Dr. Kayleigh McDonald is a Chiropractor at Mountain View Pain Center, seeing patients at Tenderfoot in south Colorado Springs. She earned her Doctor of Chiropractic at Palmer in 2019 and has practiced in Colorado Springs since. Headaches are a particular clinical interest. No referral is needed, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
Kayleigh McDonald received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Palmer College of Chiropractic (Davenport) in 2019 and began practicing in Colorado Springs shortly after graduation. Originally from Northern Illinois, Dr. Kayleigh started seeing a chiropractor at a young age for corrective care of scoliosis and athletic support. In addition to completing a family and pediatrics rotation during her education, Dr. Kayleigh has additional training and certifications with Activator Methods, kinesiology taping, and functional dry needling. She works with patients of all ages and case complexities and has a passion for treating headaches/migraines. Dr. Kayleigh currently resides in Colorado Springs with her husband Justin.
Not every headache is a neck problem, and Dr. McDonald will tell you if yours is not. But a large share of the headaches people live with for years are cervicogenic, which means the pain is referred from the upper cervical joints and the muscles around them, and those respond to care aimed at the neck rather than at the head. The tell is usually in the pattern: one-sided, worse at the end of a desk day, reproducible when the upper neck is examined, and often carrying a stiff turn to one side that the patient had stopped noticing.
Treating headaches is a clinical interest of hers rather than a line on a list, and the examination is built for it. She also holds certification in Activator Methods and in functional dry needling, which matters here, because the muscles at the base of the skull are often the structures that need attention and are not always reachable by an adjustment alone. Where the pattern points somewhere else entirely, you get told that and pointed to the right place.
The problems she sees most are lower back pain, neck pain, sciatica, herniated discs, headaches and migraines and injuries after a car accident.
Three techniques are used here, and which one you get depends on you rather than on habit. Diversified is the hands-on adjustment most people picture, with the audible release. Drop-table, also called Thompson, uses a table section that drops a short distance so the force needed is much lower. Activator is a small spring-loaded instrument that delivers a single controlled impulse and no twisting at all — which is what makes it the usual choice for someone nervous, someone older, or a joint too irritable to handle more.
Two other things are available alongside: spinal decompression, a motorised traction table used for disc-related leg or arm symptoms, and dry needling for the muscular component that survives the adjustment.
The part that matters most is what happens when Chiropractic is not the answer. Physical Therapy, Pain Management and Acupuncture are in the same building and on the same chart, so a change of direction is a conversation rather than a new referral and another wait.
Dr. McDonald sees patients at Tenderfoot in south Colorado Springs. That page lists the address, the hours and what a first visit involves.
For the rest of the team, see the Colorado Chiropractic providers page, or chiropractic care nearby for how it works locally.
No referral is needed for Chiropractic, Physical Therapy, Pain Management or Acupuncture, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
Mountain View Pain Center is contracted with Medicare and with most major commercial plans, and we also work with personal-injury liens and workers’ compensation. Medicare covers spinal manipulation only — not the examination, the modalities or the therapies around it, which are billed separately. Our team can verify your benefits before your first visit.
Availability changes from week to week, so the honest answer is to ask. Request an appointment online and say you would like to see Dr. McDonald, or call and our team will tell you what is open at Tenderfoot. No referral is needed, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
With some of them. Headaches referred from the upper neck respond well to care directed at the neck, and that group is larger than most people expect. Headaches from other causes do not, and the point of the examination is to work out which kind you have before treating you for the wrong one.
Common signs are pain on one side, a headache that builds through a desk day, tenderness when the upper neck is pressed, and neck movement that has quietly become restricted. None of those is proof on its own, which is why it is examined rather than assumed.
No. Chiropractic at Mountain View Pain Center does not require a referral, and neither do Physical Therapy, Pain Management or Acupuncture. If your own plan requires one, our team will tell you when they verify your benefits.
Medicare covers spinal manipulation only. The examination, imaging and any therapies performed alongside the adjustment are not covered under Medicare for chiropractic, so our team goes through what is covered and what is not before your first visit rather than after it.
Day or night, seven days a week — and we’ll text you back to get you scheduled. No referral is needed, and our goal is to see you within the same week. Colorado scheduling runs through one number for every Colorado clinic: (720) 749-5599.
