A Healthy Dose of Compassion : Medicine: Doctor who triumphed over polio is working on an experiment aimed at halting growth of the AIDS virus. Patients say he has a unique understanding of their plight.
Dr. Jeff Galpin is an expert on epidemics. He almost died in one.
And now he’s out to save people from another.
It was the early 1950s, the disease was polio, and Galpin’s doctor warned that he might not make it to the next morning. But Galpin has seen a lot of sunrises since then. And now he’d like to see the sun set on AIDS.
Today, Galpin is a field investigator for a federally approved experiment aimed at interrupting the growth of the deadly virus. He believes a cure is possible; in his unexpected life, everything else has been possible.
This epidemic isn’t much different from the one that attacked Galpin. He too learned to live like a pariah. The paranoia over polio was so deep that in the hospital, his toys were burned for fear of contamination.
Galpin says his struggle gave him empathy, and his patients believe him.
“He understands what it is to be different,” says Michael O’Keefe, a Palm Desert resident who was diagnosed as HIV-positive nine years ago. “A lot of doctors, especially AIDS doctors, are not concerned about the person. He cares how I feel. He’s compassionate.”
Or as John Booker, another HIV patient, says: “You know that he knows you don’t feel good. He’s gone through the same thing. I had a flare-up with my sinuses lately, and he had the same thing. It’s comforting to know your doctor understands.”
Every few weeks, in his Tarzana office, Galpin metes out shots to a pool of 27 volunteers. The genes are culled from an HIV strain at the lab of Viagene, a San Diego biotechnology firm, whose gene therapy program is based on the idea that an AIDS patient’s immune system can be reactivated and even strengthened with an injection of the virus’ own genetic material.
Galpin doesn’t treat his patients differently because they are living on borrowed time. All of us, he says, are living on borrowed time.
And he believes a lot of doctors become too protective. “They maximize the disease instead of minimizing it,” he says. “They create the worst possible scenario. I want people to be in control, to understand that life goes on, that they should do as much, or more. They should look into a future even if there is no future.”
He is optimistic without being a Pollyanna. “I may not save them, but I’ll help them die better, or live better, and that’s important.”
The effects of Galpin’s own encounter with an epidemic are evident. He uses crutches to get around the office. When he’s not working out, his body becomes especially vulnerable to injury. Pain is a frequent companion.
He’s not worried about dying, but he is scared to death of growing more frail than he already is. He just turned 50, and sometimes feels like 100. He falls often and has broken many bones. When he gets sick, he becomes concerned about his breathing, which isn’t very smooth to begin with.
“My biggest fear has always been that I would become dependent on other people,” Galpin says. “Could I remain my own person? The fears I have now are that I’m having such a good time, I’d hate to be more immobilized. I have too much to do. I have lots of things to do before I’m finished.”
Pain, for him, is “my Olympics,” another game to conquer, another opportunity to prove that his mind remains more powerful than his body. “In being weaker physically,” he says, “I have to prove I’m tougher mentally. That doesn’t make it right. It’s not what I recommend to my patients.”
As an 8-year-old in Chicago, he became a prisoner of polio and realized he would never play for the Cubs. That left him two choices: surrender or survival.
He chose survival. He went about it by erecting a fantasy world that couldn’t be compromised by physical limitations. His body was a bust, but his mind burst with activity.
“I could escape into some other place,” Galpin says. “I made my rocking bed into a roller-coaster, my iron lung into a rocket ship, and it all didn’t seem as scary that way.”
He always came back to the real world, though, spending years in rehab to give him as much mobility as possible. He decided he would have a normal life, and that included sports.
Wheelchair basketball, wheelchair football, wheelchair anything--Galpin was game. If he couldn’t be a Cub, then he’d be a stud among his peers, whoever they were. He won all kinds of titles at the University of Illinois, but his greatest athletic achievement was winning a table-tennis tournament against people with no disabilities.
“The other stuff was great, but it wasn’t like beating the normal kids,” he says.
He became such a jock, in fact, that he was put on academic probation for a semester.
Then he decided he’d go to medical school.
“No one thought I was in the right mind,” recalls Galpin. “They had never accepted a severely handicapped medical student in the Big 10.”
These days, he lives with his second wife and their 2-year-old son in a big house in exclusive Hidden Hills. “I wouldn’t give it all up to start over again,” Galpin says. “I’ve been very lucky to get to where I am.”
When he isn’t working, he knows how to play. He goes to countless Dodgers and Kings games.
He also likes to write. Among his finished projects are a science fiction novel and a semi-autobiographical project. But mostly, Galpin is a detective tracking down a killer. Jeff Galpin the doctor is determined to do what Jeff Galpin the child couldn’t. He was helpless then. He’s not now.
“Now I have the tools to play the game.”
