HIV-positive doctor says his dog saved his life

CHICAGO -- Rob Garofalo was devastated. He'd built his medical and research career on helping young AIDS patients. Then he learned he, too, was HIV-positive.

The news came after he already had 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," said Garofalo, who leads 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 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 said. "He made me re-engage with the world."

The doctor, who has helped save many an AIDS patient, knows it sounds a little crazy 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," said 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 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 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 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 Chicago-based writer named Zach Stafford.

It tells the stories of HIV-positive people and their dogs in an exhibit launching in Chicago on Tuesday, which is World AIDS Day, and 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.

"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," said Lynnea Garbutt, the young mom.

She said her wirehaired fox terrier, Coconut, eventually helped her muster the courage to leave an abusive relationship and prepared her to care for her daughter, who recently turned 1.

The child is not HIV-positive, thanks to medical interventions that can prevent the spread of the virus from mother to infant.