A former patient of the doctor charged with supplying “Friends” star Matthew Perry with deadly amounts of ketamine recalled an “incredibly odd” visit with the crooked physician — who was the only person in his office and gave her “the creeps.”
Katy Forrester, an editor at The US Sun, said she had visited Dr. Salvador Plasencia — also known as “Dr. P.” — at his urgent care clinic just last month to seek help for a kidney infection.
“He’d given me the creeps,” she wrote of the strange appointment for the outlet.
Plasencia, 42, was one of five people charged in Perry’s death on Thursday for allegedly ripping off the actor for thousands of dollars for ketamine that he also helped inject in the 54-year-old’s final days before his fatal overdose last October.
Forrester and her partner, not knowing the doctor’s hidden past, made an appointment and were greeted by a “stoic” looking receptionist when they checked in.
“After filling out forms and heading into a private room, the same man then appeared in a white coat and joked he was not just the receptionist, he was also the doctor,” she wrote.
She said she found it “incredibly odd” to find just a single person running a doctor’s office and compared it to “a scene from a psychological thriller where the local barman is also the postman and the priest.”
But she and her partner shrugged it off. Plasencia examined her and wrote her a script for some new antibiotics. When they went back to the reception area, the journalist said she tried to make small talk about him being the only person there, which is when the interaction started to feel “off.”
She and her partner left both feeling uncomfortable about the whole situation.
Then, on Thursday, Forrester learned of Plasencia’s arrest.
“When I realized who I’d been treated by and read the sweeping indictment, I felt slightly sick, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end,” she wrote.
“You are meant to be able to trust your doctor and those who treat you in an emergency, and it’s unsettling to think what he may have been up to after hours,” Forrester added.
She returned to the urgent care on Friday and was met by a sign on the door that read, “Clinic will be closed for today.”
In the two months leading up to Perry’s Oct. 28 death, Plasencia and another doctor who was charged — Mark Chavez — allegedly supplied the actor with about 20 vials of ketamine in exchange for around $55,000 in cash, despite recognizing his addiction was spiraling out of control.
Plasencia had a license to prescribe and administer the powerful tranquilizer, and once texted Chavez, “I wonder how much this moron will pay” as his drug abuse worsened. He also offered to be Perry’s exclusive hook-up for the tranquilizer.
Just two weeks before the “Fools Rush In” star died, the doctor appeared to acknowledge the severity of his troubles when the actor suffered an episode in which he appeared to “freeze up” and his blood pressure skyrocketed after he was administered a “large dose” of ketamine.
“Let’s not do that again,” he texted Perry’s assistant of 30 years, Kenneth Iwamasa, after the scare.
At the time of his death, Perry had already been undergoing weeks of ketamine therapy for depression. The desperate actor had reached out to Plasencia when the physicians at the clinic where he was being treated refused to increase his ketamine injections, prosecutors said.
In addition to Plasencia, Chevez and Iwamasa, two alleged dealers Erik Fleming and Jasveen Sangha — known as a “Ketamine Queen” of Los Angeles — were also charged in connection to the A-lister’s overdose.
Plasencia is charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine, seven counts of distribution of ketamine and two counts of altering and falsifying documents or records related to a federal investigation.
