Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 5, May 2003

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Cottage Clinic tries to be 'like home'

By MATTHEW PREUSCH

The first sign that Cottage Clinic is not your ordinary doctor's office is Fonzie, a slender black poodle that greets visitors at the door, gentling goading their hands into scratching behind his ears.

Another, said Afia Menke, the clinic's founder, is the "flower fairy," a mysterious individual who has planted petunias and daffodils along the porch, right next to the herb garden.

It's all part of the year-old clinic's carefully crafted aura of comfort. When Menke decided to start her own naturopathic practice two years ago, she originally wanted to make house calls, "like an old fashioned doctor," she said. But billing regulations for health plans made that impossible.

"The next best thing was to make my clinic more like a home," she said.

Two other physicians, Tami Taylor and Christine Bickson, have joined Menke. The trio offer a range of holistic health-care options at their Haller Lake offices, including. naturopathic medicine, midwifery, acupuncture, homeopathy and aesthetician services.

While the majority of Cottage Clinic's patients are women (a framed bra hangs in the restroom), men are welcome, too. The clinic's motto, said Menke, is, "Nurturing health care for women, children and few brave others."

Cottage Clinic recently started a monthly movie series, screening a health-related film the first Saturday of every month. Recent topics include birthing, skin care and vaccinations. After the screenings one of the clinic's doctors or another health care professional answers viewers' questions.

Menke said the film series is meant to be both informal and informational. The cost is $3, and attendees sit in fold-up camp chairs in a carpeted back room of the clinic. The theater shares a space with an exam table and white box that resembles a medieval torture device, which Menke identified as a Russian Steam Cabinet, meant to simulate a fever in a patient for healing purposes.

The film series is part of Menke's philosophy of educating her patients about their own bodies; making them, in a sense, their own physicians. Popcorn and sodas are provided by Menke.

"I have this vision of being an information source on various topics of health, sort of a community service," she said. "I feel like one of the reasons I take a lot of time with my patients is because information is power."

Her philosophy has been molded by her more-than 20 years experience working in natural health care. Her formal education started at Washington State University.

Menke, 50, graduated in 1973 and enrolled at Seattle's Antioch University, where she received her masters in Adult Education and Holistic Health in 1981.

At the time, she said, holistic healing was still a relatively obscure branch of Western medicine, though it has grown in popularity tremendously since then.

"My parents thought I was in a cult," she recalled. "People had never even heard of the word (naturopath). Now, no one even bats an eye."

At the time, Menke also got a massage license, and worked as a masseuse for a while before becoming a "full-time mommy." She has two children; a son, Forest, 19, who attends Western Washington University in Bellingham, and a daughter, Diva, 16, a junior at Shorewood High School in Shoreline. Diva also regularly works at the clinic's front desk.

Once her children were in grade school, Menke, at age 39, decided to go back to school. In 1999, she received her Master's Degree in Homeopathy and Women's Health Care at Seattle's Bastyr University.

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For more information about Cottage Clinic, call 361-2602.