HIV-positive doctor says his dog saved his life
CHICAGO (AP) — Rob Garofalo was
devastated. He'd built his medical and research career on helping young
AIDS patients. Then he learned that he, too, was HIV-positive. The news
came after he'd already survived kidney cancer and a breakup with his
longtime partner.
Try as he might, the doctor could not heal himself, at least not emotionally.
"I
couldn't afford myself the same compassion that I'd spent a career
teaching other people to have," says Garofalo, who heads the adolescent
medicine division at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. At first, he
told almost no one about his HIV status — not even his own elderly
mother, who sensed that her son was struggling mightily during a
Christmas visit in 2010.
"You
can tell me that everything is OK, but it's not," she said, cupping her
hands around her son's face at the end of his trip to his native New
Jersey.
Garofalo recalls
crying on much of the flight home to Chicago in a catharsis that led him
to an unexpected decision, one that helped him in ways no human could
and ultimately led him to a new role in the HIV community.
He got a dog.
It was a little Yorkshire terrier he named Fred. And everything changed.
"I had this little bundle of, like, pure joy," Garofalo says. "He made me re-engage with the world."
The
doctor, who's helped save many an AIDS patient, knows it sounds a
little crazy that the companionship and simple needs of a pet could help
him cope with his disease and pull him out of depression.
"But I'm not exaggerating when I say that he saved my life," says Garofalo, who'd considered suicide after his HIV diagnosis.
His
journey back to life started with simple things. He had to leave the
apartment where he'd isolated himself to buy food for Fred. He had to
talk to the many people who wanted to stop and pet the little dog.
Garofalo also found comfort when he'd awaken with one of his frequent
night terrors and have Fred to snuggle.
Eventually, Garofalo sought counseling and told his mother and
friends about his HIV status. As his energy level grew, he also started a
charity using Fred's image to raise money for programs that help
HIV-positive teens.
He
continued to share his story, even with strangers on Fred's charity
website. And Garofalo began to realize that he was far from the only
person with HIV — or any number of other diseases — who'd been helped by
a dog. And in that human-canine bond, he saw new purpose and an
opportunity to grow his charity's reach.
He
began a project called "When Dogs Heal," with the help of a dog
photographer named Jesse Freidin and a Chicago-based writer named Zach
Stafford. It tells the stories of HIV-positive people and their dogs in
an exhibit launching in Chicago on Tuesday, Dec. 1, which is World AIDS
Day, and also in New York City two days later.
Participants
whose images are in the show include a young mother from Los Angeles
who was born with HIV, a Chicago man who tested positive after he was
gang raped, and an HIV-positive man in San Francisco who quit dealing
drugs so he could provide a more stable life for himself and his newly
adopted dog.
"I would be in bed and not want to get up, but . this
little doggy was whining, licking my neck and needed to get outside. I
had to get up," says Lynnea Garbutt, the young mom. She says her
wirehaired fox terrier, Coconut, eventually helped her muster the
courage to leave an abusive relationship and also prepared her to care
for her daughter, who recently turned 1. The child is not HIV-positive
thanks to medical interventions that can now prevent the spread of the
virus from mother to infant.Though many participants' stories have difficult elements, Freidin, the photographer, said the exhibit also shows "something joyful."
Daniel Cardenas, an HIV-positive Chicagoan who'll appear in the upcoming exhibit with his dog, Loki, certainly sees that in his dog.
"He's really a symbol for me," Cardenas says, "a symbol of hope, of promise, of a future."
Hope is a relatively new chapter in the AIDS fight. In decades past, doctors, including Garofalo, were desperate to save people with HIV. Now, with new, less-complicated treatments, many people are living healthy, productive lives with the AIDS virus.
Stigma is still an issue, however.
Even a matter of months ago, and although he'd gone public with his HIV status, Garofalo did not want to talk about how he suspects he contracted the virus because he doesn't want to inadvertently imply that people who've gotten the virus through drug use or consensual sex deserve to be shamed.
He was
sexually assaulted in November 2009 during a trip to Washington, D.C.,
and although he's not entirely sure he got the virus then, it fits with
the timing of his diagnosis.
"I
wasn't perfect. I could've gotten it another way," says Garofalo, who
concedes that his sometimes self-destructive downward spiral had begun
much earlier, when he was diagnosed with renal cell cancer a decade ago,
just after he'd turned 40. "The truth is, I was a mess even back then,"
he says.
Having recently
turned 50, and with all he's been through, he says he's grown a lot —
and now sees his HIV patients in a much less academic manner.
"Now I approach it in a very different way because it comes from my soul," he says.
Even amid his personal
distress, he says he somehow managed to keep his career on track. He now
heads the Center for Gender, Sexuality and HIV Prevention at Lurie
Children's Hospital.
"Rob is a
hero," says the Rev. Stan Sloan, CEO of Chicago House, an organization
that provides homeless services to HIV-positive people and others. "And
Fred has been a critical part of that."
An
HIV-positive teen in Los Angeles recently wrote Garofalo a letter to
thank him and his Fred-inspired charity for providing money so he could
buy a much-needed pair of shoes.
"The initiative you started because of a dream, a prayer and a dog has blessed me," the teen wrote.
Garofalo
says he owes it all to Fred, whose portrait with his owner will appear
in the exhibit. It is an impact his mom saw take hold almost immediately
when her son visited with Fred in the spring of 2010, after that
Christmas visit.
Even now, Garofalo gets emotional when he tells the story of coming downstairs to find his mother cradling the dog.
"My mom was . telling him that he was a miracle," Garofalo says, his eyes reddening, "because he had brought her son back."
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