24—Cleveland Daily Banner—Sunday, January 3, 2016
www.clevelandbanner.com
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 Chicagobased 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.
JACk, A 2-yeAr-olD male Chihuahua, is looking to be your lap dog. Come and meet him at
Cleveland Animal Control from Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. to noon.
The shelter is located 360 Hill St. Cleveland Animal Control has plenty of kittens. This is Pin Stripe. Come
and meet this wonderful kitten and all of her siblings, who are waiting to be adopted by you.
Jesse Freidin via AP
DAniel CArDenAs poses for a portrait with his dog, a Shiba Inu
named Loki, in Chicago. The portrait is part of the “When Dogs Heal”
project, a photo exhibit of HIV-positive people and their dogs that
opened in Chicago and in New York City. Of Loki, Cardenas says,
“He’s really a symbol of hope, of promise — of a future.”
“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, lesscomplicated 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
20 coal-ash basins classified
as high or intermediate risk
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North
Carolina regulators are proposing that about two-thirds of Duke
Energy’s 32 coal-ash basins be
fully excavated but say further
data is being analyzed for a
determination on several others.
A draft report released
Thursday classified 12 pits at
four plants as an intermediate
risk, meaning they must be excavated by the end of 2024. Eight
pits at four sites had already
been rated as high-risk under a
state law, meaning they must be
dug up by the end of 2019.
Duke
Energy
previously
announced that it planned to
excavate the residue of coal
burned for electricity from 20
basins, but the company’s list
differs slightly from the state’s.
The state says the classifications are subject to a public com-
ment period and aren’t final.
Conservationists
decried
Thursday’s announcement, saying an earlier draft of the classifications identified 27 of the basins
as high-risk. The Southern
Environmental Law Center,
which is involved in lawsuits
seeking tougher enforcement of
environmental laws, obtained the
November draft as part of its litigation.
Frank Holleman, a senior
attorney at the center, said the
revision indicates that leaders of
North Carolina’s Department of
Environmental Quality had political reasons for changing classifications developed by the department’s staff.
“This is simply an example of
politics trumping science and
common sense,” he said in a
phone interview.
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 HIVpositive 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 Fredinspired charity for providing
money so he could buy a muchneeded 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.”
——
Online:
When Dogs Heal: http://wdhproject.org/about/
isAiAh, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier of approximately 3 years, was surrendered to the SPCA. He
caught the eyes of his new family who came all the
way from Nashville to adopt him 28 days later.
Miles, a domestic short haired male, was
owner surrendered to the SPCA. This big hunk of
love was adopted 42 days later by Rebekah
Hatmaker.
These six PuPPies were found in a ditch
with their dead mother by a Good Samaritan who
brought them to the SPCA several days before
Christmas. SPCA staff and volunteers have nicknamed them the "Bubble Puppies," because they
will be in a "bubble" of sorts until their Sarcoptic
mange has cleared up and they each get a negative skin scrape. For the time being, they are not
allowed any visitors as they are highly contagious
for humans and pets alike. Only experienced staff
can handle them or be in their room. The puppies are believed to be four to six weeks of age.
An anonymous individual donated $500 to the
WAllACe, a Boxer mix of approximately 2 SPCA to fund their care and treatment two days
years, was surrendered to the SPCA as a stray. He before Christmas. The SPCA will notify the public
was adopted 45 days later by David Montkahaus. when these babies are available for adoption.
Going on vacation? Your cats can enjoy luxury digs, too
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When
Boris and Anastasia vacation,
they prefer to stay in a deluxe
three-story suite, dine on tuna
mackerel and lobster consommé,
and spend their time on an iPad.
The Russian blue cats spend a
few days to a couple of weeks at
Morris
Animal
Inn
in
Morristown, New Jersey, when
their owners go out of town. And
it’s pretty clear to owner
Shannon Muller, of nearby
Morris Plains, that her cats get
more indulgences at the hotel
than at home.
When Boris and Anastasia get
to the resort, “they barely look
back at us,” she said. “But when
they come home, they are glad to
be home.”
People are pouring more
money into pampering their pets,
including at high-amenity hotels
such as Morris Animal Inn. The
luxury and the costs vary widely
at kitty resorts, but all cater to
cats that are no longer left at
home without care. These days,
they’re getting the same out-oftown treatment as dogs while
people emphasize pet care and
cats become more popular with
help from online videos and TV
specials.
Morris Animal Inn started
boarding cats in the 1980s with a
basic enclosure, litter and food.
It expanded its services because
pet parents are treating their
cats and dogs more like family
and demanding specialized and
customizable services, said
Joann Morris, vice president and
co-owner.
“Our first activity was the
pampered pet session, simulating the love and attention they
might get at home from an independent cat sitter,” she said.
It costs $12.95 a session and
is popular with those who don’t
want to buy a full menu of services. For those who do, package
prices range from $19.95 to
$49.95 per day and vary mainly
by how much one-on-one attention the cat gets.
The most popular is the Purrfect package, built for the most
active animals, which gives cats
lots of personal attention, fivestar fare and even a running
wheel th at looks like a large
hamster wheel. They also get
plenty of time to play with toys,
climb ropes, create art on iPads
by pawing at the screen, listen to
classical music and snack on
catnip.
Kitty TV is always tuned to
something cats like to watch:
butterflies, balls, birds. Once
they’re tired, they head back to
their three-story suites for a
snooze. The rooms offer a birdseye view of the lobby through
clear plastic, wide window seats
and soft pillows — no metal
resembling a cage.
Older cats or those who like to
laze can get cheaper packages
with more sleep time, fewer activities and a premium bed. But
everyone gets maid service and
daily brushing.
Morris Animal Inn isn’t the
only hotel doling out kitty amenities.
The Pawington in South San
Francisco is a 23,000-squarefoot dog and cat day-care and
boarding center. Suites, much
like Morris’, come in packages or
ala carte. Priced at $45 to $65,
they include separate ventilation
systems and hideaway dens for
peaceful rest.
At Whiskers Luxury Cat
Boarding in Georgetown, Texas,
every suite has a 7-foot tree
topped with a kitty skybox. The
owners even promise a family of
finches for cats to watch. Suites
range from $25 to $80 per night,
depending on amenities.
The cat-comfort craze has
even moved into veterinarians’
offices, with a push for felinefriendly, dog-free facilities where
cats are handled more gently
and get calming pheromones,
said Raelynn Farnsworth, a professor at Washington State
University’s College of Veterinary
Medicine.