A Personal Account | ZEM Wellness Clinic Altea, Spain
Part Two of Two. Read Part One: “What Hippocrates Started, ZEM Finishes”

I arrived on a Monday. I’d been sick that morning. Nothing that required a doctor’s visit, just my bed and a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. But I got up and boarded the train to Alicante anyway, made it in, and checked into what would become my room for the next six nights: a deluxe room with an outdoor terrace, a view of the Mediterranean, and an outdoor bathtub I’d use four times before the week was out.

I ordered broth for dinner. I was in bed by eight.

By Sunday, I’d done more for my health than I had in months. I know how that sounds. I also know it’s true.

The room change happened the moment I checked in. I’d been assigned a room without a bathtub. I mentioned to the gentleman at the desk — his name was Jacobo — that I have a chronic pain condition and that a bath before sleep is sometimes the only thing that helps. He said: Stand by. He came back with two options. I chose the room one floor up, with the outdoor terrace and the freestanding bathtub that sat beneath the open sky.

The first night, I was too sick to use it. The second, I drew it full and sat there while the sky stayed light past nine.

Every day had a structure. Every appointment informed the next. By Tuesday, I’d been seen by a cardiologist, an integrative medicine physician, a nutritionist, and a regenerative medicine specialist who was also trained as a geneticist and was the most intellectually honest doctor I’d met in years. She told me what ozone therapy does and doesn’t do, which is how I knew I could trust her when she told me what it does.

The ozone itself I’d encountered before — at Palace Merano in Italy, in March of 2024, after which I went skiing for the first time in over twenty-five years. I didn’t work up to it gradually, and I didn’t manage a beginner slope first. I went skiing.

That was possible because something in my body had shifted. I sought it out again at SHA Wellness in Mexico. I sought it out a third time at ZEM and did two sessions.

The sessions here also include the ozone dream chamber, rectal insufflation, and targeted injections at sites of pain. I only opted for the injections, which produce a brief, sharp sensation followed by something I can only describe as the pain putting down its luggage.

The osteopath — Carlos — knew exactly where it hurt before I said a word. Two sessions with the StimaWell diamagnetic pump, working on the thoracic spine to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, and I left both sessions feeling things release that haven’t shifted in years. I’m now looking for this technology in Washington, DC; no luck yet, though he’s promised to help.

Then there was the Brain Gym (yes, that’s what they call it, and it’s accurate). I sat in the RLX Satory chair by Gharieni — different frequencies in each ear — for thirty minutes on a Thursday afternoon. I got up and needed a second to remember what day it was. I’m still thinking about it.

On Thursday morning, I was fairly certain Diane Kruger had checked in.

I was certain enough to be composing my opening line — I’d planned to compliment her on her extraordinary performance in The Bridge — when we encountered one another near the spa pool, where the shower hose very nearly knocked me over, and we both laughed. She was beautiful in that composed, effortless way that’s very European. She was also Anna, from Denmark, who was considerably more interested in commiserating over Trump. It wasn’t the conversation I’d planned, but it was a good one.

One morning, I had breakfast with Claudia Martinez, the head of business development, whom I’d met briefly in Madrid. She’s warm and sharp, I liked her right away. That afternoon, I sat down and wrote her and the commercial director an extensive letter of feedback.

As the days approached the summer solstice, the light lasted forever, arriving before seven and lingering past nine. I worked outside regularly, both on my terrace and one day by the pool. And I felt like a kid again, going to bed while it wasn’t yet dark.

I went to the beach on a Friday afternoon — two hours, a picnic, the water so warm I didn’t want to get out. ZEM organized it without fuss. I came back from floating in the Med rested and a little giddy.

I’d packed dark chocolate from The Newt in Somerset and didn’t resist it once. Still lost weight by the end of the week — the food’s just good, no deprivation required.

I also got my roots done, mostly because of the convenience and the cost.

During the cardiac workup on Tuesday, they did an echocardiogram.

My mother suffered terribly from heart disease from the age of 46. She had her first heart attack when I was 18, another two years later in Soviet Russia. She died 20 years ago, and I feel her with me still, every day.

Given my blood work, weight, and that family history, the doctor suggested I have a cardiologist evaluate me.

I lay in the dim room watching the monitor, and what I heard wasn’t just a heartbeat — it was the sound of my blood moving through all four chambers of my heart. The rushing of it. The specific, unglamorous work of staying alive. I started to feel emotional.

Perhaps that was because I’d read, on the train from Madrid, an essay by the physicist Alan Lightman in The Atlantic called “The Ordinary Miracle of Existing.”

Lightman builds out the math of just how improbable it is that any of us exist at all. Each human female produces roughly three hundred thousand eggs in a lifetime. Each male ejaculation contains roughly three hundred million sperm. The number of unique human beings that could result from any single act of conception runs to something in the range of a hundred thousand billion. And only one of those possibilities became you. He puts it this way: if you took a ruler stretching from here to Pluto, one inch of that distance would represent you. The rest would be everyone who could have existed but never did. Each of us, he writes, has won a lottery with a hundred thousand billion players.

As I lay in that dim room in Altea and listened to my own heart moving blood through four chambers, doing what it’s been doing without my notice or my thanks for sixty years, I held back tears. Not from fear, but from something closer to awe, and something like hope.

My heart is in fine shape.

I arrived in pain, weak, and not knowing a number of things about my body I probably should’ve known by now.

I leave with a complete picture of my current health, a coherent action plan, several new treatments I’m actively pursuing at home, and referrals I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And best of all, the calm that comes from having been so thoroughly looked after.

I was taken care of at ZEM, and I mean to pass that along — I’ll be sending clients here, and I’ll be back myself.

If you want to explore a stay, reach out. I know how to build a week that works.