Millions of people: Martin Delaney and AIDS Activism

In the early 1980s, several of his friends became infected with HIV, and died of AIDS. Though he himself was never HIV-positive, their deaths drew Martin Delaney into the AIDS movement.

When he heard about a cold remedy, ribavirin, that was being smuggled from Mexico because it had been found to strengthen the immune system, Martin made several runs to Tijuana to get some. Soon after, he decided he could be more effective by taking political action.

He launched Project Inform, which started "medically supervised guerilla trials" – community-based studies of the safety and efficacy of drugs that did not have federal approval. It sponsored town-hall-style informational meetings around the country, and set up a national AIDS-treatment hot line.

He "challenged the research and pharmaceutical community in the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic to consult with HIV-positive patients and their advocates" about treatment options, in the words of Project Inform's current executive director, Dana Van Gorder.

Martin died on Friday at age 63, of liver cancer. Just before he died, he received the Director's Special Recognition Award for "extraordinary contributions to framing the HIV research agenda" from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

NIH Director Antony Fauci, MD, said, "Millions of people are now receiving life-saving antiretroviral medications from a treatment pipeline that Marty Delaney played a key role in opening and expanding."

Advice: Like Martin, live a life of political action to help your sick friends.

Read a very different activist’s story.

Thanks to Dennis Hevesi for the source article in yesterday's issue of the New York Times.

He's hiking 2,000 miles: Lou Gehrig's Disease

Ben Davis became committed to fighting ALS (amytrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's Disease) after watching Bill Jackson, a chef at the restaurant he manages, die from the disease. An endurance athlete, Ben is hiking the length of the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail to raise money to fight ALS.

He is going south toward the end of the trail in Georgia. You can follow his progress at www.2175forALS.com

Advice: Get friends like Ben Davis.

Read another ALS story.

Thanks to George Vecsey for the source article in the Nov. 8 issue of the NY Times.

He lost a $25,000 bet: Chewing tobacco addiction

Red Sox Manager Terry Francona was seen in last night's World Series baseball game spitting five times and what clearly looked like brown tobacco juice emerged three times. He knows he has a problem: he lost a $25,000 bet that he could kick his habit by the end of the season. Francona appeared to switch to gum last night.

Watching Francona's toxic brown spit should spur Major League Baseball into a vigorous campaign against chewing tobacco. Joe Garagiola, who has spoken to major leaguers and amateur players about the risks of chewing tobacco, said yesterday that Francona's parents had asked him to talk to their son about his addiction. Garagiola said his message is that chewing tobacco is addictive, causes oral cancer and can cost you your life. "If I were to talk to Terry, I'd tell him to think seriously after the World Series about getting help," he said. "I know a good place, like the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota."

Advice to nervous members of Red Sox Nation: Chew sugarless gum for the tension, and warn your tobacco-chewing friends about the dangers.

Read another of our baseball stories, or read Richard Sandomir’s source story in today’s New York Times.

A steadfast partner: Sobriety and relapse

From Caroline Knapp's memoir:

Michael and I still see each other most nights, but I am taking time to be alone, trying to understand myself as a person a little better before I make any choices about myself as part of a couple.

Choice is the key word here, and it's still a relatively foreign one for me. For the first time the relationship with Michael isn't washed over by waves of alcohol or haunted by Julian; for the first time I feel I'm with him because I've decided to be, not just because I've been buffeted in his direction by circumstances or pain or need. There's great relief in that: I often look at Michael these days with the sense that I'm finally seeing the relationship through glasses that have the right lenses. Sobriety has helped me appreciate his kindness with greater purity and depth, as though it exists in its own right now and not merely as a measure of comparison to Julian. I can't imagine a more steadfast or supportive partner: Michael hasn't had a drink in front of me since I went off to rehab, and he's as bolstering about my sobriety as anyone in AA. These days he does a great imitation of me in the kitchen before a dinner party, compulsively trying to drink a glass of wine and smoke a cigarette and stir a sauce all at the same time, and I appreciate his ability to capture the frenzied insanity of those days and to help me laugh at it too. If I've been through a war, he's been in charge of triage through most of it, and sometimes the gratitude I feel toward him wells up so powerfully I think I'm going to burst.

Advice to drinkers: Find a loyal friend to help you stay sober.

Read one of our stories about a friend as patient advocate, or read more from Caroline Knapp's memoir, Drinking: A Love Story.

I get by it with a little help from my friends: Smoking cessation and patient advocates

What’s the most common source of assistance that adult smokers in America use to quit smoking? Nope, it’s not Nicotine patches, prescription pills, nicotine gum, nasal sprays, inhalers, lozenges, books, pamphlets or videos. Rather, smokers most often relied on the support of family members and friends. One quarter of them (26%) named that, in the National Health Interview Survey, according to a graph in yesterday’s USA Today by Melanie Eversley and Adrienne Lewis.

More evidence of the role of patient advocates from one’s family and social circle…

Advice: Have your family and friends help you stop smoking.

Read another of our stories about the role of a friend as a patient advocate.

Thank God she did: Night shift in the hospital’s intensive care unit

Melinda Henneberger tells the story of her recovery from breast cancer surgery:

My husband wanted to come with me, but I finally persuaded him to stay home, thinking how much scarier it would be for our two kids if we were both gone. But my best friend, Mary, did fly in from Oregon and thank God she did. I was on the table for 12 hours and when I came out, they put me on a morphine drip. Nauseated, I’d start to vomit, then choke. I was thirstier than I’d ever been, but I couldn’t drink anything. Mary was there to feed me ice chips and hold me up when I choked. A few times, we pushed the button for help, but no one responded for quite a while Sometimes they never came at all. If I’d been on my own and choking, I’m not sure how I would have made it through the night.

The night shift staffers were kind and caring, but appeared to be overwhelmed by patients needing attention. I could hear other patients crying out for help that didn’t seem to come. It was horrible listening to them.

Later in the week, when I was able to move around, I fed ice chips to another patient. I stayed up all night with them. It took me half an hour just to get across the room. I was still in a great deal of pain and moving pretty slowly.

The whole thing was Dante-esque.

A spokesperson for the medical center says the hospital assigns one nurse for at least every two patients in the ICU, both night and day.

Melinda’s advice to people having inpatient surgery: By all means, get somebody to stay with you through the night.

Read another of our night stories, or read Max Alexander’s source story in the June 2007 Readers Digest.