testing purposes is only done on one quadrant of the mouth. I would have two quadrants done. Nick would test on one, and another student I hadn’t met would do the other.

That morning, the students were nervous but excited. This was the moment, the final test. All the tests they’d ever taken, from kindergarten through

their bachelors’ degrees, all the tests in their dental classes, culminated in this final exam. After each student completed his quadrant, I was led to another room, where dentists from the board would inspect my mouth to determine if the students would pass. The room was strangely dark. I was put into a seat, and three experienced dentists, all in their 50s or 60s, came over one at a time. They looked at my mouth, then at the computer screen showing my X-rays, then back at my mouth, then back at the X-rays, and made notes. It seemed like the older generation was doing its best to usher in the younger dentists, which made me feel like I was participating in something bigger than myself.

Both students who tested on my teeth passed. They’ll go on to become dentists, have careers and perform a service to our communities.

As the students spoke to me and to each other, I learned that many owed more than $250,000 in student loans.

None of the students I talked with had working-class families. They may have had some tuition help from their parents but had still accumulated $250,000 in student loans. What amazed me most, as a working-class person from a town in Ohio where no one dreams of becoming a dentist or doctor, was that these students weren’t afraid of this $250,000.

They had absolute faith that they would be able to pay it off.

The UNLV dental school saved me; if not for the clinic, I would have had to see a normal dentist and pay at least a thousand dollars more, which I couldn’t have done. I wouldn’t have received an SRP cleaning, and now my gums don’t bleed, and my mouth is like new. If I still lived in Youngstown, where there isn’t a dental school for 60 miles, I would have been fated to lose my teeth.

On my last visit with Nick, he told me it was his last week before graduation and that I was his last patient. He thanked me for showing up on time and being reliable.

501 S. Rancho Drive, Suite A8 Las Vegas, Nevada 89106

8460 S. Eastern Avenue, Suite C Henderson, Nevada 89074

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business

Green and gold There’s a lucrative pot rush under way in Colorado. With Nevada about to vote on recreational marijuana, a few lessons from that Rocky Mountain high B y D a n H e r na n d e z [DENVER, COLORADO]

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he first thing Mike Eymer says to the 30 or so people on his limo bus is not a greeting — not hello or welcome to Colorado Cannabis Tours — it’s a question: “Why isn’t anybody smoking weed?” That’s his way of telling us to go ahead, light up.

This is a party bus, after all. The air of giddy excitement begs to be choked by cough-inducing marijuana smoke, so a young man next to me lights the first joint. He and his friends drove all the way from Salt Lake City to experience buying and smoking weed legally. “Now there’s some smoke in here. That’s better,” Eymer says. We’re three minutes into a Denver marijuana industry tour and already folks are getting high.

But the guide also wants to survey our sobriety levels. “Has anyone consumed alcohol today?” It’s only 11 a.m., but a couple from Texas says yes. “And how about edibles? Come on guys, who ate weed brownies for breakfast?” Pot-infused desserts are a hit with tourists, and, indeed, someone in the back visited Ganja Gourmet this morning.

Rap music tumbles from the speaker system — Dr. Dre’s The Chronic — as Eymer distributes pre-rolled joints like he’s the pothead Red Cross. What were mischievous grins now curl into goofy smiles.

Eymer — the Ken Kesey to our band of Merry Pranksters — asks from whence we all hail and learns, for instance, that

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Green mind: Mike Eymer of Colorado Cannabis Tours

we are certified public accountants from Houston, a pet-hotel worker from Utah, professors from New Hampshire and a retired salesman from Cleveland who, I’m told as an aside, visits Las Vegas once a year. “We stay at the MGM. My wife likes the smell there,” he says.

Speaking of odors, it reeks of a skunky grassfire on this bus. A haze, too, lingers heavily enough to make it difficult to see the office workers trolling for lunch, the exasperated drivers stuck next to us in traffic, the brick buildings and skyscrapers on all sides of us as we lurch through downtown Denver. Thankfully the driver has an enclosed cabin; he’s walled-off from the weed part of this weed tour.

Wouldn’t want him getting a contact high.

Now, my bearings only slightly altered, I’ll focus on what Denver’s marijuana experience can teach Las Vegas.

Nevadans will consider legalizing pot for recreational use in November. The ballot initiative, Question 2, asks the state to treat cannabis like alcohol. Anyone 21 and older would be allowed to purchase up to an ounce from licensed dispensaries, just like medical marijuana cardholders have been able to since July 2015.

Medical marijuana was approved by referendum in 2000, yet the state waited 15 years to ratify the law, and that reluctance is still around. During the most recent legislative session, pols ignored the opportunity to directly approve recreational marijuana use. It’s a tough vote to cast for any politician, which is why every state and territory to adopt recreational marijuana — Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C. — has done so through a public vote.

According to Ballotpedia, 20 states have referendums for some form of marijuana legalization this November, including California and Arizona, and among those, Nevada is widely considered among the states most likely to pass cannabis use for all citizens of legal age.

But what would that look like?

If it happens, Eymer may be the one to show you. The enterprising dude behind Colorado Cannabis Tours launched a website for Sin City Cannabis Tours on this very afternoon.

“As soon as it passes, we’ll start doing this exact same thing there,” he says.

“We looked at all the states and picked California and Nevada because of the

P h oto g r a p h y A n t h o n y c a m e r a

number of tourists.

“I’m a travel agent — I have to go where my money is,” he adds. “I went to Vegas on an exploratory trip and saw the tourists and said, ‘I see all my people. These people are on my weed buses every Saturday.’” In a separate vehicle behind us, a large group of millennials is celebrating a marijuana-infused bachelor party. So I get what he means about following his clientele.

And here is what the marijuana tourism thing is all about: getting ripped with a bunch of other friendly “flower” aficionados, scoring high-end product and finally seeing what a buttoned-up version of the long-prohibited industry can achieve.

T

* * * * *

he first stop is one of the largest marijuana producers in Denver, RiverRock Cannabis. It’s a hot, dank warehouse divided into multiple grow rooms, each with hundreds of plants in various stages of cultivation. Wearing a lime green suit and trucker hat, its operations chief delivers a heady lesson on cloning, nurturing and harvesting weed.

We learn all about the different strains and their myriad effects, and the amateur botanists in the group are really riveted by his green-thumb wonkiness. But I’m more interested in this building.

It’s an old brick bus depot. The neighbors include more aging warehouses; down the street is a mobile home park, and in the near distance one can see (and smell) a Purina dog food factory. So of course this is some of the hottest real estate in Denver.

According to the commercial property firm CBRE, one-third of all industrial leases signed in Denver between 2009 and 2014 were inked by marijuana companies.

Since then, the industry’s footprint has expanded further, the results of which are an extremely low vacancy rate and, naturally, a rise in all commercial property values.

Those buildings with so-called “magical zoning” — located at the required distance from schools and other marijuana growers, licensed for “light industrial” use and fitted for high power capacity — have doubled in value. Vacant and dilapidated buildings fetched bids in the millions during peak demand. In fact, a statewide real estate boom has been one of recreational marijuana’s most profound side effects.

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business Wealthy real-estate trusts from New York are now purchasing buildings in Colorado, Oregon and Washington with the sole intention of renting them to marijuana companies. The trend inspired a recent Inc. magazine article titled “The Marijuana Business Is Really the Real Estate Business,” which also reported that cannabis companies are emerging as property barons themselves. Since the plant is still federally illegal, banks won’t accept their cash, and thus real estate purchases are the safest way to invest their funds.

“The big rush happened in 2015,” says Bob Costello, a Denver broker. “It’s been fabulous for real-estate people. I know Nevada’s market has experienced some problems. This should pick it up pretty good, especially on the industrial side.”

But a backlash has occurred in neighborhoods saturated with grow houses. Some residents complain that the buildings emit foul odors and can harm an area’s image.

For that reason, Denver issued a moratorium on industrial licenses. The city has 450 cannabis business licenses in effect now, including retail shops, confectionary kitchens, testing labs and cultivation sites.

Limiting that growth has caused producers to expand into other Colorado towns.

What’s been harder to regulate is the industry’s effect on the housing market.

Many renters and first-time homebuyers believe pot legalization has contributed to a surge in demand that is driving prices so high that working- and middle-class Denverites can hardly afford to live in their hometown. In the two years since Colorado legalized marijuana sales, median home prices in Denver have risen 26 percent.

Costello, who is also a landlord, has increased his tenants’ rent 30 percent since 2014. He receives regular phone calls from people interested in moving to Colorado to grow pot in their basements. “I don’t allow that at all,” he says.

“But I still benefit from it because it’s hard to rent a house right now.

“No one will admit it officially,” he adds, regarding the theory that pot legalization is attracting people to the state, “but, my god, what other thing caused this massive influx?”

During the RiverRock tour, I peek into a room with dozens of grow lights hanging from the ceiling, an elaborate ventila-

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Leaves of grass:

tion system snaking Denver’s new overhead, and I’m pot industry reminded of other may hold some groups capitalizing lessons for Las Vegas. on the frenzy. It’s not just “trees” these installations are feeding.

“HVAC guys, electricians, building maintenance-type guys, those people are in high demand now a lot more than they were before,” says Pat Early, RiverRock’s director of cultivation. “The green rush has gone through a lot of different industries that are related to us.”

B

* * * * *

ack on the bus, Eymer is lighting a 15-inch steamroller pipe for a Delaware college student. The tube fills with thick smoke, she heaves it in, then exhales slowly, letting it billow from her lips in volcanic plumes.

I have a rule against smoking from devices larger than my head. It’s a policy that serves my life well, and in this context I begin wondering how blazed everyone is. Our group seems to include both the several-times-a-day smokers and those for whom weed is a once-in-a-while thing — marijuana tourists in every sense of the term — but I can’t say anyone looks particularly stoned. Now, this could be the result of our intimate social setting. People are still making small talk, still trying to put their most impressive selves forward. But everyone seems to know their limits, too.

Offers to “hit this” are graciously declined as often as they are accepted.

When Eymer hands off a large glass bong, I do get to worrying, though, wheth-

er anyone intends to drive after this little weedfest is finished. That’s a concern for Nevada lawmakers too — whether people will drive under the influence of marijuana. It wouldn’t exactly be a new problem, though. Marijuana is plentiful in every city whether it’s legal or not. And Denver hasn’t seen a significant uptick in pot DUIs since recreational cannabis use was allowed, but in any case, Colorado sheriffs are piloting new technology that detects marijuana on saliva samples, making roadside tests more efficient.

We pull up to Medicine Man, the city’s largest marijuana retailer. Security guards check IDs, then we line up to consult a “budtender,” the salesclerk who doubles as a cannabis sommelier. This is not your dad’s reefer, nor is it your older sister’s

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business “dank herb.” The former came straight from Mexico with seeds and stems while the latter required a flame to smoke, which is so déclassé now.

Extracts are the hot thing for today’s weed lover. Cannabis oil may be smoked discreetly through a vaporizer and is simultaneously easier on the lungs, potentially much more potent — and because it includes the entire plant’s chemical profile, more flavorful.

Traditional buds are available too, of course. The nuggets or flowers or whathaveyous are divided into two categories, sativas and indicas, those of the heady, high-functioning buzz versus the physical, relaxing high. They also sell hybrid versions of the two. Specific strands come with cute names like Kool Aid Kush, Purple Urkle, Lemonhead or White Poison, and each strain is labeled for its potency level, much the way beer menus include alcohol percentages. Canna Tsu, for instance, is only 4.4 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol being the active intoxicant) whereas Rug Burn is a whopping 25.6 percent THC. Then come edibles. Weed cookies, lollipops, candy bars, gummies, breath mints and truffles. They also make marijuana soft drinks and THC topical creams, so if you’re feeling really inconspicuous, you can get your fix by sipping a root beer while moisturizing your skin.

Beyond the product gallery, Medicine Man is representative of the incredible range of work in this industry. Because it’s strictly a cash-based economy, security teams are necessary to keep businesses from getting rolled, so a former cop or military serviceman might be the first person you meet when shopping for weed. In the back of the house, crews of growers and trimmers nurture and harvest. There are chemists in labs, you have accountants and marketing staff, up front the budtenders, and behind the scenes, chefs who specialize in such products as weed chocolate.

It has grown into a billion-dollar industry for Colorado, netting the state more than $135 million in marijuana taxes and fees in 2015. Their first $40 million was set aside for school construction, some was earmarked for youth programs and substance-abuse treatment, while the rest went to discretionary spending. Those figures were a staggering 42 percent higher

than 2014’s. This year is likely to set an even higher benchmark. April saw a new monthly sales record — $117.4 million in 30 days, netting the state more than $17 million in taxes and fees — and overall cannabis revenues have surged 53 percent in 2016.

Some Las Vegas entrepreneurs have guessed that, if regulated kindly, Sin City might beat those figures on its own. But a more sober assessment from the Las Vegas consulting firm RCG Economics found that a $60 million annual tax boon is likely for Nevada.

And if the referendum passes, Nevada intends to use much of that revenue for K-12 education, just like Colorado, an arrangement that ought to tantalize Clark County parents whose children attend schools where the air conditioning frequently breaks down, ceilings leak and some classes are taught in crowded trailers. In its most recent national report, Education Week gave Nevada an “F” in

school spending. When averaged with poor scores in student achievement and long-term chances of success, the Nevada school system ranked 51st in the nation.

Yet if we do legalize pot for the sake of the children, state officials should probably also consider adopting Colorado’s kid-inspired regulations. Edible marijuana can no longer be marked as candy, and there is a movement underway to ban animal- and fruit-shaped edibles, since on multiple occasions, children who thought they were eating Mom and Dad’s gummy bears or peach rings had inadvertently broken into their parents’ weed stash. Numerous hospitalizations have occurred because adults, children or pets accidentally consumed large quantities of edible THC. Childproof packaging, potency limits, clear labeling and individually wrapped serving sizes are now required.

As to whether high school kids are more likely to smoke cannabis when these

shops sprout up around town, the answer is ostensibly no. A June report from Colorado’s health department showed that alcohol remains the drug of choice for teens.

About 20 percent of those surveyed admitted to smoking pot in the last 30 days, same as before the law changed. Somewhat surprisingly, the number of admitted users has declined slightly since 2009, when the state began permitting medical marijuana dispensaries.

These figures are in line with a national average that has remained flat since 2010.

T

* * * * *

he party bus seems quieter after we switch from rap to reggae. Bob Marley has a sedative effect all his own, but it’s probably the bong rips that have chilled everyone out. A TV showing clips from the movie Half Baked draws scattered giggles — “Man, I remember when a dime bag cost a dime!” — and some of

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business us try to remember other quotes from the film but can’t. That’s when Eymer distributes munchies, gummy bears that he assures us are only that, gummies in the shape of bears. The move toward sobriety is fitting because our last stop is one of the industry’s ancillary businesses that benefit from the law without actually growing or selling cannabis themselves.

We’re going to see a glass-blower make a bong from scratch.

Even though he identifies as a travel agent, Eymer is one of these “potrepreneurs” too. He doesn’t merely offer tours, he books visitors with “420-friendly” hotels and signs them up for marijuana cooking classes, glass pipe-making workshops and a “Puff, Pass & Paint” event in which tourists channel their inner Bob Ross — paint happy little trees after burning some grass.

As Nevadans may eventually learn, just about any product or service can adopt a

marijuana theme. Have you ever tried a zip line … on weed? Well, maybe not any service, but one can certainly imagine Vegas spas offering a cannabis massage. In Denver, some practitioners of deep-tissue bodywork provide a weed-oil rub to “increase muscle sensitivity and provide a soothing sensation long after the massage has been completed.”

We gather in the glass-blower’s studio around a 2,000-degree oven in which the artist spins a round piece of blue glass on the end of a steel pole. In the corner are finished pieces, including vases and goblets, because like any good businessman he has diversified.

The next big trend will likely be the marijuana café. Public consumption is still illegal in Colorado (only Alaska permits weed lounges) and that has proved frustrating for tourists who are not always content to puff alone in their hotels. A petition is in the works to change this, but for now a party

bus like Eymer’s and other sign-up events are the only options available for these visitors to socialize around their favorite plant.

Eymer believes the first major city to allow cannabis bars will emerge as the favored destination for pot tourists, be it Denver, San Francisco, L.A. or Las Vegas.

But there’s reason to believe Nevada would be competitive simply by allowing recreational sales. “I’d go to Vegas more if that were the case,” says the Salt Lake City man. “So would I,” adds the Clevelander who already visits once a year.

Still, what would that look like?

Would it look like this? The glass-blower has a variety of tools for sculpting molten glass. Tweezers, wet paddle cups, scissors and a cooling table.

Just like Colorado depends on a number of agencies and regulatory measures to keep its marijuana industry in check, so does the artist rely on helpers and instruments to craft each piece.

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He spins the molten glass continuously and returns it to the oven every five seconds so the object doesn’t droop or harden into an ugly shape. New tints are added, and as it gets closer to completion, when the piece becomes larger and more unwieldy, assistants jump in to help fuse on new parts, cool or reheat the piece.

Its bulbous base is given a flat-bottomed stand to keep it upright. He adds signature accents then spins it in the oven more, responding always to the effects of air and gravity. Someone asks if he ever breaks them. The answer, of course, is yes, but that he has learned from those mistakes and adjusted his technique.

If the glass blower is Denver, and if Denver is the model for legalizing cannabis, then you could say Denver is what Vegas might be, so I guess the glass blower is Vegas and his shiny new bong is our potential new industry, fragile and worth a lot of cash.

Or maybe I’m still high.

B

* * * * *

ack on the bus, as we return to the afternoon’s meet-up site, Cheba Hut Toasted Subs, Eymer gives a rousing speech about the ballot initiatives this fall. Talking about how no one should go to jail for having a weed bag in his pocket, he lobbies for us to get involved with marijuana rights groups and to vote.

“They’re never going to give it to you,” he says of lawmakers, everywhere. “You’re going to have to gather signatures and gave it to the Legislature and say, put this bill on the ballot and we’re gonna vote on it.”

Despite opposition from the state’s wealthiest political donor, billionaire Sheldon Adelson; despite antipathy from the entire gaming industry and extreme reticence from all but a few brave lawmakers, that’s not just happening in Nevada, it has happened. Marijuana legalization is up for a vote and most observers believe its passage a fait accompli.

“You shouldn’t have to come all the way here to experience true freedom in the United States of America,” he adds.

“I’m glad you did, and I made a living off it, but this ends for me one day. One day, the whole the tourism thing goes away and for a damn good reason: because we got it legal everywhere.”

䐀椀猀挀漀瘀攀爀 夀漀甀爀 䌀栀椀氀搀ᤠ猀 倀漀琀攀渀琀椀愀氀

圀攀ᤠ氀氀 挀栀愀氀氀攀渀最攀 愀渀搀 椀渀猀瀀椀爀攀 礀漀甀爀 挀栀椀氀搀 椀渀 愀 挀愀爀椀渀最 攀渀瘀椀爀漀渀洀攀渀琀 眀椀琀栀 瀀爀漀最爀愀洀猀 琀栀愀琀 栀愀瘀攀 猀甀挀挀攀猀猀昀甀氀氀礀 攀搀甀挀愀琀攀搀 琀栀漀甀猀愀渀搀猀 漀昀 挀栀椀氀搀爀攀渀 椀渀 䰀愀猀 嘀攀最愀猀 昀漀爀 洀漀爀攀 琀栀愀渀 昀椀昀琀礀 礀攀愀爀猀⸀

䬀椀渀搀攀爀猀挀栀漀漀氀Ⰰ 䔀氀攀洀攀渀琀愀爀礀 ☀ 䴀椀搀搀氀攀 匀挀栀漀漀氀 匀琀愀琀攀ⴀ漀昀ⴀ琀栀攀ⴀ䄀爀琀 䌀愀洀瀀甀猀 䄀搀瘀愀渀挀攀搀 䤀渀渀漀瘀愀琀椀瘀攀 䌀甀爀爀椀挀甀氀甀洀 吀攀挀栀渀漀氀漀最礀 䌀漀洀瀀攀琀椀琀椀瘀攀 匀瀀漀爀琀猀 䔀砀琀爀愀 䌀甀爀爀椀挀甀氀愀爀 䄀挀琀椀瘀椀琀椀攀猀 匀琀愀琀攀 䰀椀挀攀渀猀攀搀 䄀搀瘀愀渀挀䔀䐀 一愀琀椀漀渀愀氀 䄀挀挀爀攀搀椀琀愀琀椀漀渀

氀瘀搀猀⸀挀漀洀

mental health

‘I swear I will!’

When my son threatened suicide, I thought help would be a phone call away. Instead, I entered a maze of false hopes and shockingly scant resources B y A n o n y m o u s Editor’s note: Because of the sensitivity of this issue, and to protect the identity of the author’s son, we have agreed to her request to remain anonymous.

I

t was last August when my 16-year-old told me, over the phone, that he was going to kill himself.

“I know exactly how I’ll do it, too,” he said. “I’ll do it at the school, just like—” and he said the name of a friend who’d committed suicide, the previous year.

Although I could plainly hear that he was in the midst of some sort of panic attack, it was the benign circumstances precipitating his threat — he hadn’t received the course schedule he’d wanted for his junior year — that led me to treat it not very seriously.

The overly dramatic reaction of a teenager, I thought, and I told him that his threat was in poor taste and disrespectful to the tragic circumstances of his belated friend.

His assignment to a general chemistry class, based on his previous year’s math grade, was what had set him off. The tipping point was the school’s refusal to consider that he had repeated his math course in summer school to improve his grade, in order to qualify for chemistry honors.

“Relax, Bud,” I said, mostly concerned with calming him down — his voice was shaking and his breathing was quick.

“I’ll talk to your counselor. You’ll get into chemistry honors.” And I did. And he did.

It was about a month later when he threatened again to kill himself.

I can’t remember what had unraveled him that time, but I do remember that

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he was promising to hurt himself then and there; and that his father was out of town; and that his younger sister was frightened; and that I, in turn, threatened to call the police.

I explained to my boy, who’d grown both bigger and stronger than I, and who was in a highly erratic state, that once the authorities were involved, it would be out of my hands — the hands that had always protected him.

I watched him process this. And I watched him calm down.

And, still, I didn’t take his threat very seriously. Mostly, because he was so angry. More angry than sad. And as I understood it, depression — not fury — preceded suicide.

He was, I knew, somewhat sad — he called it depression — since his older sister had left for college and his girlfriend’s family had moved out of state.

Considering these losses, it was natural

that he’d be suffering during the adjustment phase, I thought.

He wanted antidepressants: “Please, Mom,” he said.

Time, I told him, would heal his heart.

I wanted him to try exercising first. I wanted him to get off the video games, to get outdoors, to socialize more.

When he grew even more angry, and defiant, and willful — instead of sad — I thought that I’d encountered the dreaded teenage years parents are forever being warned about. I thought the hormones of a boy developing into a man were to blame.

“We have to get him under control,” I told my husband.

Also, I suspected the positive results of his first threat were prompting the others. l thought that in gaining him access to his chemistry honors class, I’d set a precedent — in the way a parent can train a toddler to misbehave in

i l lu st r at i o n M i c h a e l Wa r a k s a

the checkout line by first denying his request for candy, then surrendering to the screams of his tantrum.

So, I responded by laying down the hammer. By demanding more chores.

Better grades. I sought politeness and gratitude from this new angsty character in our home. I responded by refusing to be manipulated by hostile threats.

And I was wrong. So utterly wrong.

I

* * * * *

didn’t know, then, that depression in teenagers often manifests as anger — knowledge I came upon while consulting experts online to back me up. (“See, video games are bad and exercise can help,” was the ammunition I’d been seeking.)

I also didn’t know that 14 percent of teens suffer at least one major depression, annually, or that 16 percent of high school students have reported to have seriously contemplated suicide.

I didn’t know that, every day, nearly 5,400 American teenagers try to kill themselves. Every day!

I didn’t know that four out of five of these kids attempting suicide first sent out very clear warning signs.

And I certainly didn’t know that suicide is the third leading cause of death among American adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18. (And in Nevada, the second leading cause of death for 15-19 year-olds.)

And because I was ignorant of all of this — so much critical information I would learn during the course of his struggle, our struggle — my son’s future threats, his calls for help, escalated into grand and violent conflicts of will. Each more explosive than the last, because we both were so intensely terrified.

He, terrified of being so alone in such a dark place; and of what he might do to himself there.

And me — stupid, stupid me: “You’re not going to kill yourself,” I said back at him, flexing my parental authority (so effective in the past) in the face of his rage, in the face of my fear.

“I will, Mom! I swear I will!”

Later — after doors had been slammed, after the shouting had subsided, once the hot energy had tempered to a lukewarm — I said to my husband, “I swear he’s going to kill himself just to prove to us that he’ll kill himself.”

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mental health My voice shook. My hands quivered with my maternal heart.

It’s unfortunate, I think now, but not surprising, that his depression arrived to coincide with his 16th year, so that I could confuse the two. While wasting so much precious time.

B

* * * * *

y mid-October, not 45 days from his original threat, my son’s grades had plummeted. His weight had plummeted. His confidence had plummeted.

So that even a mother in denial could see he truly needed help.

When he said, “I need antidepressants,” I told him, “I know you do.”

I began researching teen psychologists and therapists online. I made calls to those whose therapeutic philosophies matched my own, whose profile photos made them seem both professional and personable, and whose offices were relatively near to our home.

None were returned.

So, I broadened my parameters: I called a woman who specialized with LDS families, although we are not Mormon. I called another who claimed expertise with teens. I called another who hadn’t claimed this specialty, but whose picture seemed to indicate kindness. I called another whose headshot — long blonde hair, made-up eyes, cleavage — screamed Vegas bimbo, but whose bio wasn’t half bad.

Nothing.

For three weeks, I left voicemail after voicemail for local therapists, explaining that I was afraid for my teenager who was struggling with depression, but nobody seemed to care.

Then, finally, a voicemail back! However, this highly-qualified psychologist only held office hours on Fridays, and I would retrieve his message on a Saturday morning — which meant another seven days before I could even set up an appointment.

“Mom, help,” my son began texting from school, where his anxieties had spiraled so far out of control that he was hiding out in the boys’ bathroom instead of attending his more nerve-wracking classes.

I left more messages — tearful and panicked, now.

“Why is nobody calling me back?” I

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cried into the voicemail box of my preferred choice from my original list, a woman whose office was close, whose credentials were impressive, and whose maternal face suggested strength and sensitivity. It was my third message to her. “Please, please call me back. Please.”

The following day, she did. But only to apologize: First, for not returning my previous calls — she was just so busy.

Then, for our situation. And, finally, because she wasn’t taking on new patients.

She did, however, give me the numbers of two of her colleagues who also had expertise with teenagers.

Neither of them returned my calls.

It was early in November, prior to the Friday when I might reach the one psychologist interested in helping us, that our situation turned dire. I was making plans for our Christmas holidays and I’d texted my son about his vacation preferences. His response set off sirens.

Free of rage or bitterness, now, with only weary resignation, he texted back, “Mom, really? I’m not likely to be here at Christmas.”

I knew already that he’d researched ways to kill himself. And I knew, from his shouts during our ugliest incidents — that wild chase to the laundry room, the frenzied battle for the bleach he meant to drink — that he’d chosen his preferred method.

And now, here, a timeline.

“December,” he told me, when I asked, and it suddenly occurred to me that he hadn’t begun his annual lobbying for game systems and the other usual Christmas-list items.

I remember, in that moment, thinking to call a suicide hotline — but it was still November, and so there was no imminent threat. He would come home from school, do or not do his homework, play video games, eat dinner, harass his little sister: This was not a scene of emergency demanding immediate response. He only wanted — needed — not to feel so sad. He only wanted — needed — an appointment with a mental healthcare professional, a prescription, some counseling.

Instead of a suicide hotline, I called one of the mental healthcare hospitals I’d researched, in previous weeks, during my search for help.

After a brief conversation, I was advised to bring him in.

But … well … there was something lacking in the woman’s voice. Sensitivity? That and the canned marketing of the website: words like beautiful environment and serene surroundings (I’d driven by it — it did not appear serene) juxtaposed with other words, like 58bed facility, made it all feel fraudulent.

Also, substance abuse was the foremost topic of the site, so who would he (who hadn’t yet had his first alcoholic drink, who was by all accounts a really good kid) be rooming with in his dual occupancy room? Undoubtedly, too, I’d seen too many movies, read enough books not to be concerned. And there were those news articles, from not so long ago, about one-way bus tickets and the mentally ill, to further fuel my distrust.

Plus, for God’s sake, he was still holding on. He was still asking for help, for therapy and antidepressants. He wasn’t, I was certain, in requirement of institutionalization.

I got back on the phone. I dialed number after number after number until, at last, a real live voice picked up. This therapist — whose credentials and philosophy didn’t particularly impress me, and whose almost immediate availability raised a red flag — could see us that afternoon.

Of course, we went.

B

* * * * *

y the end of an hour — during which she spoke to my son, my husband and me, simultaneously; then my son, alone; during which she inspected his arms for recent signs of cutting (there were none) — this, the only therapist with time for us, recommended that my son be institutionalized. Immediately.

Not because he actually required institutionalization, she explained, but because he needed meds (her word) and because the only way for him to get him these in any timely fashion — here in Southern Nevada — was to be hospitalized. As an emergency patient in a mental healthcare facility, he would, in accordance with federal law, be evaluated by a psychiatrist within 48 hours and be prescribed the medication that she’d determined he needed and which only a qualified psychiatric professional could prescribe for him.

This, she explained, was the only way to successfully navigate Nevada’s lack-

ing mental healthcare system and save my son’s life.

Failing institutionalization, the state’s severe shortage of child psychiatrists — 45 in total, or 6.79 per 100,000 children, according to a 2016 report published by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychology — meant that he wouldn’t likely secure an appointment (or meds) for another three months.

“Your son doesn’t have three months,” she said.

Meaning, we were, in fact, already in a deep state of emergency.

Indeed, with the clock ticking at the erratic speed of teen despair, up against the long waiting lists of children seeking psychiatric treatment, our situation had grown instantly critical months earlier, upon the onset of his first suicidal thoughts.

In fact, any Nevada teenager experiencing depression verging on suicidal thinking (16 percent, assuming the national average) who isn’t already in consultation with a psychiatrist, is indeed already at fatal risk.

“I could call Metro, right now,” said the therapist, apparently feeling the need to drive the point home for my husband and me, who stared dumbly at her, processing the implausibility of what she was saying, the lengths our son would need to go to — institutionalization! — to get a scrip for antidepressants.

This, in 2015? When, according to a 2005-2008 Center for Disease Control and Prevention national health survey, one in 10 Americans older than 12 is using antidepressants, and likely more, these seven years since, considering the drug’s increasing usage rate: It’s up 400 percent since 1988, according to the same survey.

Could a prescription really be so difficult to get?

It turns out: Yes. Postponing her next appointment (“An emergency,” she told her waiting patient) the therapist ran down a list of mental hospitals available to us. There were some she didn’t recommend, including the one I’d called that afternoon; she didn’t agree with their treatment methods, she said (making my imagination run wild). Others, which commonly treated juvenile delinquents, wouldn’t be suitable for an upper-middle class boy from Henderson.

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mental health “You don’t want to do more harm than good,” she said.

My husband and I nodded in stunned agreement.

Finally, she recommended a newer behavioral healthcare hospital in central Las Vegas.

We could call from her office, she said.

I watched my son’s eyes grow wide with terror while my husband dialed the phone.

Then all three of us breathed a sigh of relief to learn that there were, in fact, no beds currently available.

In that case, the therapist continued, we should take him immediately to the ER, where he could be held until a bed opened up.

“But, he’s not going to kill himself today,” I said, incredulously. “Are you?” I asked him.

“No.” He shook his head in anxious certainty. His eyes still so big.

Missing not a beat, she continued in her campaign: As an ER patient, he would earn a priority position in Nevada’s long line of children awaiting beds, psychiatric services, and meds.

This was the way it had to be done, she said.

Instead — seeming confident that she had impressed upon us the severity of our situation — she agreed to release us under the condition that we call again, a few hours later, to learn if a bed had become available, as per the behavioral hospital’s directive, and with the promise that, failing that, we would consider the ER. Home again, we all sat down to catch our breath and recover from the assault of the day’s rapid escalation: Five hours earlier, I’d been planning our Christmas holiday and now I was committing my son to a mental institution. On the advice of the only therapist who had time for us? What the hell?!

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* * * * *

everal hours later, when we called, a bed still had not become available.

Nor had one opened, 12 hours after that. Or the day after that. Still, the behavioral hospital’s instructions remained the same: “Try again, later.”

When I asked that my son’s name be put on a waiting list, I was discouraged: “It’s pretty long.”

“Still,” I said.

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Then — although the therapist had advised against it: “Family doctors just aren’t helpful in these situations” — we turned to my son’s pediatrician. We hoped that she might be able to expedite an appointment with a child psychiatrist, or offer us an alternative solution, or, at the very least, confirm that what the therapist had told us was, in fact, fact.

It was.

Having heard the details of my son’s condition, his pediatrician was visibly unnerved. “There’s just no help for kids, here,” she said. “They’ve only recently implemented help for adults.” She made a reference to squeaky wheels. She said, “Kids don’t pay taxes. They have no voice in Vegas. You might try California.”

She suggested a written contract between my son and me, by which he promised not to hurt himself without first reaching out, and to which he agreed while we were in her office — but scoffed at, once we’d returned home.

Later, having made some calls, she offered us the name of a good Henderson therapist and the phone number of a local child psychiatrist, but she couldn’t make any promises. She told us, again, to consider California.

According to my online research, this psychiatrist was one of the best in Vegas; others had disturbing reviews. I called, immediately and — undeterred by the outgoing message that warned if the doctor hadn’t returned my call in a timely manner, she wasn’t likely accepting new patients — left yet another pleading voicemail. Then I crossed my fingers. No luck.

I called again.

Nothing.

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alifornia’s mental healthcare services for youth is decades in advance of Nevada’s. Where our 58-bed facilities with their private children’s wings recall scenes from disturbing movies set half a century ago, California has a multitude of programs offering care specific to teens and to their individual disorders. The programs take place in comfortable residential settings and cater to small groups of carefully screened admissions, to ensure safety and compatibility. California’s programs are everything I had assumed modern psychiatric therapy would be: In

these homelike settings, unlike our Vegas institutions, patients are allowed to keep their shoelaces — to me, a disparity indicative of the vastly different therapy environments and treatment philosophies.

So — in between the calls I continued to make diligently to the local mental health hospital, seeking a bed — I narrowed in on a program I liked for my son, in Malibu.

Reputed to be one of the best in the nation, accredited by The Joint Commission and highly rated by Psychology Today, it would cost us $49,000. (Another we had considered, a provider with our health insurance company, would leave us only $5,000 out-of-pocket: the two ends of the price spectrum, according to my findings.)

“We’ll finance,” my husband said of the Malibu option, and we began the registration process.

But, because it was a 30-day residency stay (the industry norm) and so far from home, my son was hesitant. He wanted to wait for a bed here; he wanted to try his local options, first.

“Can you call again?” he asked, with increasing frequency.

During this excruciating waiting stage — when we were afraid to leave him home alone, afraid if he shut his bedroom door for too long — I’d determined that, if nothing else, I would love him. As much as I possibly could. While he was still here to love.

It seemed, for a time, the only course of action available to me. And I counseled his father and his sisters, all whom were suffering, too, to do the same. Fear, guilt, anger, frustration: Suicide is, certainly, a lonely, lonely business — but, too, all-inclusive.

“Just love him,” I said, petting his youngest sister’s head.

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* * * * *

eanwhile, his condition grew worse.

Weeks later — well past rage and weary desperation — he’d finally grown jaded in his hopelessness. So that, as Thanksgiving approached, when he began to self-mutilate — a steak knife to the delicate white skin of his forearm — he actually found it comical.

“It’s like a trailer to a movie. The teaser for the feature show.” He laughed out loud.

This authentic amusement, his warping perspective, tinged with madness, made our decision to finally take him to the ER. It had grown glaringly evident that we had, at last, run out of time.

But, just as my husband and I were readying for the struggle we knew it would be to get him into the car, I made one last ditch call to the behavioral healthcare hospital.

“Bring him in,” they said, to my incredible surprise. It was because of Thanksgiving that so many beds had been vacated.

“We got lucky,” I said, although lucky was not what I felt.

The admission process amounted to the most wrenching four hours of my entire experience of motherhood, abandoning — it felt like abandonment! — my son in this place. Against my every screaming maternal instinct! But, too, what choice did I have?

After they’d taken his shoes and his clothes (no laces, no hoodies) and lent him a set of nurse’s scrubs, oversized and hanging from his thin frame.

After we’d hugged each other so desperately.

And he, returned now to his compliant self, walked willingly away with a large orderly in matching scrubs, down a hall where a pair of thick industrial doors would open for him, to a world I could only imagine.

Before pulling shut to lock between us.

Four hours later, it was past midnight and I was in his bedroom, touching the items on his dresser, his desk: his comic books; his Rubik’s cube collection (his record is 45 seconds); a newspaper clipping of his fourth-grade self, smiling proudly for the borax crystals he’d made for the school science fair; soccer medallions from before he quit sports; a plastic egg of silly putty; a photo booth strip of

him and his girlfriend, being goofy, being serious, kissing; the trophy he’d recently earned for his success with the Speech and Debate team.

I was trying to understand how we’d come to this place; and I was beating myself up for failing him.

Then, “F---ing Vegas,” I said, refusing to bear the responsibility alone.

Early the next morning — having packed the bag I hadn’t thought to pack the previous evening: a pair of flip-flops (his only shoes without laces), clothes (drawstrings snipped from his pajama bottoms), comic books, his toothbrush — I rose from my restless sleep in order to deliver it to him in advance of 7 a.m., when, according to the daily schedule, he would rise for grooming, showers and morning hygiene.

It was 3 p.m. (before his bag was yet to see its way from the reception desk to the adolescent floor where he awaited it,

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mental health still wearing the oversized scrubs he’d slept in) when the hospital’s accounting department called seeking payment arrangements, a $1,500 deductible: If I were to compile a list of complaints, I would start here. But, since rare is the patient who stays in such a place and doesn’t have grievances — “It’s worse than prison, Mom. There are kids here who’ve been to juvie (a new word for him) and they say it’s way worse” — I won’t bother.

Suffice it to say that the experience was no better or worse than I imagined: In pajamas and flip-flops, my son spent long hours playing cards — war, mostly — with the other kids, all of whom (except him) had drug addictions or at least drug experience. They lined up daily for medication — antidepressants for my son. They moved to and from the cafeteria in this same single file line, where they ate with plastic utensils; spoons and forks, only. They had escorts to the toilet.

Some of the staff seemed genuine, like the night nurse with the soothing voice who assured me, when I called that first time, that despite refusing sleeping pills, my son appeared to be resting just fine and to call back, anytime; and the head social worker who led the patients in group therapy sessions, where my son would learn coping skills he still uses today.

Others were as terrible as the movies would have you believe, like a nurse who, when I called one too many times, laughed at my son in front of the other kids, nicknamed him Mama’s Boy. And another who would so roughly manhandle a young autistic child that my son, when he was returned, wanted us to call the authorities. And a therapy leader who began his group session by asking, “Who wants to be here? Well, me neither, so let’s get this over with,” before he embarked on a tirade about taxes and gun control laws, omitting to address therapy whatsoever during the entire hour.

It was Monday when we admitted him. On Thanksgiving Thursday, my son — having grown visibly thinner, still — assured my husband and me, when we asked during a special holiday visiting hour, that he wanted to see his stay

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through. He felt certain, according to a conversation he’d had with the attending psychiatrist, that he would be discharged the following day.

In order for him to secure an aftercare appointment with an outpatient psychiatrist within 30 days of his hospitalization (an industry ideal, we’ve come to learn, not a regulation or even a norm), we were under the assumption that he needed to see the process through, that he needed to remain hospitalized until such time as his attending physician assessed him fit for discharge. That was the route to a psychiatrist appointment, as we understood it. So, my son meant to do just that — otherwise, what was the point of it all?

He’d come this far, he told us. He could handle another day. (Plus, he wanted to avoid the trip to Malibu that my husband and I were still considering.)

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*****

riday evening, he changed his mind: “Mom,” he said, during the phone call he was permitted between 7 and 8 p.m., “can you get me out of here?”

Although he’d been deemed healthy enough for discharge, according to the attending psychiatrist, there was paperwork to be done. And since the office staff wouldn’t return until Monday, he was advised that he would need to hang around for another three days — at a cost of $715 per day (the rate contracted with our insurance provider).

Fortunately, I managed to get the doctor on the phone, nearly immediately, since he was only then making his rounds on the adolescent floor — which, as my son explained, consisted of daily visits, five to 15 minutes in length, pertaining primarily to medication: “Any issues with the drugs?”

“I don’t know what you’re accusing me of,” the doctor said, when I asked why, if my son was fit to leave, he would need to stay until Monday.

His defensive stance surprised me because I hadn’t accused him of anything.

Rather, I was advocating for my son, trying to ascertain if I could have him immediately discharged while still securing an aftercare appointment with a psychiatrist, the appointment that he’d jumped through all the hoops required of Neva-

da’s mental healthcare system to secure.

It turns out yes. Or maybe the doctor bent the rules. I can’t be certain.

But an hour later, he was released.

Yes, he was still depressed, still suicidal, but, in his hand, a prescription for anti-depressants that would last him 30 days. And, the following week, the hospital called to report that two aftercare appointments had been scheduled: the first with a local therapist, the second with one of Nevada’s high-in-demand child psychiatrists — one with frightful online reviews, but nevertheless.

If Nevada’s mental healthcare system for youths was only lacking — and not actually fractured — our story would end here. But it doesn’t.

On December 18, the day he was scheduled to finally see the outpatient psychiatrist as part of his discharge plan, the psychiatrist had already left for the Christmas holidays. He was not seeing patients that day, according to his receptionist.

Yes, she confirmed, my son’s name was in the system but, “There must have been a miscommunication. I have no record of an appointment,” she said. And, “There isn’t room in the doctor’s books for several months,” she added.

Meaning that my son would run out of the meds he needed, the meds he suffered institutionalization to earn, two to four weeks short of the time they would normally take to achieve full effect.

Furthermore, the receptionist explained, if we did choose to reschedule, we should not expect couch time (her words). “It’s only med management. Not therapy. People are always surprised.”

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*****

ccording to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, 8 percent of youth have anxiety disorders; 10 percent have behavior or conduct disorders; 11 percent have mood disorders; and 20 percent, between the ages of 13 and 18, live with mental health conditions. Despite these numbers and despite the 16 percent of high school students contemplating suicide, the child psychiatrists to whom Nevada’s behavioral healthcare facilities are referring patients seem to

only offer medication management.

No couch time with the psychiatrists whom teens are being institutionalized to get to. Only meds. And these, only if one’s appointment wasn’t inevitably lost in the system.

Despite all the odds against us, our story has a happy ending. While the therapist to whom the hospital referred us was not especially compatible with my son, she was able to refer us to a physician’s assistant, in Henderson, who also happens to have psychiatric qualifications which allow her to prescribe antidepressants to patients. (I understand there’s a PA in Summerlin doing the same — prescriptions, without the long wait for a psychiatric appointment or the requirement of institutionalization.) While this PA wrote my son’s scrips, he sought weekly counseling with the therapist his pediatrician had originally recommended. This thera-

pist, in turn, secured him an appointment with the psychiatrist we weren’t able to access, earlier.

Having secured dedicated assistance via a series of lucky connections and despite a broken system, he was, for a while, much improved. On his best days, he smiled and laughed in ways I hadn’t seen him do in a long time. I did, too.

Then spring arrived, bringing with it the painful anniversary of his friend’s suicide to coincide with final exams, and he plummeted again into an anxious and dangerous depression.

It was early on a Sunday in May when we packed his bags for Malibu, where he would stay in a home with six similarly troubled teens, working intensely under a whole team of therapists and psychiatrists specialized in healing adolescents by focusing on the emotional underpinnings of their be-

No one should end the journey of life alone, afraid, or in pain.

havior. A place where, having toured it, I felt confident leaving him — relieved, even: He would not only be safe, I knew, he would be healed.

When he returned to us a month later, he was stronger, happier, more willing to talk, motivated and empowered — and with an entire toolbox of coping strategies and a new network of understanding friends. He’d learned to be more responsible for himself and his problems.

And my husband and I, during the program’s regular family therapy sessions, learned to let him be.

It was a positive, life-changing experience — a life-saving experience! — entirely counter to and decades ahead of the stay he suffered (I’ve considered it, carefully; that’s the right word) in Nevada.

“Why don’t they have anything like that here?” he’s asked me, since.

“Well,” I told him, “we could share your story. See if it makes a difference.”

For three decades, Southern Nevada’s physicians have entrusted Nathan Adelson Hospice with quality in-patient and home care services for their patients. We have board-certified physicians in hospice and palliative care, on-site pharmacies, a full range of complementary therapies, physician visits to patient homes and the valley’s only comprehensive pediatric hospice program. As always, our primary concern is for our patients’ comfort, care and dignity.

Swenson Inpatient Facility 4141 Swenson St. Las Vegas, NV 89119 Tenaya Inpatient Facility 3150 N. Tenaya Way Las Vegas, NV 89128 Pahrump 1401 S. Highway 160, Suite B Pahrump, NV 89048 For more information: (702) 733-0320

www.nah.org

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The Dish 56 Eat this now 58

08

16

Fork off 60

Our c i ty's be st spots to eat & drink

Chicken out: The vegan deviled eggs at The Owl are made with surprisingly tasty tofu.

P hoto g ra p h y By Sabin Orr

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Dining out The DISH

giving a hoot With attention to detail, craft beer and a farm-to-table menu, The Owl’s hyperkinetic owner, Stephan Galdau, is living his dream B y Ja s o n S c av o n e

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tephan Galdau has a voice like a taxi rolling over a pothole.

When he sees one of his young barbacks at The Owl come out from the back wearing a windbreaker despite it being the dead of July, he barks out a couple of choice epithets before growling, “It’s your generation.

You guys are so (expletive) soft.”

It’s a veteran piece of chops-busting that’s the mark of a native New Yorker, and it’s one of those things that still feels a little out of place on the sensitive West Coast. But you look around at The Owl, and there’s not much yet that’s really in place with the Las Vegas bar scene.

There’s no Internet jukebox. Galdau would rather lean on his own curated playlist of classic rock, alt-rock, rockabilly and oldies. The televisions rotate menu pictures and photos from the bar.

There aren’t any video poker machines (yet). “People need to remember what a bar is for,” he says. “Talking to each other, listening to music, drinking.”

And yelling at chilly millennials.

Galdau, 41, is loud, demonstrative and has the attention span of some of your more thoughtful goldfish. But that’s part of being hyper-attuned to everything that’s going on in his bar. When he sees one customer walk in, then turn around and go right out, he stops mid-conversation to go run them down and find out what was wrong. Ten minutes later, he stops dead again to find out why no one

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has cleared a glass from a guy at the bar.

Galdau spent 12 years in corporate advertising in New York City. In 2008, during the worst of the recession, he lost his job, and in that crisis, found an epiphany. “I said to my father, ‘I don’t have a skill,’” he said. “If I was a plumber I’d have a skill. Selling advertising is not a skill.” He remembered, though, college days spent tending bar and how it was the best time of his life. So he entered the bar scene in Manhattan, relearning his trade at the likes of industry hangout Daddy-O, a Soho-adjacent spot on the west side that catered to off-duty servers, bartenders and chefs.

He had already fallen in love with Nevada. On a trip with a girlfriend, they visited Red Rock Canyon and the Grand Canyon. It was the opposite of Manhattan. It was the don’t-fence-me-in dream.

“I loved space,” he said. “Mountains, no traffic, bright blue skies. You never get sick of it. I was sick of people being around me all the time, always fighting

for everything. Whether it was walking through a store, getting a cab, getting the subway, jobs.”

So he made the call four years ago to trade great pizza for sweeping vistas — maybe the toughest bit of culinary/quality-of-living calculus anyone should ever have to make. Along the way he realized the guy he came out with had a nasty Oxycontin addiction and left Galdau with just $600 when he got here. The economic necessity of living in an extended-stay suite led, predictably, to a break-in, in which crooks got

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Owl's well: Opposite page, owner Stephan Galdau; vegan deviled eggs; above, Korean sliders; left, the Rebel sandwich.

everything, including his passport and his Xbox. Metro gave him the welcome-to-Las Vegas advice that if the place you’re staying says “suites,” it’s not sweet. Duly noted.

Initial brush with crime aside, Galdau knew that bar ownership was the end goal. He bounced around from job to job, with Ferraro’s and the Tao Group and Sapphire and Insert Coin(s) as a bartender, bar manager and general manager.

It was a Sunday night at what was then Hammers & Ales when Galdau realized he’d found his spot. It was the first night of football, and Galdau and a buddy were the only two in the joint. It was a sign, he said, that the current owner wanted out.

Talks started in December 2013. A year later he won the bidding process over four other prospective owners, and the bar, formerly The Hammer, and remodeled in a Bar Rescue episode as Hammer & Ales, gave way to The Owl. Where Hammer & Ales was unapologetically a beer bar, Galdau takes a more catholic approach. There’s a wide-ranging craft beer menu, including some more ex-

otic breweries not widely found in Vegas, such as offerings from Butternuts Beer & Ale in Garrattsville, N.Y. (Trust: Their Porkslap is a hoppy-enough pale without the jam-a-pine-tree-in-your-mouth ethos of the overdone IPA craze endemic to craft-beer menus nationwide.) The Owl also goes in for a cocktail program with a mix of originals and riffs on classics.

But it’s the farm-to-table kitchen under executive chef Daniel Schneider that’s the crown jewel of the operation. The fare fits the elevated comfort-food mold of so many gastropubs, but what might set it apart is a vegan menu partially crowdsourced from those particular diners. It’s a small subset of the menu, but it offers creative takes like a slab of seared polenta or vegan “deviled eggs” made out of cleverly molded tofu.

The downside of sourcing fresh is that it means not everything will be available at all times — a planned Fourth of July barbecue quickly became a vegan affair when farm-raised meat wasn’t available.

But what’s available on any given day is worth the foray into Plan B. The smoked pulled-pork sandwich is a straight-up avalanche of meat with a side of cactus slaw and homemade hot BBQ sauce. The bun doesn’t stand a chance

Summerlin® | 702.433.1233 | BrioItalian.com

YOU REALLY LOVE OUR MAGAZINE. NOW YOU CAN LOVE IT VIRTUALLY, TOO. Visit us at www.desertcompanion.vegas and check out our website. Between editions of our Maggie Award-winning magazine, you’ll get web-exclusive stories, breaking cultural news and fresh perspectives from our writers.

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Dining out hot plate

Eat this now!

The Violette Club At Violette’s Vegan

8560 W. Desert Inn Road, violettesvegan.com Of the two main categories of vegan food, Violette’s Vegan falls squarely into the first: versions of omnivore classics minus the animal products. The other — original, plantbased dishes — requires a creative chef and intrepid diners. But the risk of the traditional knockoff approach is that people expect Tofurkey to taste like turkey (it doesn’t).

The Violette Club demonstrates how the 1-year-old organic eatery and juice bar wins with this approach. The sandwich has the toasty crunch, salty crackle, meaty density and juicy succulence of the traditional club sandwich, albeit through a combination of herb-baked tofu, tempeh bacon, thin-sliced avocado, cucumber, lettuce and tomato and three layers of crispy sourdough slathered with vegan mayo and hemp pesto. Like Violette’s interpretation of barbecue, biscuits and gravy and the Philly steak and cheese, its club will have you wondering, Who needs meat? Heidi Kyser

Cocktail of the month

The orangesicle at Squeeze

Squeeze is a small sidewalk juice and smoothie bar on The Linq promenade. It’s a cheerful place where grinning, affable, orange-shirted Squeezers whip up the kind of healthy, fresh-fruit concoctions that are all the rage among the eww-I’m-afraid-of-death set. I’ve got no problem with that! However, I have something to reveal! With a suitably discreet approach and secret handshake, you can induce the Squeezers to spike your drink with alcohol, magically turning your antioxidant elixir of frightened boringness into a waterfall of pants-free party juice! (Okay, it’s not a secret.) My current favorite: The Orangesicle, made with fresh oranges, almond milk and orange vanilla syrup.

Drinkably sweet, but not cloying. Get it with a shot or two of vodka, sidle up to the sidewalk people-watching bar and toast shambling humanity’s dranky dronk health! Andrew Kiraly In the Linq Promenade, 702-731-3311

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against this kind of pork/slaw onslaught, and frankly, it’s thoroughly outclassed to begin with. Forget the bun. Go in forkfirst. Or face-first. The pork is rich, dark and fatty. When the revolution comes, this is the kind of pig you set up a perimeter around to protect at all costs.

Loaded garlic fries seem to be a bit of a misnomer at first. Sure, there’s surprisingly tender steak on this riff on nachos, but it doesn’t seem to fit the bill without minced garlic shotgunned all over the spuds. Until you dig through like a fried-starch miner and find whole cloves of roasted garlic underneath. This is your reward for eating your way through fries, steak and jalapeños. It’s like somebody waited until the end of Christmas Day to bust out your birthday presents.

The Korean sliders make bulgogi into burgers, with miso mayo and a side of kimchi. Maybe not the best representation of bulgogi in the city, but still a quality interpretation that allows you to stay on the lighter side of meaty. The jalapeño poppers skip the deep-fry and focus on the pepper. The dessert menu consists of just one item, pecan pie with bourbon whipped cream. Like you were going to linger over anything else when bourbon whipped cream is on the table anyway.

Galdau has tattoos on each hand, of his parents’ initials. He says it’s to remind him to stay on the straight and narrow. On the Fourth, he had to choose between store-bought organic meat of questionable provenance or stay true to his farm-to-table vision.

“I was like, make money and lie, or tell the truth and lose everything, and I chose the latter,” he said. The truth shall set you free? Maybe. If the truth is in that pork, sign us up.

Visit palazzo.com/clintholmes or call 866.276.5657 for tickets.

Dining out B ottigl i a Cuc ina & Enotec a 2300 Paseo Verde Parkway 702-617-7075 bottiglialv.com

R ao’s 702-731-7267 Caesars Palace caesars.com

Casa Di Amore 2850 E. Tropicana Ave. 702-433-4967 casadiamore.com

Boy meets twirl A passionate pasta fan finds much to love in three renditions of an Italian classic B y G r e g T h i l m o n t

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ou might not think of pasta as a summer dish, but linguine with clams — the white wine version — is perfect for the four-month Vegas summer scorch. This classic dish is not so much a recipe as it is an artful assembly of items: pasta, shellfish, wine and adjuncts such as garlic, pepper flakes and parsley. But a deceptively simple recipe such as this is often the best for a culinary assay, especially when everything is masterfully brought together by a skilled chef.

Countless Italian restaurants in the valley do this dish. Some go for old-school comfort-food goodness, others aim for more high-concept treatments. In this edition of Fork Off, I sampled the linguine with clams at Casa di Amore, a vintage offStrip eatery filled with photos of the Rat Pack and classic casinos; Bottiglia, the

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shiny new establishment in Green Valley Ranch Resort; and, finally, in the heart of the Strip at Rao’s in Caesars Palace.

In sampling linguine con vongole, I had a few ground rules: I skipped appetizers for a clean palate. Also, as a test, I purposely didn’t ask for bread — sopping up the wine sauce is such a quintessential part of the experience, the bread should be a no-brainer. Finally, no cheese was consumed in the research of this story, Parmesan or other! Keeping it real, Italian-style.

Casa di Amore: Decades ago, this venerable restaurant was in the hinterlands of Las Vegas, but it had a Strip-based vibe and clientele to match. It still does, in its own living nostalgia kind of way.

It features live music in the old dinner club manner that is sadly missing in our modern Vegasopolis. My server called me “Love” when I sat down. “Love”!

The dish: When it comes to an abundance of clams, this house has its shells stacked in prodigious order. A well-sized plateau of pasta came substantially supplied with diced clams, with numerous in-shell steamers piled about the plate.

(A petite shellfish fork was set to the side for separating meat from shell — a touch my late Italian nana would have enjoyed.)

Eating it next to a picture of studly Elvis schmoozing luscious Ann-Margret, I went Viva Las Vegas on every last drop of the sauce remaining on my plate when the noodles were gone. I would have liked a little more wine-forward flavor overall, and

a more al dente linguine texture. Plus some additional parsley for garnish. But that’s just me: I like a lot of verdure in my sauce.

The downer: I know Casa di Amore has a mature customer base, and this demographic is used to lightweight, non-crusty bread with little substance inside, let alone holes from actual sourdough fermentation, but we can get much better bread in Vegas these days. Per favore?

Bottiglia: Bottiglia was the next and newest entrant on my list. You’ve perhaps seen it advertised on billboards along the 215. It’s from the creators of Salute at Red Rock Resort, a nicely done addition to the Italian tableau of Summerlin and the west valley. The Bottiglia space itself is bright and airy. It’s quite lovely in an informal manner, mixing the aesthetics of the American West Coast and coastal Italy, and has plenty of al fresco eating space under Henderson’s evening skies.

The dish: My linguine arrived picture-perfect. A not-huge but still sizable plate of semolina ribbons was ringed about its circumference with elegant Manila clams. Of all three entrants in my destination dining, Bottiglia’s plating was the most fragrant, with rich wafts of spectral umami steaming above the plate. (It’s said that the majority of flavor profiles humans perceive actually stem from sense of smell; my plate certainly proved this.) Edibly speaking, the pasta was excellent, and the clam meat was savory if not overly abundant, though I found the broth a bit too salted for my taste.

b o tt i g l i a , r a o ' s : c o u r t e s y ; c a s a d i a m o r e : B r e n t H o l m e s

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The downer: This dish overall was slightly soupy, and there was no bread to be had for soaking. This restaurant apparently hews to a new style of Italian cuisine, where bread is not offered up as part of the service de facto. Be that as it may, linguine con vongole needs some slices — and a heel or three — to fully partake of its remnant liquor.

Rao’s: Finally, it was on to the Big Daddy. Hands down, Rao’s is just fabulous.

It’s a wood-toned, celebrity photo-walled temple of Italian-American cuisine.

C’mon ... it’s in Caesars Palace with a famous foundation in East Harlem, NYC — paisan to the gustatory max! Of course, my dinner was a fantastic experience.

The dish: When I first sat down, a mighty bread basket was set before me.

There were thin-and-wide cheese crisps, plus well-crusted substantial slices of country loaves. To the side was a trio of butters, two of them flavored — one with caramelized onion, the other with sun-dried tomato. When my linguine arrived, a waiter swirled the pasta tableside with chopped clam meat, and added in still-shelled critters of the Manila variety from a separate chafing dish. It was a fancy presentation, indeed. The flavor was more garlicky and peppery (lots of slices and flakes in the broth) than the other contenders. The pasta texture was toothsomely perfect. Overall, the dish was rich-tasting and completely excellent. It still could have used more parsley, though it had the most of the bunch.

The downer: It sounds almost capricious of me to say, but Rao’s broth was too luxurious. I devoured all pasta strands and clam shreds, of course.

But I couldn’t convince myself to sop up all the sauce. It was just too rich and buttery to finish. There was, I confess, bread left in my basket.

The dark-horse winner: Casa di Amore.

Maybe it was the nostalgia. Maybe it was the band playing lounge music next to me (with a drummer that kept a steady eye on a baseball game playing on a nearby bar TV screen). It was surely a clean plate completely sopped of every essence of wine, clam and noodle. Mi piace molto!

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Journeys on Charleston A wide-ranging, multicultural, kaleidoscopic, close-up portrait of that other boulevard at the heart of Las Vegas

By Stacy J. Willis Photography Bill Hughes

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The last house on Charleston Boulevard’s eastern end is a two-story custom Spanish Revival with generous windows and a pool in the backyard. From here, in the desert foothills of Frenchman Mountain, the view is dramatic: By day, the iconic skyline of the Las Vegas Strip draws a sharp sense of place across a bustling valley; by night, the city lights conjure romance and awe. But like the road stretching out below, the views don’t tell the whole story, says Rosario Barba, who lives in the home with her extended family.

“So much happens up here that you’d never know,” says Barba, 29. The house was built in 2008 for an elderly man who passed away before it was completed, and Barba’s dad, a painter and contractor, made an offer. Soon, the entire family moved in — on this day, they’re having a birthday party for a younger relative, and kids splash in the pool beyond the living room’s large glass doors. Barba is wearing workout clothes and a Bluetooth earpiece and is nonplussed when she invites an unannounced stranger in to talk about the end of the road.

“We get a lot of hikers and walkers — some hikers have died, and we get police and helicopters. We also get crazy people — when we first moved in, we had this guy who would walk all the way around our house carrying a briefcase and saying it was his house. Day after day. Finally, his mother came to get him, I think,” she says.

Then there are the couples who come up here to get amorous in their cars. She laughs. “They are louder than they think! They wake us up! Sometimes they get chased off by the police, and once, there was a guy whose wife came up here — see, he was not in the car with his wife.” She rolls her eyes.

More disturbingly, she says, the end of the road serves as a dumping ground — but not just for trash: “People used to come up here a lot and leave their dogs, like when they wanted to get rid of their dogs. It was awful. One time we saw the dog chasing his owners’ car as they drove away. We call animal control, but it’s sad,” she says. “Sometimes people dump injured dogs from dog fighting. One time there were these bags dumped over there (in the desert across the street) and they started to smell so we called the police, and it was dead roosters, from cockfighting.”

She shakes her head and pauses.

While technically the Barbas are the last residents on East Charleston, she says there is at least one more person who lives farther out. “There’s the Mountain Man. He lives in the mountains up here. He comes down early in the morning

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sometimes, and we give him water, and I think he has some friends at Albertsons because I’ll see him walking back up with food. ... I don’t know his name, but he’s been living up there a long time.”

Her mother comes in and offers a glass of water; a drenched, sunburned kid shuffles across the tile floor and adds, “The Mountain Man has three tents in the desert. I’ve seen them.”

“Anyway,” Barba says, “we love it up here. It’s beautiful. We wouldn’t trade it for anything. And it’s very easy to give directions: the last house on Charleston.”

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Charleston Boulevard stretches 22 miles from east to west across the width of the Las Vegas Valley, reaching into the desert at either end. Along the way, it crosses Las Vegas Boulevard, the railroad tracks and three freeways, traverses years of history and visits a wide sample of the valley’s demographics. Much of the east side of Charleston is dominated by Hispanic culture — shop signs in Spanish, dozens of Latin-influenced eateries. But other blocks offer smaller cultural enclaves — here’s the African/Caribbean International Market; there’s the longtime gay bar Flex; here’s the SGI Buddhist Center. While rarely celebrated, the cultural and ethnic diversity of the shops and churches and salons on Charleston speak to a much more complex image than many people have of Las Vegas. On this boulevard — not the famous boulevard — you go for miles without seeing a decadent casino or a glitzy strip club.

To those who grew up in Las Vegas, Charleston may be an old friend, a limb of the family tree, a grandparent who tells stories of heydays and quirks, of tight-knit neighborhoods and popular locals’ destinations. But when you drive it now, its nostalgia is less apparent; it lays now, in many stretches, somewhere in time between the vibrant old days and the could-be-revitalized future. It also literally stretches out between the old and brand new — from its midtown historic and weathered buildings to its still-growing suburban edges, particularly on the west side, where Summerlin’s master-planned community edges ever closer to Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area as the road becomes Highway 159. But in another way, it represents an ideological battle alive in many Western-sprawl cities: There’s a tension on Charleston between what was and what could be; between past and future — the much-discussed, mostly stalled revitalization of the Huntridge Theater on Charleston’s midsection is a symbol of that struggle, and the passionate, sometimes acrimonious debates about its fate are a reminder of how invested many still are in the area’s potential.

But implied in the notion of area revitalization is a dissatisfaction with what is — the past was good, the future could be good, but what about right now? And what does revitalization — gentrification? — say about the people who are here right now, every day manning a small piece of this street, repairing cars, selling quinceañera dresses, practicing law, displaying art, serving pupusas, cutting, buzzing and braiding hair, designing floral arrangements, treating sick patients, walking, driving, riding the bus, crouching in the shade of a 50-year-old sign? West-

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ern sprawl cities are often limited on vertical growth and therefore less dense, and have newer, less architecturally revered built environments than many East Coast cities. But workaday streets like this one are nonetheless a fundamental part of the city’s character. Where Las Vegas Boulevard capitalizes on visitors’ escapist fantasies, Charleston Boulevard cradles thousands of locals going about their everyday business.

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few blocks down the hill from the Barbas, past some suburban blocks, past a strip mall or two, a boy and his grandmother run hand-in-hand through the blazing heat toward the bus stop. The RTC 206 is wheezing up as they arrive, and when the doors open, Roberto, 6, who is carrying a well-kicked soccer ball under his other arm, hops on first. His grandmother slides the fare card and sits with him. They are sweating and laughing, and Roberto, whose name is printed across the back of his yellow jersey, says in Spanish, “How long until we get there?” and his abuela, her wavy salt-and-pepper hair sticking to her neck, pats his leg and says, “Not very long.”

Roberto presses his forehead against the window as the bus chugs on, and this is what he sees: a homeless man lying in the shade of a building, which makes him rubberneck; a yellow Corvette in a strip mall parking lot, which makes him point; and a young woman wearing a pink cowboy hat and dragging a red wagon full of laundry down the sidewalk, which makes him smile.

They hop off of the bus near the Charleston Indoor Swap meet. Inside the strip-mall building, the air-conditioning is heavenly, and they navigate rows and rows of small bays selling all kinds of goods: shoes — every single display shoe is wrapped completely in cling wrap and perched on a wall; jewelry — goldtooth grills in glass cases sell for upwards of $300; posters of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, Jesus and Hello Kitty. In the back, a crowd of people sits in chairs and stands against the wall, waiting to get into the hair salon, Chapi’s. Little boys Roberto’s size run the aisle with fresh haircuts; grown men and women sit and wait their turn. Roberto and his grandmother take a seat with them. Next to the salon is an eatery, Tierra Caliente, where Spanish music is playing overhead and where you can sit on yellow benches and eat tamales de pollo and elote for $9 while a framed picture of “The Last Supper,” $48, stares at you from a bay next door.

It’s a world few would know is here from the outside — the way so much of this street is. The view, often hardscrabble, is both an accurate and incomplete description, which is kind of Charleston’s personality: There is always more to the story.

4069 W. CHARLESTON BLVD.

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pen almost any door on this road and you’ll learn something that will add a layer to your understanding of Las Vegas.

The Tebha family has been running the A-1 Vacuum and Sewing store since 1943. Their shop sits in a bright yellow building on West Charleston that, despite its loud paint job, is easy to

overlook. Inside, more than a hundred sewing machines and vacuum cleaners sit quietly in the front rooms while members of the family work in the back.

“These two industries, vacuuming and sewing, were grouped together in the 1950s,” says Shawn Tebha, who, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, is welcoming and generous with his knowledge.

“My dad was an engineer for Singer in California, and when ( job changes happened), he thought, ‘Well, I might as well open my own store.’”

We walk through the building, which is a maze of oddly placed steps and strangely placed doors — different building permits allowed for varying add-ons over the years, which have grown the building to 7,000 square feet — and Tebha reminisces.

“I grew up in here. As a teenager I learned to fix them, because as a child I sometimes broke them,” he says, laughing.

“Back then there was a lot less traffic on Charleston. Everywhere, actually. You could get from here to Pecos and Sunset in 15 minutes without speeding. Not now.”

When his dad started the business, he says, people relied on word-of-mouth and the Yellow Pages to find their sewing store.

Now the Tebhas have to jockey with the Internet and big retailers like Walmart.

“The sewing market nowadays has become online, or at least people do their research online. But I ask them before they buy

Signs of the street: From top left: The Charleston Indoor Swap Meet; the literal end of the road, on East Charleston; artists Dry Point, left, and Alexander Sky talk to manager Daisy Vega at Esmeralda’s Cafe; Angie Enk does laundry at Wash ’n’ Fold.

online, is it quality? How do they know? Also, many manufacturers buy from the same set of parts. We will work with you, and you get personal service.”

Tebha says sewing is a $10 billion industry now, and business is still decent for A-1.

“When someone comes in here, I ask, ‘Were you just learning to sew, or do you already sew?’ Back in the day they did everything on it — sewed all of their clothes and things. But now some specialize,” he says as he walks me around some 300 sewing machines on display. The oldest, a black 1930s manual Singer, goes for about $300; the fanciest, a new Janome machine that can do 500 different stitches, goes for $15,000.

“Because we’re a family-operated store, we charge on work done and give a warranty on our work,” he says. “We take pride in what we do. Things change, but that does not change.”

That’s a sentiment I find throughout my travels on Charleston: pride in hard work. While drivers-by caught in traffic might routinely ignore small, old storefronts in some stretches, they’d be cheating themselves to write them off entirely. Time and time again, I am reminded of the significance of small businesses not only to economic sustainability, but to creating the rich textures of a community, which seems particularly important in a city so shaped by transience.

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107 E. CHARLESTON BLVD.

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s the sun sets on the first Friday of the month, six or eight police cars line both sides of Charleston between Third and Main, making room for pedestrians who are flocking toward the Arts Factory. Tents are set up in the parking lot, and on blocks extending from this seat of the Arts District, other parking lots are charging $15 for a space. It’s the First Friday Art Walk in “18b” — 18 blocks loosely grouped around this stretch of Charleston near Main. Visual arts and crafts will anchor the festivities, but the party spreads out from the galleries and tents into the streets, with bands, random dancers and performance artists, a bit of alcohol and a lot of socializing.

By day, the area is more subdued but still eclectic, and for those who’ve been here years, the buildings themselves recall memories: What is now the Indoor Garden Organic Super Center was for years an exterminator that displayed a giant image of a cockroach on the exterior; across the street, the Holsum Lofts, now home to Lola’s restaurant and retail stores, was actually the Holsum bread bakery, where locals could smell fresh-baked bread as they approached the underpass it stands above.

“Charleston Boulevard has been and still is one of our main drags,” says Michael Green, associate professor of history at UNLV and a longtime Las Vegas resident. He’s quick to name a dozen or more businesses that have come and gone, from the site on east Charleston where Lowe’s is today that was a popular Montgomery Wards until the 1990s, to the now-closed

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We sea you: The mermaids of Mariscos El Dorado watch over East Charleston Boulevard, as — in a sign of the times — Clark County touts its road-building program.

Showboat Casino and Silver Dollar that drew revelers to that East Charleston area for years.

Perhaps the most talked about historic building on Charleston today is the Huntridge Theater, on the corner at Maryland. Soon after its construction in 1944, the Huntridge became a locals’ staple. It was built on land once owned by investor Leigh Hunt, who was the president of Ohio State University and publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the late 19th century. When he died in 1933, he left the Las Vegas land to his son Henry Leigh Hunt, and the neighborhood and theater were named for them. The Streamline Moderne building designed by S. Charles Lee, which first showed movies and then musical acts, is on the United States National Register of Historical Places. It was also one of the first unsegregated venues in Las Vegas.

Green remembers going to shows at the Huntridge Theater, where, he jokes, Sen. Richard Bryan had “his first fundraiser.”

As a kid, Bryan didn’t have enough pocket change to get into the movie showing at the Huntridge, and may have asked around for a little help, or so the story goes. Most longtime locals have a story to tell about the Huntridge, which makes it both beloved and forlorn as today it stands empty. On a recent sizzling hot weekday, two homeless men with shopping carts are curled into its shade. Attempts to raise money to redevelop the theater are ongoing.

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n Friday night at 7 Mares Mexican Restaurant, karaoke starts early. We’re on a stretch of East Charleston populated

by Mexican, El Salvadorean and all manner of Latin-American restaurants and shops. Across the street is Mariscos El Dorado, which occupies the building formerly home to Fong’s Garden, opened by one of Las Vegas’ prominent early developers, Wing Fong, in 1955 — a destination once so popular it’s where Harry Reid took his new wife on their wedding night. Fong’s Garden was the center of a small Chinatown in the late ’50s, according to Green. Behind Mariscos El Dorado, near where Fremont Street, Eastern Avenue and Charleston collide to create a triangle of land hosting a busy Arco gas station, the weathered Blue Angel statue still stands on her perch atop a sign pole, though the namesake hotel is long gone. Here Charleston is a treasure chest of finds, both historic and new. At 7 Mares — Seven Seas — the vibe is relaxed and happy. The walls are painted bright yellow, blue and green, a swordfish hangs above the booths and a large selection of mariscos fills the menu.

We chitchat with the waitress, although we speak very little Spanish and she speaks only a bit more English. We eat fish tacos and drink cold beer and watch several women sing karaoke, all in Spanish. Then, this: “A special welcome to our English friends tonight,” she says on the mic. “Do you want to sing?” Of course we do, and though all we can manage is English, it doesn’t matter — within minutes, several other patrons will be singing along with us, and soon, comped beers arrive at our table.

The waitress tells us it is often even more crowded, but it’s the beginning of the month and many people have to pay their rent today, so some regulars stayed home.

What many parts of Charleston lay bare are the strong tendons connecting our daily struggles to the simple joys in life, in a city where we so often think in terms of ostentatious wins and losses. I met a woman at an East Charleston laundromat who told me her family came from Venezuela. She moved here because her uncle had a friend who lived here, and he got a job in construction some years ago. Now she and her husband and two children live around the corner from the Wash & Fold, which is next to the tiny Can Cun Hamburgers, Tacos and Tortas stand. They live with other relatives — a woman and two more children — and between them, they hold four jobs, three in retail and one at an auto shop. Does she like it here, in Las Vegas? A smile. “Yes. We are happy to be with family.”

That’s all; there is laundry to be done, there is family to return to, there is no more time for talking to note-takers.

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alking west toward the Charleston Underpass, which was built in 1960, it’s all heat and dust and noise. Frustration is palpable on the road — cars vie to get past one another in two or three lanes and get stopped every few yards at another light, ultimately beating no one, least of all time. Here, at the ground level, narrow sidewalks cause pedestrians to sometimes stand aside for a bicyclist who has chosen to ride the sidewalk instead of dare the traffic, or stand aside for another pedestrian who uses a walker because the two of you do not have room to

pass at the same time, or stand aside for someone on a mobility scooter or pushing a stroller. The road is littered with cups and cans, and a film of hot-asphalt-smelling dust sticks to you as you walk, and rushing cars whoosh hot air into your face.

Up ahead, ambulances and police cruisers are all over the Del Taco in the medical district, just west of I-15, at lunchtime.

There’s been a fight. A homeless man is being handcuffed in the parking lot; his face is bloodied. Two Del Taco employees sit inside filling out police reports. One, a young man, has a scratch on his face and blood on his knuckles.

“He wouldn’t leave the bathroom, and he was drunk or something,” he says. “I told him he had to leave, and he attacked me, and I had to defend myself.” He blots the blood off of his fingers and uniform. “I’m okay, though.”

Customers, some in medical scrubs, some in business attire, some in shorts, go about their business ordering burritos and tacos while the police take the alleged perpetrator away. The employee finishes his report.

Across the street stands the University Medical Center compound, which is a prime reason Charleston grew to be the road it did. The medical center was established in 1931 as the Clark County Indigent Hospital, set up on what was then a dirt road.

For its first few years, it had 20 beds, one doctor and one nurse.

Today, it is not only the state’s only Level 1 Trauma Center and home to a freestanding pediatric emergency center, it is the centerpiece of a district of medical centers and doctors’ offices, which now includes the UNLV School of Medicine.

These medical and legal offices along this stretch of Charleston hide the historic neighborhoods just off of the main artery, neighborhoods you can find on a 1960 map in UNLV’s archives: the Scotch 80s, Hyde Park and Rancho Nevada Estates.

These neighborhoods weren’t randomly placed here, says Andrew Kirk, professor of history and director of UNLV’s Public History Education Program.

“The Scotch 80s and McNeil (subdivisions) are sort of hidden away, (but) they started in the 1940s, and were built through the 1960s. These were the suburbs of Downtown then.” He says that Ashby Street, a block off of Charleston, was originally an impressive, wide street with dirt paths on either side, standing out when it was built because “this was out in the country then.” The existence of Charleston enabled these neighborhoods to evolve.

“They are near the springs. There were more than one (spring). There’s a concentric circle around what we now know as the Springs Preserve that was broader. So really, these neighborhoods started because they were the most sensible places you could build a house.” In fact, says Kirk, “one of the myths people have to overcome about (Las Vegas’ development) is that it ‘makes no sense.’ Early on, the patterns of development were familiar and sensible. There is a good reason they built there.

“Once you’ve got the anchor of Downtown, you’ve got Charleston as a major spoke” leading to the hospital and the springs, he says.

On older maps that show the original Las Vegas townsite in 1905, Charleston isn’t there. Instead, it’s a baseline for the grid, referred to as the Fifth Standard Parallel South, below the townsite’s streets, which go south only to Garces Street. In two

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maps, the line that would be Charleston is mysteriously called “Mt. Diablo.” Charleston got its name from Mount Charleston, which is thought to have been named by a member of the Army Corps of Engineers who, when he explored the territory, named it after Charleston, South Carolina, his hometown.

By the time a 1942 map was printed, the road is called Charleston, and there’s a mark where UMC stands now called “County Hospital.” Other than the railroad tracks and crossover with the “Road to Los Angeles/Highway to Salt Lake City,” little is else noted of the outlying areas.

“But it was a critical street because it’s the road that took you out of town in the 1950s,” Kirk says. “It was a tiny road meandering out to Red Rock across the desert, but it was important.”

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n the end of a longstanding strip plaza at Valley View and Charleston, M&M Soul Food is enjoying a bustling lunch hour. The TV is broadcasting baseball; service is fast and friendly — plates of hot, buttered corncakes hit the table as soon as you sit down. The walls are covered in framed photos of celebrities. Fried okra and black-eyed peas and collard greens are delicious and filling; sweet potato pie seals the deal.

But most of the other spaces in the Panorama Shopping Center are empty, as so many are along Charleston.

“Preservationists like to say that neglect is the best friend of preservation,” Kirk says. “Benign neglect.” That way, original structures can be saved rather than experience the cycle of teardown and rebuilding. But the downside of the neglect is that people start to move farther out, leaving blight.

“Charleston has had periods of significant decline, so people moved out to the suburbs farther and farther. It’s a very

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Western pattern.”

Like many cities, Las Vegas has the core, where some buildings are old enough and neglected benignly enough that they offer some potential to preserve charming architectural styles. On the outskirts, newer suburbs like Summerlin push businesses back inward a little bit. But then there are the miles in the middle, the love of which is often hard-won.

“That’s where it gets tricky,” Kirk says. “In the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s, you have these areas where the architecture was these big, fake colonial houses, and the growth was so fast that they were slapped together with poor materials. We just had massive growth, and a lot of big-box-anchored strip malls. And it’s hard to envision that architecture as evolving and surviving in the ways (1950s and 1960s architecture) did.” So, he says, one must consider that some “rings of the city” may not be worth preserving — “but the land there will still be valuable” — and ultimately the structures on those areas may be demolished and replaced with infill development. “The more thoughtfully things are laid out to begin with, the more chance they have of surviving,” Kirk says.

The biggest conundrum may not be the housing but the strip malls — dozens of them line Charleston, east and west. “Who knows what’s going to happen to them,” Kirk says. “The 1950s versions,” such as the one M&M Soul Food is in on Valley View and Charleston, “may be more adaptable. They’re small-scale, with decent parking but not oceans of parking, and they have small spaces. It’s the big-box-anchored ones that make no sense.

We do need little stores, and small spaces will be in demand.

They’re more usable and adaptable and more appealing, and some are more ‘designed.’

“The real question is what to do with the big boxes in a modern economy, when everyone is shopping for those things on Amazon? I don’t know.”

4241 W. CHARLESTON BLVD.

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Rich variety: All the way out to the last intersection at its west end (far right), the street teems with life, whether it’s Frank Walters at M&M Soul Food Cafe, Steven Riddle of Velvet Underground Comics, a guy negotiating the Charleston underpass, or all the sights and sites in between.

till, so much can happen in the elbow of one of these weathered strip malls on Charleston over the course 30 years or so. A man can leave his successful career in hospitality, discover his love of plants and home decorating, and make a business of it, opening a retail outlet on Charleston. And then, maybe he’ll meet a guy who uses the space next door to house old comic books.

Maybe they’ll chat about collecting comics, and the guy who grew up working in hospitality and later opened a silk plant shop will start to deal in comics and collectibles. Soon enough, he’ll open his own comic book and collectibles shop next door to his plant shop, and create one of the city’s best-loved comic book stores. All in a tiny corner of an oft-ignored strip mall on Charleston.

“Comic books are for adults,” says Steven Riddle, owner of Velvet Underground Comics. He’s tall, gray-haired and trim-mustached, with a slew of Old Vegas stories he’s willing to share. But today, the conversation is about his busy shop. “It’s very serious business. People come back because there is a reputation, and you earn that reputation with integrity and honesty.”

Riddle kindly shows me around the store — aisles so tight you can barely squeeze through, and silk plants and decorative tree branches tucked in and above the shelves. The books are in immaculate condition. The place is crowded on a weekday afternoon, something you wouldn’t expect when you spot it from the road, tucked back in the corner of this Hyde Park Shopping Center behind a motorcycle shop and an upholstery store. Classic pop and rock play on the radio, and among the books are also collectible statues: Wonder Woman, Superman. Behind the counter there are rows of clean, handwritten pullboxes for customers who pre-order a certain comic book. Riddle’s financial ledger is hand-written — meticulously — as well.

“This is my neighborhood. I grew up here. I went to Clark High School. I love it here,” he says. “West Charleston is the original western-reaching street, you can take it all the way to Red Rock. Thirty years ago, if you were on West Charleston, you were the dude, you were in a good place. And I still think you are.”

I have come to think that despite its rough-and-tumble stretches and its pockets of blight, Riddle could be right about this. Or maybe it’s because of those patches, combined with the more vibrant areas, along with the shout-outs to historic Vegas, and the longtime businesses such as Annie’s Hubcaps, The Omelet House, Kessler & Sons Music, and the newer businesses like Silver Sage Wellness marijuana dispensary or Krayvings Feel Good Food, that Charleston is a such an enchanting trail.

5201 W. CHARLESTON BLVD.

O

n a late Friday night, Flex Cocktail Lounge is packed, there’s a drag queen on the stage, and two male go-go dancers performing on platforms. Flex has been a gay bar since the 1990s, and long before that it was the Hyde Park Lounge, reflecting the neighborhood around it, which was built in the 1940s and 1950s. Like many of the businesses on this western-central stretch of Charleston, it’s been remodeled several times.

Change characterizes a lot here. A few blocks west, there’s a plaza where the once popular Red Rock 11 Theater used to be.

Today it’s a shopping center with a variety of retail outlets, but in the 1970s, it was one 500-seat theater, and by the ’80s, it was expanded to 11 theaters. As newer theaters were built in outlying areas, Red Rock 11 was closed.

The Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services facility at 6161 W. Charleston was built in 1969 to provide both inpatient and outpatient care. Next door, the 80-acre College of Southern Nevada

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opened in 1988, the third of three campuses of the Clark County Community College. Such developments served to push still more residential and business construction westward on Charleston.

But no single development affected West Charleston more in the last three decades than Summerlin.

In 1952, Howard Hughes purchased 25,000 acres of desert land adjacent to Red Rock Canyon. It sat vacant for decades, until plans were announced in the late 1980s for Summerlin, a master-planned community named for Hughes’ paternal grandmother, Jean Amelia Summerlin. By the mid-’90s, the western end of Charleston had become a major thoroughfare to thousands of new upper- and middle-class suburban homes. By the mid-2000s, the entire west end of Charleston had become a fundamental part of the massive master-planned community and its many “villages,” which drew more strip malls anchored by grocery and big-box stores. The traffic and crowds grew still more with the 2006 addition of the $930 million Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa — complete with palm trees swaying atop its 20-floor tower — and the 2014 shopping venue Downtown Summerlin. On this block at 11011 W. Charleston, a bit of Las Vegas’ tourism image returns: plentiful gaming, show theaters, fine dining, boutique shopping and a luxurious pool. Whether it’s tourists or locals enjoying a staycation, Red Rock Casino says modern destination Las Vegas. But much of the rest of this area, not dominated by gaming, says something more like comfortable, upper-middle-class Western suburbia.

8855 W. CHARLESTON BLVD.

I

A

t’s lunchtime on a Thursday. The intersection of Charleston and Rampart is jammed with cars. All corners offer massive, busy strip malls, most dominated by chain stores and chain restaurants: the standard concrete horse of P.F. Chang’s fronts the northwest center housing Ann Taylor and Williams-Sonoma shops; Boca Park shopping center spreads out in layers of retail behind a Target on the northeast corner; Claim Jumper restaurant dominates the southwest. Here, in the southeast center, set behind a stretch of grass-and-tree landscaping and a large, crowded parking lot, is Whole Foods Market, next to a Barnes & Noble and a Pier 1 Imports.

A few people eat salads at the tables outside the grocery store under the shade of the patio; one is typing on his laptop. A uniformed security guard watches the parking lot. Inside the enormous space, rows are busy with slow-roaming shoppers, a good many wearing stylish gym outfits, pushing carts first through displays of bright, organic produce, then on to the butcher shop, where signs explain, “No cages, no crates, no crowding” and “No added hormones, no antibiotics, ever, no wondering.” In the middle of the store, rows of jarred supplements, vitamins, herbs and tinctures are complemented by a bookstand with titles such as Conscious Capitalism and Liberation Soup. A rack of “Super Soft Organic Boxer Briefs: No Sweatshops / No Toxic Pesticides / Fair-Trade Certified Cotton / No Child Labor / Non-GMO Cotton” sell for $28.99 per two-pack.

Upon leaving, I’m approached by two small boys, maybe 7 or 8 years old, in the parking lot: “Excuse me ma’am,” says one.

“We don’t mean to bother you, but we’re trying to get money for our football team.” He’s holding a clipboard and I ask him if it’s

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his school team or a league of some sort.

“Not school,” he says. “Twenty dollars is good, but if you don’t have that, anything will help. Have you ever seen a $2 bill?”

I’m about tell him that yes, I have seen a $2 bill, when the security guard claps his hands loudly four times, striding our way across the pavement, and the boys scurry off.

“I’ve told them time and time again not to do that here,” he says. “It’s not a real team. Their dad is around here somewhere in a four-door Nissan.” He stalks off through the sedans and SUVs, looking, but they’re nowhere to be seen. I feel sheepish, as I was going to give them a few bucks — and as I load my bag of Naked Beet Chips and So Delicious Coconut Milk into the car, I consider the different concerns of people on this boulevard.

I think of Roberto and his grandmother laughing and running to catch the bus on their way to get haircuts; I think of the nervous, well-groomed couple and their three small children I met on the bus who were all heading to the welfare office; I think of doctors and patients in UMC’s full emergency room; I think of the shoppers showing their social conscience by buying Organic Boxer Briefs not made with child labor or toxic pesticides.

Where 15 miles east I struggled with language skills, here I grapple momentarily with the way the distribution of wealth alters our immediate concerns and reframes our sense of urgency and responsibility. What’s most remarkable is that all of these efforts to survive and thrive are happening on the same street, at virtually the same time — a street once noted as nothing more than a parallel on the map, a dirt road to a hospital, a trail to the valley’s foothills.

I drive onto Charleston, heading west. ****

At the 215, Charleston briefly spreads to 10 lanes and a median before trickling through the westernmost edge of Summerlin toward Red Rock Conservation Area, where the road becomes known as Highway 159, or the road to Blue Diamond. On this edge of town, the view from Charleston is breathtaking: Red Rock Canyon’s dramatic rise and bright red iron oxide stripes remind us, after a long traffic-filled trip across town, that we are still just a blip in the multimillion-year timeframe of this valley, a blink in the cosmic scheme of things.

The westernmost street sign that identifies the road as Charleston, rather than Highway 159 or Blue Diamond Road, is at Sky Vista Drive, the latest, but not the last, of Summerlin’s advancing suburban streets. The desert beyond Sky Vista is already graded for more development. The homes already here are desert browns and beiges, sizable, upgraded, some behind gated entryways.

The streetlights and the landscaped median ends at Sky Vista, and Charleston turns into the two-lane highway, a “Designated Scenic Byway” that will pass through Red Rock Conservation Area, past Spring Mountain Ranch State Park and Blue Diamond, and eventually end at State Route 160.

When you turn around from this point and look back, eastward, you realize that you have traversed worlds, skipped through decades, met vastly different people, but barely scratched the surface of Charleston’s offerings. With this street, there is always more to the story.

™ & © 2016 The Jim Henson Company. All rights reserved.

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With rural health care in crisis in Nevada and beyond, providers are searching for a cure

by H E I D I K Y S E R

Jeff Martin’s eyes sparkle as he rattles off the exhibits at the Tonopah Historic Mining Park, where he works. He loves the park, he says, and the town that he and his wife moved to from Southern California four years ago, when she landed a job at the nearby Crescent Dunes solar plant. ¶ “I’ll never go anyplace else,” he says. ¶ There’s just one problem with Tonopah, located a couple clicks southwest of Nevada’s center. “Our biggest issue right now is, our hospital closed down at the end of last year,” Martin says. Is there any clinic or mobile medic for urgent care? “There’s nothing here. Nothing. The only thing Tonopah has for medical services are the life flights, and they’ve been a great help to the whole community.”

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They’ve been a great help to Martin in particular. He’s taken two emergency airplane trips to Reno for painful ruptures of his diverticulitis.

It’s easy to see why this situation is not ideal. The only thing more burdensome than the 100-mile drive that Tonopah residents have to make for regular checkups in Hawthorne, Nevada, is the cost of flying twice that distance, to Las Vegas or Reno, for an acute episode. The short trip with Life Guard International, which stayed on after the hospital shut down to provide medical transportation from Tonopah, can cost as much as $30,000 and may not be covered by a patient’s insurance.

Tonopah residents aren’t alone in lacking access to medical services. Research firm Ivantage Health Analytics reported this year that 76 rural hospitals have closed since 2010 and another 673 are vulnerable to closure. That includes seven in Nevada.

And they need these services — at least as much as city dwellers, if not more. Rural residents face unique obstacles to good health, such as higher rates of fatal car crashes, poverty, and teens abusing alcohol and tobacco, according to the National Rural Health Association. A 2014 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the life expectancy of rural residents was almost three years shorter than that of metropolitan residents — and that the gap is growing.

Aging populations in rural areas aggravate the situation. According to U.S. census data, 29 percent of residents in Nye County, of

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Urgent cares: Above, the Nye Regional Medical Center; opposite page, nurse practitioner Diane McGinnis hopes to launch a mobile clinic to serve rural areas.

which Tonopah is the seat, are age 65 or older. Treating chronic diseases in these populations, the Centers for Disease Control says, soaks up two-thirds of the country’s health care budget.

The Nye County Regional Medical Center’s closure a year ago prompted Rep. Cresent Hardy to co-sponsor legislation dubbed the Rural HEALTH Act. The bill, which has gone through the commerce and agriculture committees and is currently in the commodity exchanges subcommittee, calls for Health and Human Services to resume its annual study of state rural health organizations, suspended since 2003. It would also reauthorize a grant program providing $15 million for five years, including a carve-out for facility construction and upgrades.

“It’s a small amount,” Hardy says, “but you have to have the study before you start throwing money at things.”

Although professionals in the field welcome the study, they have a different view on the funding. From specialty centers in Las Vegas that have had to cut remote programs, to nonprofit clinics struggling to

cover costs with scant office visits, they say a little cash tossed their way would help improve access to care.

“Financing is still a big issue,” says Gerald Ackerman, head of Nevada’s State Office of Rural Health, based in the University of Nevada School of Medicine (now the UNR School of Medicine). “When you look at costs for health care, someone always has to pay, whether it’s you or your insurance company or the county, under indigent care. If it wasn’t for the tax base in certain communities, some health clinics wouldn’t make it.”

The Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) didn’t make matters worse, insiders say, but it didn’t help much either, since reimbursements for small providers are still too low to cover their costs. To help fill the gap, Ackerman’s office uses a federal grant for rural hospitals to fund the Nevada Flex Program, which offers cost-based reimbursements to providers that meet cer-

tain requirements. But that’s just one function of the multi-faceted program that has received only $3.3 million since 1999.

“Hospitals have been good at getting their rates adjusted up,” says Barbara Atkinson, founding dean of the UNLV School of Medicine. “Physicians haven’t done so well. And community providers don’t have any reimbursement, so we need to work on that in the next legislative session.”

The providers themselves aren’t holding their breath for more money or policy reform. Instead, they’re looking for creative ways to stretch every dollar to its max.

Three developments — mobile medicine, telemedicine and specialty teleconferences called ECHO clinics — have shown promise, and more innovation may be on the way.

A TOUGH SELL Around 100

miles northwest of

Tonopah, in Gabbs, Nevada, an apron-clad Ken House is loitering outside the senior center puffing on a cigar. He and his wife, Kathleen House, have just finished making biscuits and gravy for the breakfast that they serve at the center every other Friday.

House, who moved to the town of 250 from California’s Bay Area when he retired six years ago, is on its advisory board and

volunteers at both the library and fire department. He also used to drive the local ambulance, but gave up his first-responder certification a few years back.

“There were problems getting the paperwork from the state in a timely manner,” he says. “And there was a lot involved for a volunteer thing. It was, like, 80 hours, and then it’s good for two years. A year was already up before I completed all my paperwork and certification, and we do have two EMTs here and a few first responders, so we had enough at the time.”

House has just listed all the healthcare professionals in Gabbs. There’s no medical clinic there; it shut down several years ago.

House says he and his wife go to a clinic that Reno-based Renown Health operates in Fallon, nearly 80 miles away. Like Jeff Martin in Tonopah, they rely on flights for emergencies.

“It could be better,” House says. “If we did have a clinic here, that would be the best-case scenario. It’s a very small community, though, so it’s hard to justify.”

Slow business, and the resulting low revenue, is not the only deterrent to clinics in towns like Gabbs. Another big one: Few doctors want to work in rural areas, and almost no one wants to work in socalled “frontier towns,” the industry term for places 60 miles or farther from the nearest hospital.

“Some people just can’t handle not having a grocery store, pharmacy, dentist, vet,” says Diane McGinnis, a doctor of nursing practice with Searchlight Healthcare. “And you may be able to find a provider who’s willing to do it, but then their spouse can’t work in the same town.”

That was the case for McGinnis, who spent nearly four years in Beatty, a frontier town of around 1,000 residents, while her husband and three children remained in Las Vegas. From December 2011 to October 2015, she would make the 115-mile commute to Beatty on Sunday evenings, returning on Fridays to spend the weekend with her family.

“I have a terrific husband,” she says.

She also has a commitment to rural healthcare. Although McGinnis was only in Beatty five days out of the week, she was very involved in the community — volunteering for the fire department, serving on the museum board and leading a Boy Scouts troop.

“I enjoy doing personal medicine,” she says. “I like knowing about the whole patient, what they’re doing, their family. I think I can give better medical care if I know that their mom just died or their child is ill. You see your patients after hours. You live with them.”

McGinnis maintains her community ties to Beatty, hinting at her larger goal: to operate a full-fledged mobile clinic. Right now, in addition to manning Searchlight Health’s Henderson office during regular business hours, she operates McGinnis Mica Medical on the side. That’s her nurse practitioner house-call business, or, as she describes it, “clinic without walls.” She’ll see patients anywhere they want: home, the library, a park — she even had one appointment at Walmart. Instead of the traditional black bag, McGinnis’ SUV carries a couple large plastic tubs stocked with a blood pressure cuff, otoscope, stethoscope, etcetera.

“I’m qualified to give immunizations, but they have to be kept at a specific temperature, and you have to have Internet capability for the data logger,” she says. “If I had an RV, I could set that up.”

United Health Care currently operates such an RV. Its 45-foot-long Medicine on the Move truck goes to churches, community centers and homeless shelters to provide primary care to patients who typically don’t seek it because of barriers such as child-care and transportation. The truck goes to rural Nevada towns such as Mesquite and Yerington, but no frontier towns.

That’s where McGinnis comes in. Just as she sat down to talk with Desert Companion, she answered a call from someone needing a urine sample to be taken from a patient in Tonopah. She told the caller that, in addition to the fee for her service, she’d have to be reimbursed for the six- to seven-hour round-trip drive, another $240.

“You can’t see enough patients in one day to sustain a clinic because of the driving time,” she says. “You only see the patients that the insurance companies (you’re contracted with) pay you for. And I only get paid 85 percent of what a physician would by certain insurances, even though I offer the same services.”

Through Mica Medical, McGinnis can help patients who wouldn’t otherwise get care, but she acknowledges it won’t solve the rural healthcare problem. For that, many are looking to telemedicine.

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BEAM ME OUT, SCOTTY Scattered

around

Gabriel Léger’s

desk at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health are signs of a busy mind: a stack of Neurology magazines, an apple (still uneaten at 3:30 p.m.), a Southwest Airlines ticket jacket. Hovering above this clutter are two large computer monitors. On the right, live video of three women, Mary Goicoechea and her niece and daughter, sitting in padded armchairs in a small office at Elko’s Morningstar Health Center. On the left-hand screen are the data-crammed windows of a complicated medical app that allows Léger to see Haas’ medical chart, pull up brain scans and test results, and log notes. Goicoechea, a resident of a town with no neurologists, is in an appointment with an Alzheimer’s specialist 425 miles away.

After chatting with the two younger women about how Goicoechea has been doing, Léger turns his attention to the patient.

“Mary, I see your head is shaking a little bit,” he says. She seems surprised.

The doctor asks Goicoechea to take off her glasses, and, using a menu that looks like a joystick, zooms the camera, which is atop the computer monitor several feet from his patient, in for a close-up. The resolution is so high that you can almost see the blood vessels in her eyes.

“Without moving your head, look all the way down,” he tells her.

Though she’s wearing headphones, Goicoechea seems to have a little trouble hearing Léger. The camera’s panning and zooming functions also give the doctor a little trouble. Still, he’s able to do as thorough an exam as he would in his Las Vegas office. And Goicoechea’s family is able to get help with her disease from a highly qualified behavioral neurologist.

“The first time, it was weird. I’d never done anything like that,” says Veronica Eldridge, Goicoechea’s daughter, who’d been driving her mother three hours to Salt Lake City before hearing about the Ruvo Center’s telemedicine program from a friend a year ago. “I was like, maybe this isn’t going to work. But he (Léger) is so good at his job.

I definitely think it’s really good now.”

Nevada is progressive in telemedicine relative to other U.S. states, and champions of it will give you many reasons why the state is an

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ideal test case. For starters, the distance between Nevada towns is greater than in most other states, so people can’t just drive 15 minutes to the next burg and find a doctor. Specialists are even farther away. Nevada is short on doctors in general — current numbers are 200 for every 100,000 people, 48th in the country — and specialists in particular. If folks are unlikely to drive an hour for a general checkup, then they’re even less likely to drive three hours for a specialized consultation.

(And if the state can’t convince recent medical school graduates to work in its cities, then it’s even less likely to convince them to work in small towns.) There is also little home care in rural areas to follow up and make sure patients are taking their meds, going to physical therapy and so on.

Telemedicine programs like the Ruvo Center’s are an ideal solution to these problems. So, why aren’t there more of them?

“Money is part of it, like it always is,” says Charles Bernick, associate medical director at the Ruvo Center. “Most of our patients are Medicare patients. You can bill Medicare, but the amount you get back doesn’t cover the time you spend. … To be honest, unless you’re a state entity and get some funding, or you’re a hospital and you want patients to come to you for surgery, it’s hard to make money. It has to be a (nonprofit) organization, like ours, that can absorb the cost.”

Bernick says a brewing partnership with Renown Health, which recently applied for a grant to establish several telemedicine sites, would allow the Ruvo Center to expand its services beyond Elko. He’d like to see other players that are currently working separately band together to share their strengths and costs.

Gerald Ackerman, of the State Office of Rural Health, says another challenge, besides money, is staff. Someone has to facilitate a telemedicine appointment on the patient’s end, and practitioners staffing small clinics may not have time.

Bernick, who’s been doing telemedicine for some 20 years, gets around this obstacle by hiring staff like Tami Charters, the medical assistant who facili-

tates appointments with Ruvo Center patients in Elko. Although she has training in office medical management and as a nurse’s assistant, Charters is not a physician or advanced practitioner. She is, as she says, “the chief cook and bottle-washer” — running the office, scheduling appointments, checking patients in, administering tests, taking their vitals and tracking down prescriptions.

The UNLV School of Medicine’s Barbara Atkinson believes more training programs for people like Charters would help telemedicine grow. Her school is cooperating with CSN to certify community health workers, who could fill this role. Atkinson says she’s also encouraged by a bill that passed in the 2015 Nevada legislative session, allowing physicians to bill telemedicine at the same rate as office visits, and the facility hosting the patient to bill for the visit as well.

As for the physicians themselves, the UNLV School of Medicine, expected to accept its first class next year, is incorporating a robust telemedicine program into its curriculum and clinical practice. Vice Dean Tracey Green is visiting schools in Alabama, Mississippi and Utah to see examples of successful programs as she develops UNLV’s.

“This will really help people in rural areas stay close to home,” Atkinson says.

BUT DAVIS’ MOST RADICAL IDEA MAY BE FOR GROUP APPOINTMENTS. IN THIS MODEL, A PHYSICIAN SEES EIGHT TO 10 PATIENTS AT A TIME. THE GROUP GETS AN HOUR AND 15 MINUTES OF CARE INSTEAD OF A MERE 10 MINUTES EACH.

AND THEY TELL TWO FRIENDS …

When Sanjeev Arora,

a liver disease specialist in Albuquerque, tried us-

ing telemedicine to help him treat New Mexico’s thousands of rural patients with hepatitis C, he was unimpressed. He could still only see one patient at a time, whether in person or on a computer. Thinking about the available technology, he had another idea: What if he shared his basic knowledge of hep c with rural primary care providers? Then, they could each see dozens of people and get the treatment ball rolling.

The effect would be multiplied exponentially. After trying out his idea for a while, Arora found that the rural providers’ patient outcomes were just as good as his.

That led to the birth of Project ECHO at the UNM School of Medicine in 2003. The basic model — teleconferences in which medical specialists study rural primary care providers’ cases and empower them to provide certain specialty services — has not changed, although the technology has evolved and licensees have adapted it to their needs, creating new uses. Today, there are 89 Project ECHO replications in 30 U.S. states and 14 other countries. The Department of Defense uses it; so does the Veterans Administration. The UNR School of Medicine was one of the first 10 adopters, starting its ECHO program in 2012.

“Nevada is a strong U.S. hub,” Erika Harding, Project ECHO’s director of replication initiatives, says. “And they grew fast. Evan Klass (a former endocrinologist at UNR, who’s still director of the program) and his team launched seven ECHOs in 18 months, which was a record then. They took on diseases and conditions that others didn’t.”

Chris Marchand, the UNR program’s coordinator, says that, as with telemedicine, Nevada’s geography and demographics make it an ideal laboratory for Project ECHO. “Let’s say a patient has diabetes,” he says. “His primary care provider doesn’t do diabetes management, so he refers the patient to an endocrinologist in Reno. It could take that patient six to 12 months to go see the endocrinologist, and often, the questions asked during the initial referral are questions that could have been asked during an ECHO clinic, saving the patient the travel time, lost wages, child care costs and other inconveniences.”

UNR’s Project ECHO Nevada offers primary care providers training in sports medicine and office orthopedics, public health, gastrointestinal medicine, pain management, diabetes and endocrinology, geriatrics, and behavioral health in primary care.

One pillar of the model is patient confidentiality. “Not using protected health information allows ECHO to do what it does,” Marchand says. “Discussion of the primary care providers’ cases is important, so you have to make sure patient information is protected.”

Another pillar is that it’s free, Harding says. “Sanjeev (Arora) has always pushed back against the view of medicine as being fee-for-service. We believe that by positioning ECHO for rapid ramp-up, we can demonstrate its value and its return on investment to the healthcare education system, so we’ll be able to convince government — not just ours, but those of the countries where it operates around the world — of the value and get them to pay for it, whether it’s small clinics in rural Nevada or the super-hub of Ireland that includes 20 different diseases.”

Marchand says his biggest hurdle is the voluntary nature of the program.

“It’s difficult to expand and grow when everybody is short-staffed and overloaded with work,” he says. “Over the last few years, we’ve been slowly growing what we do, and becoming more involved with other health organizations around the state.

But there’s a lot more we want to do.”

GROUP CHAT There’s

a lot more that others

want to do, too. Take Walter Davis, CEO of Nevada Health Centers, a nonprofit that gets federal funding to operate clinics in under-served communities. Davis has lots of ideas, starting with the simple task of educating rural communities to embrace advanced practitioners such as McGinnis, who can give the same level of care as traditional MDs but cost less, meaning reimbursements for their services go further.

Unlike most providers, Davis believes there’s enough funding available to expand healthcare to the rural communities that need it. The problem, he says, is adherence to an outdated budget model. Instead of health plans, hospitals and medical groups fighting over the same dollars, he says, the state should

foster population health management.

“We need to build budgets around communities instead of individual sites,” he says. “Patients need access to both hospitals and primary care. Hospitals want to fill beds, but if we’re doing healthcare right, we would need fewer beds. We have to spend more time on prevention than on feeding a large system that’s challenged by insurance plans and infrastructure investments to keep the business running.”

In small ways, Nevada Health Centers is already implementing this approach. The company runs a discharge clinic at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center in Carson City, giving the hospital access to its schedule to book patients for follow-up care in order to reduce readmission rates. A visiting nurse program in Lockwood paired a nurse with a sheriff, who had been frequently finding people in need of medical assistance during welfare calls.

But Davis’ most radical idea may be for group appointments. In this model, a physician and facilitator with a clinical background see eight to 10 patients at a time.

Having all signed confidentiality waivers, they take turns talking with the physician, stepping out for treatment as needed. The entire group gets an hour and 15 minutes of care instead of 10 minutes per person.

“I learned about this maybe 10 years ago,” Davis says. “I was taken aback by the patients’ lack of fear to talk about what’s going on with them. One 75-year-old brought up his libido issues. At the end of the session, I asked them why they felt so comfortable, and they said, ‘We all face the same issues, and we’re learning.’”

Other, less radical ideas are also chipping away at the problem. Ackerman’s office is working to establish rural residency programs around the state; state grants offset student loans for medical and nursing students who commit to working in out-of-theway areas; and the federal government regularly identifies ZIP codes where qualified operators like Nevada Health Centers can compete to open new clinics when funding becomes available. Ackerman says a final, important piece of the puzzle is pipeline programs to prepare high school kids — particularly those from rural towns — to go into medical professions.

“I definitely hope we don’t give up on rural clinics,” McGinnis says. “It breaks my heart to see these people abandoned.”

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with employers’ other health-related benefits, to serve more than 30 million members in every major region of the world.

More than a traditional second opinion, Best Doctors delivers a comprehensive evaluation of a patient’s medical condition – providing value to both patients and treating physicians. By utilizing Best Doctors, members have access to the brightest minds in medicine to ensure the right diagnosis and treatment plan.

Best Doctors’ team of researchers conducts a biennial poll using the methodology that mimics the informal peer-to-peer process doctors themselves use to identify the right specialists for their patients. Using a polling method and balloting software

maintained by Best Doctors, Inc. For more information, visit bestdoctors.com or contact Best Doctors by telephone at 800-675-1199 or by email at research@bestdoctors.com. Please note that lists of doctors are not available on the Best Doctors website.

Best Doctors, Inc., has used its best efforts in assembling material for this list, but does not warrant that the information contained herein is complete or accurate, and does not

that Gallup® has audited and certified, they gather the insight and experience of tens of thousands of leading specialists all over the country, while confirming their credentials and specific areas of expertise.

The result is the Best Doctors in America® List, which includes the nation’s most respected specialists and outstanding primary care physicians. These are the doctors whom other doctors recognize as the best in their fields. They cannot pay a fee and are not paid to be listed and cannot nominate or vote for themselves. It is a list which is truly unbiased and respected by the medical profession and patients alike as the source of top-quality medical information.

assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person or other party for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Copyright 2016, Best Doctors, Inc. Used under license, all rights reserved. This list, or any parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without written permission from Best Doctors, Inc. No commercial use of the

information in this list may be made without the permission of Best Doctors, Inc. No fees may be charged, directly or indirectly, for the use of the information in this list without permission.

BEST DOCTORS, THE BEST DOCTORS IN AMERICA, and the Star-in-Cross Logo are trademarks of Best Doctors, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries, and are used under license.

Addiction Medicine

Melvin I. Pohl

Las Vegas Recovery Center 3371 N. Buffalo Drive 702-515-1373

Anesthesiology

Mark Stuart Scheller

Cardiovascular Anesthesia Consultants 2850 S. Mojave Road #A 702-388-8062

John S. Smith

Cardiovascular Anesthesia Consultants

Erik J. Sirulnick

HealthCare Partners Medical Group Cardiology 3131 La Canada St. #200 702-933-9400

Leo Spaccavento

Advanced Heart Care Associates 4275 Burnham Ave. #220 702-796-4278

Colon and Rectal Surgery

Ovunc Bardakcioglu

2850 S. Mojave Road #A 702-388-8062

University of Nevada School of Medicine Department of Surgery

Cardiovascular Disease

1707 W. Charleston Blvd. #160 702-671-5150

John Bedotto

HealthCare Partners Medical Group - Cardiology

Joseph P. Thornton

Frank J. Nemec

Gastroenterology Associates 3820 S. Hualapai Way #200 702-796-0231

Infectious Disease

3006 S. Maryland Parkway #780 702-737-0740

Medical Oncology and Hematology

Brian J. Lipman

Heather J. Allen

10001 S. Eastern Ave. #307 Henderson 702-776-8300

3730 S. Eastern Ave. 702-952-3400

Gary R. Skankey

Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada

Infectious Disease Consultants

Infectious Diseases of Southern Nevada

Infectious Disease Consultants

Tillmann Cyrus

1707 W. Charleston Blvd. #160 702-671-5150

Internal Medicine

Dermatology

Dignity Health Medical Group Nevada

Miriam S. Bettencourt

Advanced Dermatology and Cosmetic Surgery

Pediatrics Center Las Vegas Division of Pediatric Genetics

Jerome Frank Hruska

9280 W. Sunset Road #320 702-534-5464

Department of Cardiology 6900 N. Pecos Road #3D152 North Las Vegas 702-791-9000

Colleen Morris

Sunrise Hospital Medical Office Bldg #315 3006 S. Maryland Parkway 702-671-2229

University of Nevada School of Medicine Department of Surgery

VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System

Medical Genetics

3006 S. Maryland Parkway #780 702-737-0740

Ethan Milton Cruvant

8205 W. Warm Springs Road #210 702-676-5801

Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada

Fadi Braiteh

3730 S. Eastern Ave. 702-952-3400

Russell Gollard

Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 2460 W. Horizon Ridge Parkway Henderson 702-822-2000

Edwin Charles Kingsley

Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada

Carlos Fonte

1701 N. Green Valley Parkway #7B Henderson 702-257-7546

Paul T. Emery

3201 S. Maryland Parkway #502 702-733-8600

Endocrinology and Metabolism

8205 W. Warm Springs Road #210 702-616-5801

Nicholas J. Vogelzang

Cres P. Miranda

Freddie G. Toffel

Mark Charles Handelman

2700 E. Sunset Road #D-34 702-736-2021

2585 Box Canyon Drive #110 702-538-7773

3730 S. Eastern Ave. 702-952-3400

3150 N. Tenaya Way #320 702-227-3422

Gastroenterology

Sarah C. Heiner

David Lloyd Navratil

Joseph Mansour Fayad

70 E. Horizon Ridge Parkway #100 Henderson 702-778-8828

Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists

Nevada Heart & Vascular Center

HealthCare Partners Medical Group - Cardiolgy 2865 Siena Heights Drive #331 Henderson 702-731-8224

Charles Allen Rhodes Nevada Heart & Vascular Center

VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System Department of Gastroenterology 6900 N. Pecos Road North Las Vegas 702-791-9162

Donald Lawrence Kwok

Dignity Health Medical Group Nevada

Bradley J. Thompson 3650 S. Eastern Ave. #300 702-796-8036

Jerry Routh

7395 S. Pecos Road #102 702-737-8657

3820 S. Hualapai Way #200 702-796-0231

Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada

John P. Havill

Candice Tung

Gastroenterology Associates

Marvin Jay Bernstein

7395 S. Pecos Road #102 702-737-8657

3820 S. Hualapai Way #200 702-796-0231

Gregory Kwok

Nephrology

500 S. Rancho Drive #12 702-877-1887

Gastroenterology Associates

Summerlin Medical Office Bldg. 3 #250 10105 Banburry Cross Drive 702-360-7600

Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada

Jerrold Schwartz

4275 S. Burnham Ave. #100 702-240-6482

HealthCare Partners Cardiology

3730 S. Eastern Ave. 702-952-3400

Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 100 N. Green Valley Parkway #310 Henderson 702-877-1887

Robert W. Merrell

Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 100 N. Green Valley Parkway #310 Henderson 702-877-1887

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BEST DOCTORS Neville Pokroy

Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada

Jocelyn Ivie

Women’s Health Associates of Southern Nevada

653 N. Town Center Drive, Bldg. 2 #70 702-877-1887

2821 W. Horizon Ridge Parkway #130 Henderson 702-862-8862

Zvi Sela

Florence N. Jameson

Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada 653 N. Town Center Drive, Bldg. 2 #70 702-877-1887

Neurological Surgery

John A. Anson

The Spine and Brain Institute 8530 W. Sunset Road #250 702-851-0792

Derek A. Duke

The Spine and Brain Institute

General Surgery Associates

Pediatric Cardiology

700 Shadow Lane #370 702-382-8222

Ruben J. Acherman

John J. Fildes

Women’s Health Associates of Southern Nevada

Abraham Rothman

1707 W. Charleston Blvd. #160 702-671-5150

1934 E. Sahara Ave. 702-369-5758

3006 S. Maryland Parkway #690 702-732-1290

Arthur A. Fusco

Kirsten B. Rojas

Meadows Women’s Center

Pediatric Medical Genetics

700 Shadow Lane #370 702-382-8222

9120 W. Post Road #200 702-870-2229

Colleen Morris

John Ham

Steven Kramer

J. Michael Scarff

James S. Forage

1934 E. Sahara Ave. 702-369-5758

Bruce S. Shapiro

The Fertility Center of Las Vegas

Children’s Heart Center

Children’s Heart Center

Pediatrics Center Las Vegas Division of Pediatric Genetics Sunrise Hospital Medical Office Bldg. #315 3006 S. Maryland Parkway 702-671-2229

Pediatrics/General

8851 W. Sahara Ave. #100 702-254-1777

Renu S. Jain

Neurology

Jeffrey Lee Cummings

Orthopaedic Surgery

1524 Pinto Lane, 3rd Floor 702-944-2828

Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health

888 W. Bonneville Ave. 702-483-6000

Luis L. Diaz

Terence G. Banich

4230 Burnham Ave. #144 702-733-3785

University of Nevada School of Medicine Department of Surgery

Women’s Health Associates of Southern Nevada

861 Coronado Center Drive #200 Henderson 702-948-9088

Quest Diagnostics

Surgery

3006 S. Maryland Parkway #690 702-732-1290

5281 S. Eastern Ave. 702-262-9676

861 Coronado Center Drive #200 Henderson 702-948-9088

The Spine and Brain Institute

Darren Thomas Wheeler

Douglas J. Seip

University Pediatric Center at Lied

General Surgery Associates

University of Nevada School of Medicine Department of Surgery 1707 W. Charleston Blvd. #160 702-671-5150

Surgical Oncology

Souzan E. El-Eid

Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada 9280 W. Sunset Road #100 702-255-1133

Daniel M. Kirgan

University of Nevada School of Medicine Department of Surgery

8930 W. Sunset Road #350 702-304-1911

Beverly A. Neyland

Otolaryngology

1524 Pinto Lane, 3rd Floor 702-944-2828

Thoracic Surgery

Plastic Surgery

Peter G. Vajtai

University Pediatric Center at Lied

1707 W. Charleston Blvd. #160 702-671-5150

3150 N. Tenaya Way #520 702-233-0755

Walter (Russ) Schroeder

Te-Long Hwang

3195 Saint Rose Parkway #210 Henderson 702-792-6700

Goesel M. Anson

5745 S. Fort Apache Road #100 702-240-3198

8530 W. Sunset Road #130 702-822-2100

Robert Wiencek

Robert C. Wang

Michael (Mike) C. Edwards

Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center Department of Neurology 3186 Maryland Parkway 702-731-8115

Ear, Nose and Throat Consultants of Nevada

Nuclear Medicine

Surgery Center Department of Otolaryngology

Paul D. Bandt

3150 N. Tenaya Way #112 702-671-6480

Desert Radiologists 2020 Palomino Lane #100 702-387-6900

Pathology

Obstetrics and Gynecology

Quest Diagnostics

Irwin G. Glassman

Laura Lynn Bilodeau 4230 Burnham Ave. #144 702-733-786

Women’s Health Associates of Southern Nevada

Ronald Knoblock

1934 E. Sahara Ave. 702-369-5758

7455 W. Washington Ave. #301 702-732-3441

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Laboratory Medicine Consultants

8530 W. Sunset Road #130 702-822-2100

Julio L. Garcia

St. Rose-Stanford Clinic Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery Program 7190 S. Cimarron Road 702-675-3240

6020 S. Rainbow Blvd. #C 702-870-0058

Urology

Radiology

653 N. Town Center Drive #308 702-732-0282

Paul D. Bandt

Desert Radiologists 2020 Palomino Lane #100 702-387-6900

Sheldon J. Freedman Ranjit Jain

Urology Associates 700 Shadow Lane #430 702-384-0500

Discover

VALLEY HOSPITAL

Your healthcare provider … in the heart of Las Vegas

• Heart Attack • Heart Failure • Pneumonia • Surgical Care • Immunization

For more than 40 years, Valley Hospital has been serving residents and visitors to Las Vegas and helping them lead a healthier life.

With a strong history of quality care, Valley Hospital has a new look inside.

We want you to see it for yourself!

While our look has changed, our tradition of service excellence remains, with: • An American Osteopathic Association (AOA) approved graduate medical education program to train and teach future doctors • Advanced technology and innovative procedures … like robotic and minimally invasive surgery • An accredited Chest Pain Center • A comprehensive diabetes treatment program • A dedicated behavioral health unit • An accredited Primary Stroke Center • An advanced Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Treatment Center • Get with the Guidelines® Gold Plus Stroke Award • Intensive inpatient rehabilitation services

Discover Valley Hospital … advanced care … innovative technology Learn more at valleyhospital.net Get social with us too!

Physicians are independent practitioners who are not employees or agents of Valley Hospital Medical Center.

The hospital shall not be liable for actions or treatments provided by physicians. 152273

620 Shadow Lane • Las Vegas, NV 89106

To

SERV E .

To

L EAD .

To

T EACH .

Touro University Nevada faculty physicians lead the way in educating the physicians of tomorrow while caring for our community today at the Health Center at Touro.

www.tun.touro.edu 702.777.1750 874 American Pacific Drive, Henderson, NV 89014 Touro University Nevada is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and licensed in Nevada by the Commission on Post-Secondary Education.

Touro University Nevada does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, disability, or age in its employment, programs, or activities.

TOP DENTISTS A

great dentist is something to smile about.

And on the following pages are lots of reasons to smile. Our 2016 topDentists list features more than 160 of the best dental professionals in Southern Nevada.

How did we find the valley’s top dental talent? It started with a simple question: “If you had a patient in need of a dentist, which dentist would you refer them to?”

This is the question we’ve asked thousands of dentists to help us determine who the topDentists should be. Dentists and specialists are asked to take into consideration years of experience, continuing education, manner with patients, use of new techniques and technologies and of course physical results.

The nomination pool of dentists consists of dentists listed online with the American Dental Association as well as all dentists listed online with their local/regional dental societies, thus allowing virtually every dentist the opportunity to participate. Dentists are also given the opportunity to nominate other dentists we have

missed whom they feel should be included in our list. Respondents are asked to put aside any personal bias or political motivations and to use only their knowledge of their peers’ work when evaluating the other nominees.

Voters are asked to individually evaluate the practitioners on their ballot whose work they are familiar with. Once the balloting is completed, the scores are compiled and then averaged. The numerical average required for inclusion varies depending on the average for all the nominees within the specialty and the geographic area.

Borderline cases are given a careful consideration by the editors. Voting characteristics and comments are taken into consideration while making decisions. Past awards a dentist has received and status in various dental academies can play a factor in our decision.

Once the decisions have been finalized, the included dentists are checked against state dental boards for disciplinary actions to make sure they have an active license and are in good standing with the board.

Then letters of congratulations are

sent to all the listed dentists.

Of course, there are many fine dentists who are not included in this representative list. It is intended as a sampling of the great body of talent in the field of dentistry in Nevada. A dentist’s inclusion on our list is based on the subjective judgments of his or her fellow dentists. While it is true that the lists may at times disproportionately reward visibility or popularity, we remain confident that our polling methodology largely corrects for any biases and that these lists continue to represent the most reliable, accurate, and useful list of dentists available anywhere.

This list is excerpted from the 2016 topDentists™ list, a database which includes listings for more than 160 dentists and specialists in Southern Nevada. The Las Vegas area list is based on thousands of detailed evaluations of dentists and professionals by their peers.

The complete database is available at usatopdentists.com. For more information, call 706-364-0853; write PO Box 970, Augusta, GA 30903; email info@usatopdentists. com or visit usatopdentists.com.

Disclaimer This list is excerpted from the 2016 topDentists™ list, which includes listings for more than 160 dentists and specialists in Southern Nevada.

For more information call 706-364-0853 or email (info@usatopdentists.com) or visit us at topdentists.com. topDentists has used its best efforts in assembling material for this list but does not warrant that the information contained herein is complete or accurate, and does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. Copyright 2008-2016 by topDentists, Augusta, GA. All rights reserved. This list, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without permission of topDentists. No fees may be charged, directly or indirectly, for the use of the information in this list without permission.

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TOP DENTISTS Note: An asterisk indicates the dentist also performs cosmetic procedures.

Endodontics

W. Scott Biggs Micro Endodontics of Las Vegas 4450 N. Tenaya Way #240 702-463-5000 lasvegasendo.com

William D. Brizzee Las Vegas Endodontics 6655 E. Sahara Ave. #A-106 702-876-5800, lvendo.com

Russel K. Christensen Las Vegas Endodontics 6655 E. Sahara Ave. #A-106 702-876-5800, lvendo.com

Mark C. Tingey

Chris S. Cozine

George Harouni*

Endodontics of Las Vegas 9750 Covington Cross Drive #150 702-878-8584 endodonticsoflasvegas.com

8579 S. Eastern Ave. #A 702-739-8289, cozinedental.com

731 Mall Ring Circle #201 702-434-9464 georgeharounidds.com

General Dentistry

Stanley S. Askew Island Dental Center 9750 Covington Cross Drive #100 702-341-7979 islanddentalcenter.com

Steven A. Avena* 3117 E. Charleston Blvd.

702-384-1210 stevenavenadds.com

Peter S. Balle*

Bradley A. Ditsworth 2458 E. Russell Road #A 702-798-6216

Mark Dorilag Green Valley Dental Group 710 Coronado Center Drive #100 702-260-0102 gvdentalgroup.com

Jason L. Downey* 5660 E. Flamingo Road #B 702-871-4903 smileslasvegas.com

Mark D. Edington*

Gregg C. Hendrickson* Comprehensive Dental Care 2790 E. Horizon Ridge Parkway #100 702-735-3284, nvdentists.com

Michael G. Hollingshead* 6392 Spring Mountain Road 702-430-2552 lasvegasnevadasmiles.com

Owen W. Justice Jr. 3226 N. Decatur Blvd.

702-648-6800 justicefamilydental.com

Balle & Associates 2801 W. Charleston Blvd. #100 702-977-1177, balledds.com

Modern Dental Care 9895 S. Maryland Parkway #A 702-372-4069 moderndentallv.com

Brian R. Karn*

8460 S. Eastern Ave. #B 702-492-6688, coxendo.com

William J. Dougherty Jr.

Alex D. Blazzard

Donald J. Farr

Thomas P. Keating*

840 Pinnacle Court #6A 702-345-8686 blazzarddds.com

2458 E. Russell Road #B 702-798-4595 donaldjfarrdds.com

Laurie S. Bloch-Johnson*

Barton H. Foutz

Keating Dental 880 Seven Hills Drive #240 702-454-8855 keatingdds.com

Exceptional Dentistry 9501 Hillwood Drive #A 702-463-8600 drlauriesmiles.com

2510 Wigwam Parkway #100 702-792-5929, drfoutz.com

Matthew O. Cox

Sunset Endodontics 54 N. Pecos Road #B 702-436-4300, sunsetendo.com

John Q. Duong Lakeview Dental 2291 S. Fort Apache Road #104 702-869-0001, karentrandds.com

David C. Fife 1975 Village Center Circle #110 702-360-2122, drdavidfife.com

Darin K. Kajioka Endodontics of Las Vegas 9750 Covington Cross Drive #150 702-878-8584 endodonticsoflasvegas.com

Ronald R. Lemon UNLV School of Dental Medicine 4505 S. Maryland Parkway #SLC-D 239 702-744-2731 dentalschool.unlv.edu

Jason T. Morris 2510 Wigwam Parkway #200 702-263-2000

Kathleen Olender* Desert Dental Specialists 7520 E. Sahara Ave. 702-384-7200 dentalimplants-lv.com

Derryl R. Brian Nevada Trails Dental 7575 S. Rainbow Blvd. #101 702-367-3700 nevadatrailsdental.com

Pamela G. Caggiano* Excellence In Dentistry 321 N. Pecos Road #100 702-732-7878 pamelacaggianodds.com

Colin M. Campbell* St. Rose Family & Cosmetic Dentistry 2875 Saint Rose Parkway #110 702-387-5900 strosedental.com

Sandra Chan Moore Family Dentistry 10624 S. Eastern Ave. #N 702-407-6700, lvsmiles.com

Guy L. Chisteckoff*

Endodontic Associates 6950 Smoke Ranch Road #125 702-869-8840

Island Smiles Cosmetic & Family Dentistry 8940 S. Maryland Parkway #100 702-270-6501 islandsmiles.org

Daniel I. Shalev

Stephen H. Clark II

Douglas R. Rakich

2510 Wigwam Parkway #200 702-263-2000

Ryan C. Shipp 9053 S. Pecos Road, #3000 702-798-0911 shippendodontics.com

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2820 E. Flamingo Road #B 702-732-2333 stephenclarkddslv.com

Kenneth M. Cox 6615 S. Eastern Ave. #106 702-735-3506

James B. Frantz Jr.

Karn Extraordinary Smiles 851 S. Rampart Blvd. #230 702-341-9160, drkarn.com

James G. Kinard* 2780 E. Horizon Ridge Parkway #20 702-719-4700

Green Valley Dental Group 710 Coronado Center Drive #100 702-260-0102 GVDentalGroup.com

William P. Leavitt

Glen Gallimore

Ton V. Lee

702Dentist 3455 Cliff Shadows Parkway #130 702-839-0500, 702-dentist.com

Summerlin Smiles 9525 W. Russell Road #100 702-579-7645 summerlinsmiles.com

Heeyup Ghim

UNLV School of Dental Medicine 1001 Shadow Lane #SLC-D 260 702-774-2641, unlv.edu

Black Mountain Dental 1475 E. Horizon Ridge Parkway #100, 702-564-4498 blackmountaindental.com

Robin D. Lobato*

Benjamin Glick

Nicholas E. Lords*

1070 E. Horizon Ridge Parkway #120 702-331-1378, benjaminglickdmd.com

Rainbow Park Dental 2950 S. Rainbow Blvd. #200 702-227-6510

Irwan T. Goh* Smiles by Goh 2653 E. Horizon Ridge Parkway #110 702-832-5517, smilesbygoh.com

Chad Gubler Gubler Dental 11221 S. Eastern Ave. #200 702-558-9977, gublerdds.com

Jeffery W. Hadley* 3910 Pecos McLeod, #A-140 702-454-7695 smilesbydrhadley.com

Steven L. Hardy Paradise Family Dental 6825 Aliante Parkway 702-294-2739 drstevehardy.com

9061 E. Sahara Ave. #101 702-877-0500 drlobato.com

Kent A. Lysgaard Lysgaard Dental 2911 N. Tenaya Way #101 702-360-9061 drlysgaard.com

Ronald R. Marshall 6891 E. Charleston Blvd.

702-255-6768, rrmsmile.com

George J. McAlpine UNLV School of Dental Medicine 1707 E. Charleston Blvd. #290 MS7424 702-671-5130, unlv.edu/dental

Nina Mirzayan Adaven Children’s Dentistry 1701 N. Green Valley Parkway #8E 702-492-1955, drninaonline.com

D. Kevin Moore

David B. Sandquist

Terrie X. Tran

R. F. John Holtzen

Moore Family Dentistry 10624 S. Eastern Ave. #N 702-407-6700

2650 Lake Sahara Drive #160 702-734-0776 sandquistdds.com

All Smiles Dental 10545 S. Eastern Ave. #140 702-492-9399, allsmilesbydesign.com

E. Orlando Morantes*

Douglas D. Sandquist*

3412 N. Buffalo Drive #107 702-794-0820 morantesdds.com

2650 Lake Sahara Drive #160 702-734-0776 sandquistdds.com

Michele S. Tratos

Nevada Oral & Facial Surgery 6950 Smoke Ranch Road #200 702-360-8918 nevadaoralandfacialsurgery.com

Johnny E. Nassar

Nathan D. Schwartz

Smile Design Center 10120 S. Eastern Ave. #375 702-361-9611 smiledesigncenterlv.com

Henderson Family Dentistry 537 S. Boulder Highway 702-564-2526 hendersonfamilydental.com

Tam P. Nguyen*

A. Thomas Shields

4840 Spring Mountain Road #2 702-256-2111

Shields Family Dentistry 653 N. Town Center #508 702-228-8777 shieldsfamilydentistry.com

Jorge Paez* Nevada Dental Esthetics 4455 S. Jones Blvd. #E2 702-312-3655 lasvegas-cosmetic-dentistry.com

Desert Smiles 10175 E. Twain Ave. #120 702-202-2300 desertsmilesdental.com

Susan Schmutz Smith*

James B. Polley*

Stephen W. Spelman*

1875 Village Center Circle #110 702-873-0324, drpolley.com

Thomas J. Puhek

Willow Springs Dental 3450 S. Hualapai Way 702-871-6044 stephenspelmandds.com

3431 E. Sunset Road #301 702-435-3901

Bradley S. Strong*

Richard A. Racanelli

2931 N. Tenaya Way #200 702-242-3800, bstrongdds.com

8275 S. Eastern Ave. #101 702-967-1700 susansmithdds.com

Nevada Oral & Facial Surgery 6950 Smoke Ranch Road #200 702-360-8918 nevadaoralandfacialsurgery.com

Brendan G. Johnson Nevada Oral & Facial Surgery 6950 Smoke Ranch Road, #200 702-360-8918 nevadaoralandfacialsurgery.com

Katherine A. Keeley 2649 Wigwam Parkway #102 702-263-9339, drkeeley.net

Bryce Leavitt

Sun Dental Center 9450 Del Webb Blvd.

702-255-2111, sundentalcenterlv.com

Gibson and Leavitt Oral & Maxillofacial & Implant Surgery 2835 St. Rose Parkway #100 702-685-3700 ryangibsonoralsurgery.com

Johnathan R. White*

Carlos H. Letelier

Aesthetic Dentistry 8084 W. Sahara Ave. #G 702-823-3000, jbwhitedds.com

Brad A. Wilbur Green Valley Dental Center 275 N. Pecos Road 702-896-8933 gvdentalcenter.com

Derrek A. Yelton 2625 S. Rainbow Blvd. #103 702-365-1743

Center for Oral Surgery of Las Vegas 10115 E. Twain Ave. #100 702-367-6666 lasvegasoms.com

Jeff E. Moxley Moxley Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery 3663 E. Sunset Road #403 702-898-8350 drjeffmoxley.com

Patrick A. O’Connor 630 S. Rancho Drive #B 702-870-2555 drpatrickoconnor.net

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

Daniel L. Orr II

3505 E. Harmon Ave. #A 702-605-1819 minidentalimplantslasvegasnv.com

George E. Bonn

2040 E. Charleston Blvd. #201 702-383-3711, orrs.org

Rick B. Thiriot

Stephen C. Rose* Rose Cosmetic and Family Dentistry 4230 E. Charleston Blvd. #A 702-459-8998 rosecosmeticandfamilydentistry.com

Louisa Sanders

Matt D. Welebir*

Gregory J. Hunter

Ronald R. Taylor

Rose Family Dentistry 8490 S. Eastern Ave. #C 702-914-0000 rosefamilydentistry.com

899 Adams Blvd.

702-293-0373 drgrosenbaum.com

53 E. Lake Mead Parkway 702-564-3444

James V. Whalen

70 N. Pecos Road #A 702-735-2755 patricksimonedds.com

George F. Rosenbaum

Scott M. Weaver

4610 Meadows Lane 702-878-7700

7884 E. Sahara Ave. #100 702-367-7133

Craig R. Rose

Desert Breeze Dental 8650 Spring Mountain Road #101 702-869-0032, desertbreezedental.net

Raymond Kent Simister Patrick A. Simone*

Stunning Smiles of Las Vegas 6410 Medical Center St. #B 702-736-0016 lvstunningsmiles.com

Paul VreNon*

Summerlin Dental 410 S. Rampart Blvd. #360 702-228-2218, summerlindental.net

William G. Pappas Sam Partovi

3057 E. Warm Springs Road #300 702-369-8730 thelasvegasnvdentist.com

Huang & Bonn Oral & Implant Surgery 1701 N. Green Valley Parkway #2-E 702-270-2999 oralsurgeryhenderson.com

Mont M. Ringer

Michel Daccache

Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery of Southern Nevada 5765 S. Fort Apache Road #110 702-876-6337, omssnv.com

Franson K. S. Tom

1701 E. Charleston Blvd. #520 702-750-9444, nevadaoms.com

Steven A. Saxe

4318 S. Eastern Ave. 702-736-6119, drfransontom.com

Mark I. Degen

Advance Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery 1570 S. Rainbow Blvd.

702-258-0085, nvjawdoc.com

UNLV School of Dental Medicine 1001 Shadow Lane #MS7414 702-774-2655, unlv.edu/dental

Arthur Anthony Tomaro* Exceptional Dentistry 2095 Village Center Circle #120 702-331-4700 drtomaroexceptionaldentistry.com

Michael Tomita

1700 W. Charleston Blvd. #D 702-774-2816

Island Dental Center 9750 Covington Cross Drive #100 702-341-7979, islanddentalcenter.com

R. Michael Sanders*

Karen T. Tran

UNLV School of Dental Medicine 1001 Shadow Lane #MS7410 702-774-2660, dentalschool.unlv.edu

Lakeview Dental 2291 S. Fort Apache Road #104 702-869-0001, karentrandds.com

Red Rock Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Centre 4730 S. Fort Apache Road #390 702-253-9090, redrockomsc.com

John J. Dudek Mountain View Oral Surgery 6970 Smoke Ranch Road #150 702-259-6725

Ryan Gibson Gibson and Leavitt Oral & Maxillofacial & Implant Surgery 2835 St. Rose Parkway #100 702-685-3700 ryangibsonoralsurgery.com

Robert M. Svarney Jr. 6140 S. Fort Apache Road #120 702-655-8400

Eric D. Swanson Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Associates of Nevada 2030 E. Flamingo Road #288 702-892-0833 facialsurgery.org

Albert Ted Twesme 4544 S. Pecos Road 702-436-0900 AUGUST 2016

WWW.DesertCompanion.VEGAS

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TOP DENTISTS Oral Medicine

Douglas K. Simister

Jeffrey A. Cox

Edilberto De Andrade

Griffiths & Simister Orthodontics 8710 E. Charleston Blvd. #150 702-256-7846 lasvegasbraces.com

Anthem Pediatric Dentistry 2843 Saint Rose Parkway #100 702-531-5437 apdkids.com

Dave L. Smith

Chad W. Ellsworth

Anthem Periodontics and Dental Implants 2610 E. Horizon Ridge Parkway #202 702-270-4600 periodontics-dentalimplants.com

Orthodontics

5320 E. Sahara Ave. #4 702-871-1808

Ryan S. Gifford*

David A. Chenin

Robert H. Thalgott

Anthem Pediatric Dentistry 2843 Saint Rose Parkway #100 702-531-5437 apdkids.com

Harout V. Gostanian

Gary D. Goaslind

Centennial Children’s Dentistry 7425 E. Azure Drive #120 702-880-5437 safaridentistry.com

Periodontics Unlimited 3811 E. Charleston Blvd. #201 702-259-1943, lvperio.com

Dawn L. McClellan

Significance Dental Specialists 2430 E. Harmon Ave. #6 702-733-0558, sdsdental.com

Edward E. Herschaft UNLV School of Dental Medicine 1001 Shadow Lane #SLC-B 214 702-774-2654, unlv.edu

Chenin Orthodontics 10730 S. Eastern Ave. #100 702-735-1010, cheninortho.com

Stephen T. Chenin Chenin Orthodontics 10730 S. Eastern Ave. #100 702-735-1010 cheninortho.com

Stephen N. Fleming 5320 E. Sahara Ave. #4 702-871-1808

Michael C. Gardner Leaver & Gardner Orthodontics 6005 S. Fort Apache #100 702-878-0764, leavergardner.com

James L Gibson Gibson Orthodontics 70 E. Horizon Ridge #170 702-564-1037, gogibson.com

John C. Griffiths Griffiths & Simister Orthodontics 8710 E. Charleston Blvd. #150 702-256-7846 lasvegasbraces.com

R. Cree Hamilton Hamilton Orthodontics 401 N. Buffalo Drive #220 702-243-3300 hamiltonortho.com

Blaine R. Hansen

1945 Village Center Circle #110 702-364-5100 thalgott.com

Alfred A. Thresher Thresher Orthodontics 9500 E. Flamingo Road #102 702-254-4335 thresherortho.com

Mark Truman Truman Orthodontics 851 S. Rampart Blvd. #130 702-360-9000 trumanorthodontics.com

Zachary B. Truman

Fenn Welch

Gary D. Richardson

Welch Orthodontics 8551 W. Lake Mead Blvd. #216 702-240-2300 welchortho.com

Adventure Smiles 8995 E. Flamingo Road #100 702-529-2034 adventuresmiles.com

Lance L. Whetten

Joshua L. Saxe

4540 S. Pecos Road 702-436-0999

A Childrens Dentist 8710 E. Charleston Blvd. #100 702-255-0133 achildrensdentist.com

Tracy D. Wyatt Wyatt Orthodontics 7550 E. Lake Mead Blvd. #6 702-242-9777 wyattorthodontics.com

Scott E. Leaver

Laurie B. Abrams

Hamilton Orthodontics 401 N. Buffalo Drive #220 702-243-3300 hamiltonortho.com

Carey B. Noorda Noorda Orthodontics 1701 N. Green Valley Parkway #1 702-737-5500, drnoorda.com

Alana Saxe Saxe Orthodontics 3555 S. Town Center Drive #104 702-541-7070 saxeortho.com

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August 2016

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Children’s Dental Center 2085 Village Center Circle #120 702-240-5437, cdclv.com

Manny Rapp Jr.

Pediatric Dentistry

Jeremy S. Manuele

Todd S. Milne

Truman Orthodontics 880 Seven Hills Drive #170 702-221-2272 trumanortho.com

Hansen Orthodontics 3600 N. Buffalo Drive #110 702-568-1600, hansenortho.com

Leaver & Gardner Orthodontics 6005 S. Fort Apache #100 702-878-0764, leavergardner.com

Dental Care International 1750 Wheeler Peak Drive 702-272-1100, dcare.org

Just for Kids Dentistry 7140 N. Durango Drive #110 702-740-5437 justforkidsdentistrylv.com

Bryan Q. Bui Cavitybusters 6910 S. Rainbow Blvd. #104 702-362-5437 cavitybusters.org

Ryan S. Bybee Kidz Dentistry 1600 E. Sunset Road #B 702-733-8341 hendersonkidsdentist.com

Alice P. Chen Red Rock Kids Dental 11700 E. Charleston Blvd. #180 702-242-2436 redrockkidsdental.com

Adaven Children’s Dentistry 1701 N. Green Valley Parkway #8E 702-492-1955, adavenkid.com

Michael D. Saxe A Childrens Dentist 8710 E. Charleston Blvd. #100 702-255-0133 achildrensdentist.com

William F. Waggoner

Periodontics Unlimited 3811 E. Charleston Blvd. #201 702-259-1943, lvperio.com

Allen Wei-Lun Huang*

Curry H. Leavitt Red Rock Periodontics & Implantology 7475 E. Sahara Ave. #101 702-834-8900 redrockperio.com

Robert L. Lockhart UNLV School of Dental Medicine 1700 E. Charleston Blvd.

702-774-2657 dentalschool.unlv.edu

Brian Mantor Periodontics Ltd. 3811 E. Charleston Blvd. #201 702-259-1943 lvperio.com

James K. Rogers Canyon Ridge Periodontics 3375 S. Town Center Drive #110 702-966-0300 canyonridgeperio.com

David J. Trylovich* Periodontics Unlimited 3811 E. Charleston Blvd. #201 702-259-1943 lvperio.com

Pediatric Dental Care Associates 8981 E. Sahara Ave. #110 702-254-4220 pediatricdentalcareassociates.com

Prosthodontics

Periodontics

2255 Renaissance Drive #B 702-798-1987 nelsonlasiterdmd.com

David A. Arpin* Desert Dental Specialists 7520 E. Sahara Ave. 702-384-7200 dentalimplants-lv.com

Nelson D. Lasiter

Marco T. Padilla*

Eric Bernzweig

Advanced Prosthodontics of Las Vegas 851 S. Rampart Blvd. #250 702-263-4300 lasvegasprostho.com

6835 E. Charleston Blvd.

702-869-8200

Steven L. Rhodes 501 S. Rancho Drive #E29 800-397-6603 srhodesdds.com

DEAN COLLINS Medical Specialist / 866.980.9585

SPECIALIZED BANKING FOR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS We understand your profession and the unique ways in which a practice operates. Let us take care of your finances, so you can take care of your patients.

RITA VASWANI Medical Specialist / 866.909.8764

Our team can help you:  Stay current with new technology  Expand operations  Find cash flow solutions for delayed reimbursements  And more BRING YOUR BANKING HOME.

CASH FLOW SOLUTIONS | IMPROVE YOUR BUILDING/FIRM/PRACTICE SONNY VINUYA Medical Specialist / 866.530.9982

FINANCE EQUIPMENT | CUSTOM HOME FINANCING1 | FINANCIAL STRATEGIES

WEALTH MANAGEMENT 2

56 years in Nevada I nsbank.com 1. Loans subject to credit approval. Terms and conditions apply.

ZB, N.A. NMLS# 467014 2. Securities and Advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC. Insurance and annuity products offered through LPL Financial or its licensed affiliates. ZB, N.A. and its Nevada State Bank and Nevada State Investment Services divisions are not registered broker/dealers and are not affiliated with LPL Financial.

PATRICK MILBANK Medical Specialist / 866.950.7512

Not FDIC Insured Not Bank Guaranteed Not Insured by any Federal Government Agency

May Lose Value Not a Bank Deposit

Congratulations to all the Winners from the Heart of the Las Vegas Medical District

umcsn.com

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL PROFILES

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2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL

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PROFILES

THOMAS UMBACH, M.D. BLOSSOM BARIATRICS

Dr. Tom Umbach – Dr. Tom, as his patients affectionately call him – was first drawn to bariatrics after discovering the incredible potential it had in significantly reducing the effects of diabetes or eliminating diabetes and other health problems altogether. His journey was then fueled by the stories that came in day after day: obesity since childhood, failed diet after failed diet, severe knee pain and joint complications, depression, and more. The thought of being able to put an end to people’s suffering was irresistible.

Dr. Tom’s compassion, coupled with his true gift at bariatric surgery, has made him one of the most successful surgeons in the nation.

WITH YOU EVERY STEP OF THE WAY Dr. Tom and his staff do everything in their power to make their clients as comfortable as possible. Surgeries are performed at Warm Springs Surgical Center in Las Vegas, a state-of-the-art surgical center designed with patient comfort and safety in mind.

Another significant difference between Blossom Bariatrics and other providers is the unparalleled support each patient receives. From preoperative seminars, physical and psychological exams, and insurance assistance to postoperative support through one-of-a-kind programs designed to aid in nutrition, fitness, and mental health, their staff supports you in every stage of the journey.

Individuals seek out Dr. Tom from all over the world for his expertise, exceptional patient outcomes, and post-surgical support, and Blossom Bariatrics has partnered with local hotels to offer discounted lodging and entertainment with assistance from lasvegas.com and LVCVA. At a fraction of the cost of other bariatric centers, the trip to Las Vegas simply makes sense!

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AWARD-WINNING SURGEON AND STAFF Dr. Tom has been recognized by Newsweek as one of the “Nation’s Leading Bariatric Surgeons” and by The New Economy as “Best Healthcare Consultant” and “Best Medical Tourism Provider.”

And working together with his staff – many of whom are past bariatric patients themselves – Dr. Tom has been able to pass significant savings on to his patients resulting in the most affordable bariatric care available. Truly, compassion meets expertise at Blossom Bariatrics.

WHY BARIATRIC SURGERY? “People come to me after having attempted every diet known to man,” says Dr. Tom. “The truth is that dieting doesn’t work. Due to a combination of several natural factors, our bodies actually fight weight loss. Bariatric surgery effectively combats these forces and helps every patient that follows the guidelines – not just the lucky – lose weight for good.”

BLOSSOM BARIATRICS 7385 S. PECOS RD. SUITE 101, BUILDING 24 LAS VEGAS, NV 89120 702.463.3300 blossombariatrics.com

2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

PROFILES

DR. JACK ABRAMS ABRAMS EYE INSTITUTE

Jack Abrams M.D. is a board-certified, fellowship-trained ophthalmologist. In 2005, he founded Abrams Eye Institute to provide the most advanced, comprehensive ophthalmologic services in Southern Nevada. Dr. Abrams believes in bringing the most superior technology to his patients. He is the first surgeon in Nevada to perform: Laser- Assisted Cataract, KAMRA Inlay and Laser-Assisted Intacs; Dr. Abrams is the first and still only surgeon in Nevada to do Laser-Assisted Corneal Transplants. During his 20-year career he has performed more than 15,000 surgeries and is frequently sought after by leading technology companies to utilize their latest equipment.

What is the latest technology in Ophthalmology?

One word – Laser. I am always researching and investing in the latest laser technology to treat all of my patients.

The laser is a game changer in all facets of my practice. The eye is a very delicate organ in a miniature setting. A laser gives us the most accurate cut. Think about drawing a perfect circle. Even the most skilled surgeon cannot do it. But a laser can.

How does the laser technology impact the patient?

When I use the laser, the patient recovers faster and ultimately their vision is better. It is that simple. Standard treatments work but laser surgery works better, faster.

What kind of lasers do you have in your practice? What conditions do they treat?

We have many laser options at Abrams Eye Institute but here are a few of the most common: The revolutionary LenSx® femtosecond laser introduces image-guided computer precision to cataract eye treatment. This results in greater accuracy, better visual outcomes, better lens positioning, and customized astigmatism treatment. Many steps involved in traditional cataract procedures are still performed manually The LenSx® Laser offers a new level of precision and reproducibility in ophthalmic surgery. The additional steps performed by the LenSx® Laser to align the capsular and corneal incisions in three dimensions improve your visual outcome.

We use our ViSx Laser during LASIK procedures to re-shape the cornea and correct refractive error and astigmatism

Our iFS® Advanced Femtosecond Laser is used to make incisions instead of using a blade. We can use it to make the LASIK flap, Intacs channels and most recently, corneal transplants. iFS also makes the KAMRA “pocket” for the KAMRA Inlay procedure.

ABRAMS EYE INSTITUTE LAS VEGAS 6450 MEDICAL CENTER ST. SUITE 100 LAS VEGAS, NV 89148 HENDERSON 8605 SOUTH EASTERN AVE. SUITE B LAS VEGAS, NV 89123 PAHRUMP 1470 E. CALVADA BLVD. SUITE 300 PAHRUMP, NV 89048 702.304.9494 AbramsEyeInstitute.com

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2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

PROFILES

PALM MEDICAL GROUP Palm Medical Group has been serving Las Vegas since 2008 to meet the community’s need for board certified endocrinologists. The physicians at Palm Medical Group specialize in treating disorders of the endocrine system such as hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, thyroid cancer, hyperparathyroidism, type I diabetes, type II diabetes, osteoporosis, hypogonadism, pituitary disorders, growth hormone deficiency and adrenal disorders.

The providers are able to offer patients a variety of resources at the practice. There is a certified diabetes educator available for diabetes and nutrition education, insulin training, insulin pump education, and glucometer training. Thyroid patients that require ultrasound and fine-needle aspiration (FNA) biopsies are able to have this procedure done in the office.

Patients are able to access their medical records online through the patient portal, which allows for patients to better control their health and contact office staff.

The providers at Palm Medical Group are great advocates of education and training.

They are preceptors to medical students, physician assistant students, and medical residents. In addition, the providers are at the forefront of their specialized profession with knowledge and experience gained through cutting-edge therapies in clinical research.

In collaboration with Palm Research Center, the physicians at Palm Medical Group work on a variety of clinical trials in various areas including type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, testosterone deficiency, osteoporosis, cholesterol, and growth hormone deficiency. Palm Research Center is a University of California, San Francisco affiliate site for an international research network called Type 1 Diabetes Trialnet. Led and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), TrialNet is exploring ways to prevent and delay type 1 diabetes.

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PALM MEDICAL GROUP SOUTHWEST OFFICE 9280 W SUNSET RD SUITE 306 LAS VEGAS, NV 89148 NORTHWEST OFFICE 3150 N TENAYA WAY SUITE 415 LAS VEGAS, NV 89128 PHONE:.702.696.7256 FAX .702.796.7256 palmmedicalgroup.com

2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL PROFILES

JOSEPH P. CONTINO, MD, FACS

COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTERS OF NEVADA Joseph P. Contino, MD, FACS, is a breast surgeon with Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada (CCCN). He has treated patients with breast, colon and thyroid cancers for more than 20 years; and has a special interest in breast related diseases using less invasive technologies such as breast ultrasound, stereotactic imaging, cryotherapy, and other new modalities.

His dedication as a surgeon extends beyond his work in the operating room.

Dr. Contino has embraced all forms of social media into his practice by following health care industry organizations and news outlets. He believes in sharing timely information with his patients and other followers, who all appreciate his proactive approach to imparting knowledge and surgical expertise.

Dr. Contino’s patient philosophy is to treat breast cancer on an individualized basis. This requires staying up on the latest forms of breast cancer treatment, and collaborating with other specialists who are like-minded. He likes to spend time with his patients to inform them, and console if needed, as he would hope others would treat his own family.

Ultimately he wants to provide surgical care, acceptable cosmetic outcomes, and good functional results.

In his years of practice, Dr. Contino has found the diagnosis of breast cancer tends to be as psychologically devastating as it is physically harmful.

As a surgeon treating this disease in a

multispecialty practice, his goal is to make the process as easy as possible for the patient. He constantly studies and employs new technologies and techniques that have been found to have better outcomes while still providing a good cosmetic appeal for the patient.

As a modern breast surgeon, there is now a constant inflow of scientific and clinical information available on how to provide the best care possible. At Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada, he uses that information to provide optimal care and excellent long-term outcomes.

Dr. Contino is a Board Certified General Surgeon and holds an Ultrasound Certification with the American Society of Breast Surgeons.

He is affiliated with several healthcare related organizations, including the American Society of Breast Surgeons and

Clark County Medical Society, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and registered with The Mastery of Surgery Breast Program and Original Pilot Program.

Dr. Contino is married with four children. His interests include hiking, cooking, fishing and cycling.

COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTERS OF NEVADA JOSEPH P. CONTINO, MD, FACS 7445 PEAK DR. LAS VEGAS, NV 89128 702.952.2140 cccnevada.com

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2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL PROFILES

EVA LITTMAN MD, FACOG RED ROCK FERTILITY CENTER

Red Rock Fertility Center specializes in helping couples achieve their dreams of becoming parents and assisting patients in preserving their fertility so that they are able to have children at the opportune time in their lives.

Founded in 2008 by Practice Director Dr. Eva Littman, Red Rock Fertility Center has grown to be one of the most successful fertility centers on the West Coast. Dr. Littman recently celebrated the opening of a 12,800 square foot, state-of-the-art IVF lab, surgery center and clinic at 9120 West Russell Road in Las Vegas. The new center is over twice the size of Red Rock Fertility’s previous facility and brings all aspects of patient care under one roof.

The practice is proud to specialize in challenging cases and helping patients whom other doctors have deemed as having a slim chance of conceiving. Along with having an amazing, compassionate spirit, Dr. Littman completed her medical training at some of the world’s leading medical centers and universities, including Stanford University and Duke University.

Dr. Littman has contributed to worldwide knowledge of specific infertility problems by publishing several articles in peer-reviewed journals and regularly presenting at international meetings and local conferences. She has also helped mentor future OB-GYN residents by serving as an associate clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University Of Nevada School Of Medicine.

In 2013, she was named a Women to

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Watch Honoree by Vegas INC. Some of her previously recognized work has been for her groundbreaking research.

She was awarded the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society Prize Paper Award for research entitled, IGF2 Imprinting of Pre-Implantation Mouse Embryos.

In addition to this, she has received the Academic Medicine Fellowship Award by the National Medicine Foundation.

Dr. Littman is one of the Valley’s most trusted, knowledgeable and honored fertility experts. She offers an outstanding level of empathy and a broader amount of compassion for her patients given that she has personally undergone some of the procedures involved with fertility treatment. Dr. Littman has three children of her own, and she understands the desires

of her patients to conceive. Dr. Littman frequently assists patients with less than a five percent chance of pregnancy to welcome new lives into their families.

RED ROCK FERTILITY CENTER 9120 W. RUSSELL RD. SUITE 200, LAS VEGAS, NV 89148 702.749.4902 redrockfertility.com

2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

PROFILES

AANSHU SHAH, MD STEINBERG DIAGNOSTIC

MEDICAL IMAGING CENTERS Dr. Aanshu Shah, radiologist, is the Director of Women’s Imaging at Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging Centers.

Dr. Shah considers this an exciting time in medicine, where game-changing advancements in technology are improving her ability to impact patient’s lives.

Education: Undergraduate - Michigan State University Medical School - University of Michigan Medical School Residency Training - University of Pittsburgh Fellowship Training in Women’s Imaging Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Why did you choose to specialize in radiology?

Radiology fascinates me - it allows us to look inside a human being and see what’s happening. The technology is powerful and amazing, and I get to work with physicians in every field of medicine and help them to know what kind of treatment plan is best for their patient. We have a tremendous responsibility to deliver accurate information about what we see in a patient’s medical images. I embrace and love that about what I do.

What are the new technologies and advancement for diagnosing women?

Perhaps the single most important advancement in medical imaging to benefit women is happening right now.

Tomosynthesis, or 3D mammography, will revolutionize how we read mammograms.

We will find more cancers, have fewer call-backs AND cause less stress and anxiety to patients. What’s more, the GE SenoClaire technology we are using delivers no more radiation to the patient than the standard digital mammogram.

Other 3D technology in the marketplace increases a patient’s exposure to ionizing radiation by at least two times.

I have been so fortunate to witness these tremendous changes and I am so excited and proud to help bring this new life-saving technology to women in Las Vegas. #ONLYSDMI Why SDMI? Steinberg Diagnostic believes in being a good neighbor and community partner, and supports so many charities in town.

That’s a philosophy that really resonates with me. Personally, I am involved with the National Charity League with my daughter and the Young Men’s Service League with my son. Through this work, we can expose our kids to the wonderful and important work of many community organizations throughout Las Vegas. It is great to be connected to the community and to teach my children the value of giving back.

Our team at SDMI shares that same

sense of community and connectedness.

This year, you’ll see us at the Susan G. Komen Nevada Race for the Cure, JDRF’s One Walk, Scale the Strat, Red Rose Regatta, Three Square Food Bank, ACS’ Real Men Wear Pink, Tools 4 Teachers and more.

STEINBERG DIAGNOSTIC MEDICAL IMAGING CENTERS DR. AANSHUH SHAH 2767 N. TENAYA WAY LAS VEGAS, NV 89128 702.732.6000 www.sdmi-lv.com

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MEDICAL & DENTAL

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

PROFILES

ROSEMAN UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES Roseman University was founded as a non-profit, private institution in Henderson, Nevada in 1999 in response to the educational and healthcare needs of the state. The university’s initial class of 38 Doctor of Pharmacy students earned their degrees in 2003. Just 16 years later, Roseman University now has an enrollment of nearly 1,600 students on three campuses in Nevada and Utah.

Roseman University offers five academic degree programs to address the needs of our communities, including a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), Accelerated Bachelor of Sciences in Nursing (ABSN), Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD), Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD), Orthodontic Residency program, and an MBA with a healthcare focus. In 2013, Roseman established an MD-granting College of Medicine, which is currently working to achieve accreditation.

When Roseman University was

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established, its founders approached learning in a different way. They recognized that every student has a different learning style and that adult learners may need to be engaged differently. They also believed that every student could succeed and compete at a very high level if given the right tools and training to do so.

Breaking down barriers and increasing communication and partnership between student and teacher are at the core of success, proficiency and content mastery.

Student-to-student collaboration develops healthcare professionals that work in teams so that the patient has the very best chance of a good outcome.

As a result, the university developed the Six-Point Master Learning Model to produce graduates that are competent and to provide an educational environment that not only produces and ensures high levels of achievement from all students, but also fosters cooperation and collaboration in the learning process.

The Six-Point Master Learning Model consists of Block Curriculum, Active and Collaborative Learning, Competency-

based Education, Assessment Learning, Early Experiential Learning, and a Classroom Design that facilitates learning.

All of these components reinforce one another, and contribute to an unparalleled educational environment.

Roseman University has campuses in Henderson and Summerlin as well as the Salt Lake City suburb of South Jordan, Utah. The university is regionally accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

ROSEMAN UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES HENDERSON 11 SUNSET WAY HENDERSON, NV 89014 LAS VEGAS 10530 DISCOVERY DR. LAS VEGAS, NV 89135 702.990.4433 Roseman.edu

2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL PROFILES

SHEPHERD EYE CENTER Shepherd Eye Center has been proud to serve the communities of Las Vegas and Henderson since 1968. What started as one physician, Dr. John Shepherd, in one location, has grown to a practice of 13 ophthalmologists, 4 offices, nearly 160 employees, and the most recent addition, local optometrist, and Nevada native, Brad Stewart, O.D. Early on Dr. Shepherd pioneered new techniques and instrumentation that would improve the way cataract surgery would be performed. Today Shepherd Eye Center continues to provide care using the latest medical techniques and technology.

With the breadth of talent and experience of the doctors of Shepherd Eye Center, care is provided to patients of all ages.

Services include routine eye exams as well as the treatment of eye diseases, including surgical options. The physicians at Shepherd Eye Center treat a wide range of conditions from glaucoma to diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, muscle imbalance, cataracts and corneal conditions.

Specialists trained in pediatric ophthalmology, oculoplastic surgery, and refractive surgery

round out the comprehensive ophthalmology team at Shepherd Eye Center.

Whether it’s the front desk staff or the employees assisting the doctors, our staff are given opportunities to gain certifications in order to provide the highest level of care for our patients including: Certified Patient Service Specialist, Certified Ophthalmic Technicians, and Certified Ophthalmic Assistants. Each office has an optical shop stocked with glasses, and is staffed with experienced opticians ready to help you find a pair to compliment your style. Our contact lens specialist can expertly fit you with the right contact lenses for your unique eyes.

The Shepherd Eye Surgicenter consists of two operating rooms and performs more cataract surgeries than any other eye practice in the state of Nevada. The surgery center is staffed with highly-qualified registered nurses, scrub techs and support staff, and is state-licensed, Medicare-approved, and accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, Inc..

“We are lucky to have had a leader like Dr. Shepherd that set the tone for the

practice when it began,” says Steven O. Hansen, MD, FACS, and president of Shepherd Eye Center. “By keeping his vision of always putting the patient first, we have been able to embrace the challenges and opportunities that have presented themselves over the last 50 years and provide compassionate eye care for the whole family.”

SHEPHERD EYE CENTER HENDERSON 2475 W. HORIZON RIDGE, SUITE 120 HENDERSON, NV 89052 LAS VEGAS 3575 PECOS-MCLEOD LAS VEGAS, NV 89121 SOUTHWEST 9100 W. POST RD. LAS VEGAS, NV 89148 SUMMERLIN 2100 N. RAMPART LAS VEGAS, NV 89128 702.731.2088 WWW.SHEPHERDEYE.COM

M E D I C A L P R O F I L E S M101

2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

PROFILES

DESERT VALLEY AUDIOLOGY SENIOR MEDICARE PATROL

BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars are drained from the Medicare system as a result of fraud, waste, errors and abuse.

The Nevada SMP – Senior Medicare Patrol educates Medicare beneficiaries, their families and caregivers on how to avoid, detect and prevent health care fraud. This helps protect and promote the integrity of Medicare. SMP is funded and supported by the US Administration for Community Living and administered by the Nevada Aging & Disability Services Division. There are 53 SMP programs nationwide.

SMP staff and volunteers conduct outreach in the community through group presentations, exhibiting at events, answering calls to the SMP Help Line (702-486-3403) and meeting individually with beneficiaries. The main goal of the SMP is to empower Nevadans by teaching them to: • Protect their personal information and identity • Detect suspected errors and deceptive healthcare practices on their healthcare statements (i.e., charging for services that were never provided, providing unnecessary or inappropriate services) • Report to the SMP if they feel they have been a target of errors, fraud, or abuse, or illegal marketing practices If you want to make a difference in your community and fight Medicare fraud, volunteer today with Nevada SMP! Free training is provided. For more information, please call 702-486-3403.

To receive a FREE Personal Healthcare Journal to help track your medical information, please contact us at SMPinfo@adsd.nv.gov.

NEVADA SMP – SENIOR MEDICARE PATROL

This project was supported, in part by grant number 90MP0209, from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official Administration for Community Living policy.

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702.486.3403 888.838.7305 nevadaSMP.org

Desert Valley Audiology, founded by Dr. Timothy Hunsaker in 2010, provides a full range of hearing care services.

These include screenings and tests; pediatric evaluations; fitting and programming of top-brand, state of the art hearing aids complete with a manufacturer warranty and full aftercare.

Featuring a team of audiologists and Nevada-licensed hearing instrument specialists, Desert Valley Audiology is committed to helping all ages, from infants to seniors, with their hearing issues, challenges and impairments.

Desert Valley Audiology offers attentive and personalized diagnosis and treatment plans for a wide array of audiological problems, it’s DVA’s goal to meet all your hearing needs, make communication easier and improve your quality of life.

Offices conveniently located in Las Vegas and Henderson.

DESERT VALLEY AUDIOLOGY LAS VEGAS 501 S. RANCHO DR. SUITE A8 LAS VEGAS, NV 89106 HENDERSON 8460 S. EASTERN AVE. SUITE C HENDERSON, NV 89074 702.605.9133 lasvegashears.com

2016

MEDICAL & DENTAL PROFILES

UNLV SCHOOL OF DENTAL MEDICINE UNLV School of Dental Medicine is the only four-year, fully-accredited dental school in the state.

The school offers a pre-doctoral program, three specialty programs, and continuing education programs for dental professionals.

The school’s Faculty Dental Practice is a full-service, private dental practice that offers comprehensive dental and oral healthcare.

Faculty and students provide quality, low-cost care for 50,000 to 60,000 patient visits each year.

The school coordinates and conducts 10 community clinics that offer services to children, women, homeless persons, veterans, and those with HIV/AIDS. For additional details about the school, visit: www.unlv.edu/dental.

For information about becoming a patient, call 702-774-2400.

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS SCHOOL OF DENTAL MEDICINE 1001 SHADOW LN. LAS VEGAS, NV 89106 unlv.edu/dental

RICHARD A. RACANELLI, DMD

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, Dr. Richard Racanelli has been practicing general and cosmetic dentistry for 15 years. Dr Racanelli’s practice, Stunning Smiles of Las Vegas, provides excellence in all phases of dental care for the entire family.

Dr. Racanelli and his team share a philosophy of patient care based on delivering the highest quality dentistry, consistently excellent client service, and the use of state of the art technology to elevate the patient experience.

Dr. Racanelli and his warm and caring staff also place tremendous value on the relationship side of dentistry.

“I’m really proud of my team here at Stunning Smiles. In addition to the best clinical dentistry, we are known for really getting to know our patients and developing rapport and long-term relationships with them.” said Dr. Racanelli “One of our favorite sayings is ‘We Treat People, Not Just Teeth’… Treating patients like family has created a fun and rewarding environment. Our patients know 6410 MEDICAL CENTER ST. we care for them and this comes across in the many SUITE B amazing testimonials we have earned.”

LAS VEGAS, NV 89148 Dr. Racanelli is a Premier Invisalign Provider who 702.736.0016 has developed a niche treating patients with Invisalign LVStunningSmiles.com as a way to improve overall body health. “We know that gum disease leads to heart disease and other long-term medical issues and that having straight properly aligned teeth will reduce the risk for gum disease. There is tremendous value in Invisalign as a tool for health and the team and I love helping patients achieve this benefit.”

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5

e k ta your Arts+Entertainment calendar for august

28 Explosions in the Sky Brooklyn Bowl

You may have heard them on Friday Night Lights — shimmering instrumental guitar music filled with “cathartic mini-symphonies.” Said to be quite emotive live, despite the lack of singing. 7p, $25-$45, brooklynbowl.com

Sundays 23

4

Cat’s Meow

History of Burlesque

Velveteen Rabbit

You read that right — the happening Downtown grog shop will be the setting for an immersive production of Steven Peros’ dark comedy about William Randolph Hearst, his yacht, a murder and Jazz Age excess. Directed

by Troy Heard. (28) 7p, $25$30, brownpapertickets.com/ event/2567899

Infrared,

by Sean Russell Summerlin Library

Clark County Library

2-14

Using a camera that captures infrared and ultraviolet light, Russell shot skewed-light photos of Minnesota, Red Rock and Las Vegas, then transferred the high-tech images onto lowtech wood surfaces.

See for yourself through October 9.

The Smith Center Free, lvccld.org

The Sound of Music If there’s ever a time to burrow into the familiar, pillowy comforts of a sentimental classic, it’s summer. So, come on! Once again the hills are alive! 2p & 7:30p, $29-$127, thesmithcenter.com

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A talk by Burlesque Hall of Fame Director Dustin M. Wax. Come for the va-va-voom, stay for the ooh-la-la. 7p, free, lvccld.org

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ART

A VISUAL LANGUAGE THROUGH AUG. 19 Artist Eric Vozzola’s exhibit features colorful, patterned, surreal and contrasting compositions. Vozzola thinks of his work as connecting to ancient storytelling, such as wall drawings, hunting map carvings, hieroglyphs and other archaic messages that leave behind an aesthetic and a language unique to the artist. Free. Winchester Gallery, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

GARDEN ART EXHIBIT: GREATER ROADRUNNERS THROUGH AUG. 28, 10A-6P Artist Alisha Kerlin’s installation celebrates one of the Southwest’s most well-known birds. Three oversized sculptures of the iconic, long-legged Southwestern cuckoo bird, frozen mid-stride in silver and stucco, are presented in their natural habitat.

Free with membership or paid admission. Botanical Garden at Springs Preserve, springspreserve.org

USUS, GLORIA THROUGH SEP. 9 Artist Christopher A. Jones will install a column in the Rotunda, divided into three independently rotating sections, each festooned with the printed detritus of our lives; torn, reassembled, stenciled and written on by the artist. The rotation of the sections refers to wheels used in ceremonies in various cultures. Free. Clark County Government Center Rotunda Gallery, clarkcountynv.gov

ANCIENT ROME: THE EMPIRE THAT SHAPED THE WORLD THROUGH SEP. 11 Visitors will take a hands-on journey through the Roman Imperial period, exploring military war machines, significant construction inventions

Carole King-James Taylor Live at the Troubadour Friday August 26 at 9 p.m.

Get Ready to Rio! with Chef Hubert Keller

The Presidents: American Experience

Saturdays, August 6, 13 and 20 at 2:30 p.m.

Thursday, August 8 – 11 and August 15-18

Inside Poldark

I Miss Downton Abbey

Sunday, August 21 at 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, August 28 at 7:30 p.m.

VegasPBS.org | 3050 E. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89121 | 702.799.1010 August 2016

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THE GUIDE like pottery wheels and grinding mills, large-scale technical innovations like cranes, water pumps and much more. $10. The Las Vegas Natural History Museum, lvnhm.org

NO ORDINARY LIFE THROUGH OCT. 1, TUE–FRI 12–5P; SAT 10A–3P Artist Kim Johnson is a native Las Vegan who received her BFA degree from UNLV. In addition, she has formally studied human anatomy, environmental science and principles of ecology. Utilizing her knowledge of these subjects, she infuses the imagined into reality to create an otherworldly environment through dreamlike spaces and images. Free. Left of Center Art Gallery, 2207 W. Gowan Road, leftofcenterart.org

THEY SAY AUG. 29–OCT. 14 Chad Scott’s multimedia installation examines the spectacle of the electoral process during a presidential election. In a political environment filled with mixed messages, Scott raises questions about what it means to be informed, what counts as information and where information may be found. Free. Winchester Gallery, 3130 McLeod Drive, chad-scott.com

MUSIC

THE STONE FOXES AUG. 4, 8P Invoking the audience with their commanding stage presence, even jumping down into the crowd if the mood strikes, their fans know they are in for something action-packed whenever the Foxes are on stage.

21+ with valid ID. Free. Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com

OLETA ADAMS AUG. 5, 8P; AUG. 6, 6P The R&B singer performs her Gulf

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War-era hit “Get Here,” along with many other songs across a wide range of styles. $39–$65. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

THE RONNIE FOSTER ORGAN TRIO AUG. 6, 2P Foster, music director for “Smokey Robinson Presents Human Nature,” emerged in the ’70s as a jazz organist on Blue Note and as a sideman on seven of George Benson’s most popular albums, including Breezin’. $10 in advance, $12 on concert day.

Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

THOSE FACHING TENORS AND OPERA INNAMORATA AUG. 7, 2P An exciting new vocal trio led by musical director Maestro Jack Gaughan performing selections from the Rat Pack, Broadway, Popera and tenor hits from the world of Grand Opera. Opera Innamorata is a husband and wife team with a repertoire ranging from Puccini and Verdi to Wagner who will delight you with the romantic side of some of the greatest music ever written.

Free. Summerlin Library, lvccld.org

NEW BREED BRASS BAND AUG. 9, 7P The band lives and breathes the culture of New Orleans, infusing funk, rock, jazz and hip-hop into a custommade enhancement of second-line brass band tradition.

21+ with valid ID. Free.

Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com

narrative and dancing. $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

DAVE DAMIANI & RENEE OLSTEAD - BENDING THE STANDARD AUG. 18, 7P You will hear jazz renditions of The Great American Songbook, preceded by an autograph session for the official SINATRA 100 book with author Charles Pignone (co-president of Frank Sinatra Enterprises). $25–$45. Cabaret Jazz at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

THE FIXX AUG. 18, 7P Formed in London in 1979, their hits include “One Thing Leads to Another,” “Saved by Zero,” “Are We Ourselves?” and “Secret Separation.”

The band features the classic line up of Cy Curnin, Adam Woods, Rupert Greenall, Jamie West-Oram and Dan K. Brown and are heralded as one of the most innovative bands to come out of the MTV era. $27.50 advance; $30 day of show. Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com

DIGABLE PLANETS AUG. 19, 7P Alternative hip-hop trio, Mary Ann “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira, Craig “Doodlebug” Irving and Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler have reunited! $25.

Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com

OH, WHAT A NIGHT!

AUG. 19 & 20, 7P A tribute to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons featuring all of their biggest hits. $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

DAVE KOZ AND DAVID SANBORN: SIDE BY SIDE

AUG. 13, 7P Enjoy a mix of the classic folk and pop hits of Simon and Garfunkel, The Association, Burt Bacharach and many others, along with

AUG. 19, 7:30P Two of the most acclaimed and commercially successful saxophonists in history share the stage for an evening of jazz.

$29–$99. Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

THE GREATEST DUETS OF ALL TIME AUG. 27, 7P A cast of eight singers from the Las Vegas Strip perform the greatest duets of the pop era, such as “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” and “All I Ask of You.” $20. Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

The classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical based on the true-life story of the von Trapp family. Features classic songs such as “Do Re Mi,” My Favorite Things” and the title song. $29–$127.

Reynolds Hall at The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

IMPROV PERFORMANCE AUG. 5, 4P Join us for an entertaining night of Whose Line is it Anyway?-style improv. Our improv players will make you laugh through a series of games in which the audience plays a key role. You will not be disappointed! $7. Winchester

DANIEL BELLONE — AWAKENING THROUGH MUSIC AUG. 27, 8P Sanskrit mantras fused with music for spiritual enlightenment. $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Baobab Stage at Town Square, baobabstage.com

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY AUG. 28, 7P The progressive ambience of early Peter Gabriel, the triumphant romanticism of The Cure in their prime, and the more melancholy moments of Fleetwood Mac all infuse the curious beauty of their newest album, The Wilderness.

Come experience it live. $25–$45.

Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, brooklynbowl.com

A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED HOOTENANNY! AUG. 31, 7P Hickory Wind presents a celebration of 1960s folk music with songs made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary, The New Christy Minstrels, The Kingston Trio and more. $12.

Starbright Theatre at Sun City Summerlin, scscai.com

THEATER

THE SOUND OF MUSIC AUG. 2–7 & 9–14, 7:30P; AUG. 6–7 & 13–14, 2P

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THE GUIDE Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

ANNIE AUG. 18–21, 6P Annie is a spunky Depressionera orphan determined to find her parents, who left her on the doorstep of a New York City orphanage run by the cruel Miss Hannigan. In adventure after adventure, Annie befriends President Franklin Roosevelt; finds a new family and home in billionaire Oliver Warbucks; his personal secretary, Grace; and a lovable mutt named Sandy. $7. Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

MAGIC: A DAY OF DECEPTION AUG. 27, 2P & 7P Magic, illusion, mindreading, comedy, storytelling and sleight-ofhand will be presented by magician Paul Draper and his friends. Fun for the whole family! $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

DANCE

ALL-CITY SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING SHOW: LIVING THE DREAM AUG. 11, 6P See Las Vegas’ local swimmers just before they compete in the 2016 Summer Olympics. The synchronized swimming teams are from Las Vegas, Clark County, Henderson and North Las Vegas.

These teams have worked all summer to perfect their routines and are ready to perform! Free.

Baker Pool, 1100 East St. Louis Ave., 702-229-1532

OUR WORLD IN MANDARIN AUG. 13, 2P The students and staff of our Chinese summer camp present singing, Tai Chi fan dance, the

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lion dance and a short play about protecting our environment — all in Mandarin Chinese. $10 in advance, $12 on concert day. Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

STAR CATCHERS SUMMER RECITAL AUG. 26, 6P The award-winning troupe will celebrate the end of summer with a dance showcase of original choreography in hip-hop, contemporary, jazz and ballet. $7.

Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 McLeod Drive, clarkcountynv.gov

LECTURES, SPEAKERS AND PANELS

THE HISTORY OF BURLESQUE IN LAS VEGAS AUG. 4, 7P As the Burlesque Hall of Fame gets ready to move into its new museum in the Las Vegas arts district, Executive Director Dustin Wax discusses the history of burlesque in Las Vegas from Harold Minsky’s first revues at the Dunes and Lili St. Cyr’s residency at the El Rancho, through the glamour years of the ’70s. Free. Main Theater at Clark County Library, lvccld.org

AUTHOR ROBERT PARKER AUG. 20, 11A Meet author and stroke survivor Parker and hear about his remarkable journey of recovery as he shares his inspirational experience of being left speechless and incapacitated by stroke to successfully writing and publishing books. Free. Summerlin Library, lvccld.org

FAMILY & FESTIVALS

HOT HAVANA NIGHTS AUG. 4, 6–10P The National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement hosts this evening inspired by the

decadent Havana resorts of the first half of the twentieth century.

Guests will celebrate the vibrancy of Cuban culture including its delectable cuisine, tropical cocktails, music, dancing, casino-style games, handrolled Mob Museum-label premium cigars by Spirit of Cuba and more. $69, 10% discount for museum members.

The Mob Museum, themobmuseum.org

BACK-TO-SCHOOL FAIR AUG. 5, 6:30P Bring the family to enjoy a back-toschool fair with a DJ, vendors and a movie in the park. Food trucks will be selling refreshments. Free. Centennial Hills Park South Soccer Field and Amphitheater, 7101 N. Buffalo Drive, 702-229-6154

BACK-2-SCHOOL FAIR AUG. 13, 10A–12P Enjoy free sno-cones, face painting and crafts. Vendors will be on site to help with getting kids ready for school. Free. East Las Vegas Community Center, 250 N. Eastern Ave., 702-229-1515

BEACH PARTY SPLASH AUG. 14, 12–6P Enjoy swimming, games, dancing, treats, prizes, a DJ playing your favorite music and all the splash toys in the pool! $12. Municipal Pool, 431 E. Bonanza Road, 702-229-6309

HIGH ROLLER$ CAT SHOW

AUG. 27–28, 9A–5P Learn about many unique and wellknown breeds of cats, watch judges from around the world judge both pedigreed and household cats, see new and upcoming breeds to TICA, talk to breeders of your favorite breeds of cats and shop for pets from many vendors. $6 adults, $4 under 18, under 5 free. Henderson Multigenerational Center, 250 S. Green Valley Parkway, cityofhenderson.com

R S V P T O D AY !

SUMMER 2016

FUNDRAISERS

BE. AUG. 12, 6:30P Philanthropy Entertainment presents “Be.” — an evening of entertainment to benefit Safe Nest, provider of temporary assistance for domestic crisis.

Enjoy cocktails and a silent auction of local art, restaurant gift certificates, show tickets and much more! $30.

Nicholas J. Horn Theatre, 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave., philanthropyent.com

4TH ANNUAL HAPPY HOUR FUNDRAISER AUG. 19, 4:30P Each guest receives a complimentary drink ticket for a Cosmo, Lemondrop, Apple, Chocolate or Blue Martini.

There will be live entertainment, a silent auction and raffle prizes. Proceeds benefit the Happy Home Animal Sanctuary. 21+. $18. Blue Martini, 6593 Las Vegas Blvd. S., happyhomeanimalsanctuary.org

JOIN THE MOVEMENT GOLF TOURNAMENT

DAT E F R I D AY

D E S T I N AT I O N

SEP. 30

THRU

AUG. 27, 6:30A This fun-filled event was created to bring everyone together to support D E ST.E.M.P.O.’s T I N AT I O N Generation National Youth Fitness Festival. Form a twosome or a foursome and enjoy the great outdoors. Start the day with a continental breakfast, play a round of Shotgun Golf, then finish off with lunch. Raffle prizes and giveaways will also be a highlight of the tournament. $85/golfer. Stallion Mountain Golf Course, 5500 E. Flamingo Road, gentempo.org

S AT U R D AY

OCT. 01

UTAH SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

YOU WILL SEE THREE PLAYS:

Julius Caesar, Murder for Two, The Odd Couple

STRIKES FOR SCHOLARSHIPS AUG. 28, 9A The Epicurean Charitable Foundation program has a unique local focus that is helping to build the economy in Las Vegas by adding highly trained professionals to the field of hospitality management. This event will feature an enjoyable day of bowling, along with an exciting balloon-pop raffle. $35–$800 per team. South Point Casino, ecflv.org

For more information or to reserve your seats, please visit www.npr.vegas

August 2016

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END NOTE #mindfreak

ARE YOU READY?!?!?

Random notes on the state of Vegas spectacle, based on having seen the recent premiere of Criss Angel MINDFREAK Live at the Luxor B y A n d r e w K i r a ly

1. How good is Criss Angel MINDFREAK Live? So good that it apparently tore open a spacetime rift and cannonballed Robin Leach through it, as he declares the show, “The No. 1 Magic Show Of All Time!”

2. Which is to say, inasmuch as you can trust Robin Leach for his critical acumen, not that good. It’s two hours of Criss Angel’s greatest hits (swallowing razors, levitating, making motorcycles appear, sawing women in half ) festooned with flames and leather, and pumped with a suspect urgency that suggests a professional crisis.

3. This isn’t necessarily Criss Angel’s fault.

It probably has more to do with the fact that magic is dead. Sorry! But you know it’s true!

You’ll enjoy MINDFREAK Live for its frenetic bombast if you go in knowing that all the tricks have been done — just the packaging changes. Our era of mythbusters, debunkers and our collective mania for behind-the-scenesy forensic explication has, for better or worse, completely bled the mystery out of things.

(That’s why “street magic” from the likes of David Blaine [and Criss Angel] took off for a while — it was magic temporarily rescued from the suspect visual hyperbole of stage and studio! Then you realized they were all doing the same nine tricks.) The enjoyment of watching magic these days is, at best, a logic-puzzle appreciation of engineering and psychology. (See Penn & Teller.) That said, I felt like kind of a jaded jerk not being more excited during the show; like, every time a trick happened and there was, say, a sexy assistant grinning from inside a plastic box, freshly teleported from the hardcore cosmic plane of DIMENSION

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MINDFREAK, my internal monologue would be all, “Oh, neat ... ish.” Then I went into a self-conscious microspiral of introspective hashtag feels: #issomethingwrongwithme #sojaded #maybethelighthasdied #cansomeonehelpmeunderstand #iwanttobeexcited 4.Criss Angel’s solution to this is to make MINDFREAK Live a show largely about His Story. The pre-show video montage of Angel’s wonder years reveals a bright-eyed boy with a supportive, loving family; a teenager getting his first magic kit for Christmas; a goth scarecrow fronting an industrial band (with magic!); a dark prince of grand illusions with a rock-video emo mane and pneumatic pecs.

You Get to Know Him. (In one segment, he chokes up as he pitches for a pediatric cancer charity, revealing that his 2-year-old son is battling leukemia.) This is worrisome for the ethos of Strip headliners. What does it mean when a marquee show is fundamentally retrospective, gazing backwards fondly upon greatest hits? It means it’s a lounge act, a cover band. Not that there’s anything wrong with a lounge act. When it’s in a lounge.

4.5 Okay, Criss Angel turning handkerchiefs into birds — almost at the pace and pressure of spraying a garden hose, but an invisible magic garden hose that shoots out white birds — was pretty cool. But maybe that’s in part because this comparatively understated, tastefully moody segment dispensed with his usual tropes, which involve vixens, industrial props and stylish gloom. It suggests an alternate path MINDFREAK Live could have taken.

5. Best takeaway psychic souvenir from the show: Criss Angel’s trademark catchphrase, “There’s just one question ... ARE YOU READY?!?!” This, delivered in a pained, genital-scrunching rebel screech. Super-fun to do Rickroll-style at home or at the office. (“Here’s that third-quarter earnings spreadsheet you requested. There’s just one question ... ARE YOU READY?!?!” “My math test was so hard, mom! There was just one question ... ARE YOU READY?!?!”)

6. At the end of MINDFREAK Live, I found myself, weirdly, hoping the tourists thought it was okay, in the mincing way of acknowledging, Alright, so the show’s not mind-blowingly great, but hey, Angel seemed to try hard, invest a lot of effort into it, and though it’s not the best he could’ve done, it represents a plausibly earnest effort ... right? Your mind was freaked a little ... right? Just a little?

6.5. There’s something amiss with Vegas entertainment when it inspires you to mime mental apologies to tourists.

7. Criss Angel: PLAUSIBLE EFFORTFREAK 8. No.

i l lu st r at i o n S C OT T L I E N

Being a patient shouldn’t test your patience.

Health care facilities exist for one reason: to care for people. At Dignity Health Medical Group, we vow to never forget that. That’s why we focus on the little details that make being a patient a lot easier: more-comfortable waiting rooms, shorter wait times–and, of course, great internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatric medicine doctors.

Appointments are available at these locations: Green Valley Henderson 1701 Green Valley Pkwy.

10001 S. Eastern Ave. Suite 10A Suite 101 Henderson, NV 89074 Henderson, NV 89052

Peccole Plaza 8689 W. Charleston Blvd.

Suite 105 Las Vegas, NV 89117

Rose de Lima 106 E. Lake Mead Pkwy.

Suite 104 Henderson, NV 89015

Tivoli Village 400 S. Rampart Blvd.

Suite 240 (Capella Building) Las Vegas, NV 89145

Southwest 8205 W. Warm Springs Rd. Suite 210 Las Vegas, NV 89113

Welcoming new and established patients. For appointments, call 702.616.5801, or learn more about our physicians at dhmgnv.org.

INNOVATION THAT HEALS.

Jessica Gaylor Diagnosis: Breast Tumor

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Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada has helped develop more than 60 FDA approved cancer therapies.

At Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada there is no such thing as a “standard” course of treatment. As an affiliate of The US Oncology Network and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, we have access to the latest innovations in cancer treatment therapies as they are developed.

No matter what you face, chances are we’ve faced it before. And we know the most current and effective individual treatment options that are most likely to be effective for you.

Ask your doctor about Comprehensive. Visit cccnevada.com for more information or call 702.952.3350 to schedule an appointment today.

United in Healing

The US Oncology Network is supported by McKesson Specialty Health. © 2016 McKesson Specialty Health. All rights reserved.