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HIV Healthcare Is a Small World Whose Practitioners & Clients Have Big Hearts.
One Voice by Sherri Lewis
I first met Judy Currier in the eighties. I was newly diagnosed HIV-positive and needed to get some tests done at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. Judy was a young resident there; I was her young patient. It was a brief encounter—an intake and a blood draw. The rest of my medical care would continue with my primary care physician who was an internist at Mass General Hospital. I didn’t see Judy again.
By 1991 my father was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called myelofibrosis. His doctors recommended a specialist at the Mayo Clinic. A doctor by the name of Murray Silverstein. So off we went, my father, brother, and I to the deep freezes of Minnesota to see Dr. Silverstein. Here I was in the most famous diagnostic hospital in the world and I thought, surely, they must have something here about HIV that nobody else has. When I asked Dr. Silverstein he said it would take the next generation to figure that one out and that his work was already done. He went on to tell me that his daughter was a doctor and was working with AIDS patients in Boston. Little did I know that I had just met Judy Currier’s father and visited the very place where she grew up.
By 1999, my father had passed away, my health had changed as my HIV progressed and fortunately combination therapies were available and effective for me. I also found myself single for the first time living with HIV. I decided it was time to make a move. My destination: Los Angeles, California. I asked my doctor, “Who should I go to for my continuing healthcare?” She said without hesitation, “Dr. Judith Currier at UCLA.” I remember thinking that name sounded familiar but didn’t put it together.
I arrived at the UCLA AIDS Institute’s Clinical AIDS Research and Education (CARE) Center and barely had any time to catch my breath when a familiar face walked in the room. Though the dots had not connected yet, during the intake process it became clear. My father, her father, our journey. I felt safe knowing I was in good hands.
Dr. Judy Currier is one of the directors of the CARE Center and is part of a new generation of doctors, the first generation of HIV/AIDS specialists. And like her father, she is one of the best and brightest in her field, along with her colleagues, Dr. Ronald Mitsuyasu, director of the UCLA CARE Center, Dr. Margrit Carlson, CARE clinic director, and clinic physicians Dr. Ardis Moe, Dr. Ross Cranston, Dr. Jennifer Sayles, Dr. Raphy Landovitz, and Dr. Peter Anton. The CARE Center has moved from the UCLA campus, where its health professionals have been seeing AIDS patients since 1981, into a new clinic space off-campus. With the help of Dame Elizabeth Taylor, who has graciously lent her name to a campaign to raise an endowment for the CARE Center, they hope to increase their faculty, clinical staff, study coordinators, and administrative staff.
Setting up appointments with Mike Marcial, who started as a temp and charmed his way to full-time status, or Meldie Asis, the CARE clinic manager, makes scheduling stress-free. Rosa Amgwert, RN, and I exchange stories about her two Maltese dogs and my Bichons. Dr. Ardis Moe has a dual appointment as an AIDS specialist at UCLA CARE Center and at a Ryan White-funded HIV clinic in South Central Los Angeles, T.H.E. Clinic, Inc.; her interests include complications of HIV and HCV, as well as treatment options for lipodystrophy. Speaking of which, the first clinical trial I participated in was for lipodystrophy. It was time-consuming and difficult for me to tolerate, but having physician assistant and study coordinator Maria Palmer made it all okay. I did get my waist back, but my fingers and feet swelled up! Most recently I signed on for a much simpler study, and met the very entertaining Maricela Gonzalez. She gets most of her clever ideas from her role model, Lucille Ball. After I drank that thick, gooey drink I felt like I was in the Vitameatavegamin episode! Now that’s my kind of clinic! My friend and fellow outreach coordinator for the CARE Center, Deon Claiborne, has been doing community outreach, education, and trial recruitment for nineteen years.
Breaking new ground is nothing new for the UCLA CARE Center. So partnering with here! Networks, America’s premium gay television network, as it launches the first ever Virtual AIDS Quilt is right on time for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the AIDS pandemic and World AIDS Day. “The tremendous progress that we have made in improving the treatment of HIV infection would not be possible without the efforts of the people who volunteered to participate in the clinical trials done over the past twenty years,” states Judith Currier. “The research volunteers are the true heroes of this epidemic.”
Log on to www.uclacarecenter.org for more information about HIV/AIDS services.
Sherri Lewis, aka Beachfront, is an HIV-positive actress/singer, writer, and nationally known AIDS educator. She is a public speaker for UCLA and Being Alive, and serves on Women At Risk’s board as the organization’s Outreach Coordinator. Reach her by e-mail at SlewisWAR@aol.com.
October 2006
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