Paintings in Barbara May's two-story home in West Allis depict a cabin in a sunny meadow, an abstract flower in shades of orange and green.

May, 49, created those scenes. Three years ago she played guitar, painted and cleaned homes. Now she uses a walker for balance, fighting spasms in her legs when she stands. Sometimes she struggles just to breathe.

"I don't go anywhere. I don't work anymore," May said. "It feels like I'm wearing a corset. My hands constantly sting. It's hard just to write a couple of checks."

May has severe, chronic spinal disease in her neck, her medical records show. She can walk because two years ago she had urgent surgery to remove discs that were compressing her cervical spinal cord, making it swell with fluid. She also has spinal osteoporosis - weak, brittle vertebrae. Spinal manipulation - commonly known as chiropractic adjustment - can be dangerous for patients with spinal nerve damage or osteoporosis, states the Mayo Clinic website, which offers comprehensive information on hundreds of diseases.

But before May knew she had spinal disease, she spent almost a year in the care of a Milwaukee man named Sik Kin Wu. And May says she paid Wu, a self-described "intuitive healer," to adjust her neck - not once or twice, but 11 times during a year.

Wu, a Shorewood restaurant owner with a history of federal tax fraud, says he can tell what's wrong with people by looking at them. He acknowledged he isn't licensed to provide health care in the United States, instead providing a certificate stating he completed a four-month acupuncture and Chinese massage program in Shanghai.

But a Journal Sentinel investigation found Wu has used spinal manipulation - considered the work of a chiropractor or, in some cases, a physical therapist or credentialed massage therapist - on May and many others for years. By his own account, Wu also charges $350 to put his hand in people's vaginas and rectums to "heal" conditions such as erectile dysfunction and ovarian cysts.

The state Department of Safety and Professional Services wouldn't say whether Wu's activities are legal, but Wisconsin statutes prohibit the unlicensed practice of medicine, surgery or chiropractic care.

May said she sent the department a complaint about Wu over a year ago, but officials said they have no record of it and didn't investigate. Indeed, the department doesn't regulate many alternative providers at all. And its rate of seriously disciplining physicians ranked third-worst in the country last year.

May's story raises questions about who, if anyone, ensures alternative treatments are safe for the nearly one in four American adults who use them.

Was scared

May was trying to start a business with her husband in April 2008. They had no health insurance, so when May began having burning pain beneath her collar bone, she didn't see a doctor.

"I've heard hospitals will get a judgment and take your house away from you," May told the Journal Sentinel. "That scared me."

Then Joyce Goulet, May's mentor in an entrepreneurship group, told her about Wu. "You know, Barb, he fixed my heart," May recalled Goulet saying. That word-of-mouth exchange typifies how clients find Wu. Joyce Hill of Milwaukee recommends Wu and says she's brought "well over 100 friends" to see him in the eight years he's treated her chronic pain.

"He can put a neck in place so beautifully," said Hill.

May and her husband met Wu at his East Garden Chinese Restaurant, 3600 N. Oakland Ave., and followed him to the basement. There, May says, she saw medical books, a skeleton hanging in a corner, and partitioned-off cubicles with exam tables. Wu pressed her spine, twisted and pulled her leg, pushed her pubic bone outside her underwear.

"He massaged the back of my neck and told me to relax," she said. "He whispered in my ear, 'Barbara, just relax,' over and over."

Then, May said, Wu "cracked my neck" fast in both directions. It was loud, but it didn't hurt.

New symptoms

May said her chest pain disappeared after seeing Wu, but about two weeks later her fingers began tingling and feeling numb. So she visited Wu again May 9. He charged $200 to see her the first time, she said, and $40 the second. But this time her symptoms persisted.

"No matter how you look at it, (intuitive healing is) false," said Wallace Sampson, clinical professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford University and former editor-in-chief of the journal Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine. "Even though they believe what they're doing is right, it's intellectually and scientifically fraudulent."

Indeed, there is little proof many alternative therapies work - even though more than 88 million adults use them, based on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2007 National Health Interview survey.

By October, May's arms and legs felt weak. Still lacking insurance, she saw Wu again in November and eight more times over the next five months, she said, providing phone records of calls to schedule appointments. During each visit, she said, Wu adjusted her neck.

By spring, May was struggling to keep her balance when she walked.

She went to an emergency room, providing a false name to avoid a bill. She received no diagnosis. A family practice doctor helped her obtain a free brain scan. The normal result ruled out multiple sclerosis. She refused other tests, telling the doctor she couldn't afford them.

May last saw Wu in late April 2009, nearly a year after her first visit. She later began having trouble controlling her bladder. That summer she could no longer work. Her low income qualified her for BadgerCare, which covered her visit to a neurologist.

Physician Wendy Peltier admitted May to Froedtert Hospital, where a spinal MRI revealed arthritis and two herniated discs in May's neck were causing stenosis (narrowing) of her spinal canal. The resulting compression was severely damaging her spinal cord. Six days later, a surgeon removed the herniated discs and inserted bone grafts and a metal plate to stabilize May's spine.

Months of rehabilitation followed. And then the questions began.

Seeking a reason

Surgery and physical therapy improved some of May's symptoms. But she kept wondering how she'd become ill. She said she had no family history of neurological disease and couldn't recall an injury. She began thinking about Wu's spinal adjustments.

"Every time I saw him, it knocked me off my rocker," she said. "I would have a feeling like a band around my head, and a buzzing that went down from my neck to my chest, body and knees."

May asked her physicians if Wu's manipulation caused her neurological symptoms. None said yes, but a note by Peltier in May's medical record shows she thought they could have worsened them.

"I am most worried about a cervical disc with stenosis that may have been aggravated by her chiropractic therapy," the neurologist wrote in June 2009.

Russ Leonard, executive director of the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association, said chiropractors know not to apply force when patients have serious spinal disease.

"If you have an individual without this training doing this, the results can be catastrophic," he said.

Wu no longer works out of his basement. He and his daughter, licensed massage therapist and acupuncturist Judy Wu, now run Eastern Wisdom Health Clinics, LLC, a set of rooms connected to the restaurant. Its website doesn't refer to him by name, but a linked blog of client testimonials does.

In an interview, Wu admitted he has no health care license - and initially maintained he doesn't need one.

"My daughter has a license, and I'm almost retired," he said. In the same interview, he said he sees so many clients he doesn't need to advertise.

Wu also said he doesn't manipulate people the way a chiropractor does. But eight of 11 current and former clients interviewed (five referred by May, six by Wu) said Wu adjusted their spines.

"He gives a very rough chiropractic treatment," said Henrietta Koch, who saw Wu at May's urging. "I've never been to another chiropractor like it."

"He twisted my legs and it was very painful," said her husband, Douglas Koch, who saw Wu for peripheral neuropathy. "I nearly fell off the table afterwards."

The couple said Wu told them his certification was pending and was only a technicality.

But clients such as Tod Hoopes of Milwaukee considered Wu a "genius" with a "diagnostic gift."

Hoopes said he doesn't care that Wu has no license. "I take it as a very informal situation."

Penetration technique

State law prohibits the unlicensed practice of medicine and surgery, which it defines to include penetrating "the tissues of a human being" to treat disease.

Yet Wu said he puts his gloved hand in clients' rectums and vaginas, a self-taught method he said helps reproductive disorders, cluster migraines, epileptic seizures and Parkinson's disease. He taught Judy Wu to do it, too, and she confirmed she uses the technique.

May said she allowed Wu to manipulate her vagina and rectum after he told her it would help the numbness in her limbs and what he considered her "prediabetic" condition. She teared up when discussing it.

Sasha Kromraj of Milwaukee said she saw Wu in 2008 along with her mother, who is May's close friend. When Kromraj told Wu she had endometriosis - a painful condition in which uterine tissue grows outside the uterus - she said he wanted to put his fingers in her vagina.

"He kept pushing me, and I said no," said Kromraj, 22. "I said it a few times and then he backed off."

Wu said he began the practice after reading in a medical book that rectal manipulation can fix broken tailbones.

"I thought I could not feel anything from inside," he said. "But I felt a lot of things wrong inside there, and I started healing everything."

Michael Kuranz, whom Wu referred to the newspaper, said he felt an "incredible lightness" after Wu massaged his prostate gland. Another client, a Milwaukee woman who asked to remain anonymous, said Wu's vaginal manipulation cured her uterine fibroid tumors.

"I had a second test, and they were gone," she said.

Uterine fibroids and ovarian cysts - which Wu also says he can heal - can diminish or disappear without treatment, said Brenda Jenkin, gynecology professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

And doctors say conditions such as back pain can wax and wane, with many treatments failing to address underlying causes.

It's not all quackery

Not all alternative care is quackery.

For example, peer-reviewed studies suggest mindfulness meditation can prevent recurrent depression and that the Alexander Technique - a mind-body practice to improve posture - reduces back pain.

But alternative therapies often lack scientific evidence, said Sampson, the Stanford professor.

"It's unfortunate that people, before they would go to someone like (Wu), would not ask him to prove it," he said. "Prove you can do what you say you do."

Several factors can drive consumers to seek alternatives to conventional medicine. When a person's symptoms cause worry, Sampson said, he or she might avoid a medical diagnosis and embrace false hope in a cure, thereby delaying effective treatment.

And while physicians' ability to understand diseases has improved markedly in the last century, the U.S. health care system doesn't adequately emphasize wellness or patients' needs, said Timothy Bartholow, physician and senior vice president of the Wisconsin Medical Society.

"Part of the (alternative care) industry may well be thriving on that alone," he said.

The Centers for Disease Control survey also found that when people can't afford conventional care, they're more likely to seek alternative treatments, as May did.

"If somebody is being threatened with the loss of their house, what are they to do?" said Bartholow. "In my own practice (in Sauk Prairie), we would have people choosing between their insulin and hamburger."

Confronted Wu

Several months after her surgery, May went to Wu's office to tell him she thought he'd harmed her. She said Wu first denied adjusting anybody's neck, then said if he adjusted hers, it was "oh, so gentle."

May asked for copies of her treatment records.

She said Wu told her he'd look for them and left a message saying she could pick them up. But then he called again, she said, and told her he'd lost some records when his basement flooded and couldn't give her the rest because his attorney said not to.

In an interview, Wu first said he wasn't sure he remembered May. Then he said his techniques had changed and that she'd had neck problems when she first saw him.

May denies having neurological symptoms before seeing Wu.

Wu said a flood did destroy some of his files, but produced a copy of a treatment sheet listing May's name and visits on April 28, May 9 and Nov. 9. He said a lawyer told him not to give it to May.

"Why would I give her records if she would sue me?" he asked.

State law gives patients the right to copies of their medical records except in some cases when they're receiving residential mental health treatment, said Stephanie Smiley, Department of Health Services spokeswoman.

May said she contacted eight attorneys about filing a lawsuit against Wu, but none would take her case because she didn't have proof she'd seen him.

Wu said he didn't know patients have a legal right to their records.

"She didn't tell me before to stop it," he shouted. "She told me nothing. Every time I treated her she always felt good. She felt better."

Wu, who served an 18-month federal prison sentence for income tax fraud in the mid-1990s, later asked the newspaper to write he reports income from clients as "massage" on his tax returns.

Probes take months

The state Department of Safety and Professional Services regulates 132 credential types - including interior designers, manicurists and peddlers - but not alternative providers like homeopaths or naturopaths.

The department and its associated boards regulate the state's licensed health providers, but investigations can take months, with few serious disciplinary actions.

In 2010, 21 full-time staff processed complaints about 1,338 people in 15 health care professions that include 122,000 licensed providers, according to department data. Yet the department investigated only half those complaints, and as of July 19, had suspended or revoked just 27 licenses.

The department also investigates people who practice any of the covered professions without the appropriate license or credential.

Under state law, it can issue an injunction requiring such people to stop. If they don't, it can fine them up to $10,000 per day, spokesman David Carlson wrote in an email. Local district attorneys or the attorney general's office also can issue criminal charges. But since 2005, the department has investigated just three of 20 complaints about people practicing chiropractic without a license and so far hasn't taken action against any, Carlson wrote.

May said she filed a formal complaint about Wu practicing without a license in February 2010. She provided the newspaper a copy of the form, dated February 2009. She said she was taking narcotic pain medications at the time and that this led to her misdating the form.

She called a few months later, she said, and was told the department hadn't yet processed her complaint.

Department officials said they have no record of ever receiving a complaint against Wu, but acknowledged sometimes losing complaints.

May's balance has improved since her surgery. But she still uses a walker and said muscle spasms and other symptoms have left her unable to work.

She still hopes the state will stop Wu.

Two weeks ago, she said, she mailed the department a copy of her original complaint, along with a new one - sent by return receipt.

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Give your health care provider a checkup

Here are some things you can do to learn more about your health care provider.

See if your health care provider's license is current:

online.drl.wi.gov/LicenseLookup/IndividualCredentialSearch.aspx

Search for disciplinary actions by board or profession: online.drl.wi.gov/orders/searchorders.aspx

File a complaint with the state Department of Safety and Professional Services: www.drl.wisconsin.gov/section.asp?linkid=16&locid=0