PJY

Quite a while ago, a friend told me that he always seems to have an idol - someone who currently captures his ultimate respect.

I'm the same way. Some of my idols are friends, people I've met along the way (my current idol is Mary Holmes the coordinator of the UBC Aboriginal Garden - more about that another time maybe). Sometimes my idols are people in the press. One of those was Terry Fox - a nice looking boy my age, bravely making his way across Canada (declining corporate sponsorship). And of course, the heart break when he was forced to stop.

Another of my idols was, as I knew him, PJY. He publicly fought his disease with the aim of educating people about AIDS, which at the time was met with a mix of hysterical fear and extreme homophobia.

Peter was a friend of Ken's and to celebrate the end of medical school a group of about 15 or 20 classmates and various partners (which is why I went along) took to the Gulf Islands in a flotilla of 3 sailboats. It was a fun and memorable trip. My most lasting image of Peter is during our croquet tournament, played - I think - on San Juan island. Peter festooned himself in all things British, sporting a large Union Jack on his chest - quite appropriate for the game, really.

On Friday I attended a showing of The Dr. Peter Series - a collection of segments that appeared every week on the CBC evening news. I don't think I missed one. They were thought provoking and often funny - and I was really proud of him.

At the end of the evening the audience was asked to pose questions or share their own experiences. I would never stand up in front of a bunch of people and do such a thing, but I did want to to share my experience as a nurse at the very peak of the AIDS hysteria, so I'll do it here.

In 1983, as a student nurse, I worked at the Drake Street clinic downtown. At that time they knew of a disease that was affecting gay men - but they didn't yet know how it was transmitted - the nurse there said that there was some speculation that it might be transmitted by steam, since many gay men were frequenting steam baths.

When I graduated later that year, I got a job at VGH on an acute medical floor. One diagnosis that frequently appeared on the charts of young men who were admitted to our ward was fever not yet diagnosed, FNYD.

In 1985, I followed Ken to Montreal, where he was doing his internship. I had an interest in burn care so I got a job at the Montreal General, in the burns and isolation unit, or the pus pit as it was known. Because the ward was entirely made up of single rooms (isolation rooms), we were the first ward to admit patients with known AIDS.

At this time the hysteria was at its height. Nurses were afraid - by that time we knew it was a sexually transmitted blood-born disease (and there were actually quite a few studies out about the virus if people had bothered to read them) and I remember nurses saying that you could get AIDS by touching the patient's IV tubing. Even though I knew that was irrational, I can recall riding home from work on the Metro, wondering if I was going to die.

I also became angry at the ignorance displayed at the hospital, which should have been the place were science-based practice was in place.

I signed on to be the nurse of a patient with AIDS. He was in his mid-20s and when he found out he had AIDS he took an overdose. What happened though, was that he passed out for a very long time (it might have been 30 hours - though I'm not sure) and because he was heavily drugged, he had remained in the same position all that time, cutting off circulation to one of his legs. The end result was that he was admitted with an amputated leg and several pressure sores - and the thing about the stump where the leg was removed, was that it needed to be irrigated several times a day.

Could you get more fear-inducing scenario at the time - needless to say, there were very few who volunteered to look after him. The hospital burned all of his linen that was changed every day - all of it - the whole time he was on the unit, which was months. Even the TV man didn't want to go into the room to fix the TV. I said something to him along the lines of, "You don't have to have sex with him, you just have to fix his TV!"

It was also the only time I ever wanted to get someone fired. Since my patient had tried to commit suicide, someone had to be in his room at all times for the first while, to make sure he didn't try it again. One of the orderlies who was assigned to stay in the room refused to touch the patient. He just sat in the chair for the whole shift saying and doing nothing.

It was some time late in '86, after moving back to Vancouver, that there was a whisper, a rumour, accompanied by a chill of fear that PJY had AIDS and that he was very ill. But he rallied and soon, there he was, in weekly installments, explaining in simple terms what was going on with his disease. To do that, not only did he have to come out to his family, but he also had to come out to a pretty homophobic society.

Peter was the perfect person to tell such a story - he was smart and funny and as a physician, he was able to educate us about AIDS. Things have changed in many ways for the better, and Peter is one of the reasons why.

Check out the Dr Peter Diaries Then and Now.