Sandra, I'm going to make rounds.

Chris...tine?

Christine?

Where's my team?

Do you know where my team went?

Good match.

Did I lay down my papers?

Oh, wait a minute... Oleske: Oh, I put them here.

Mom: Where's your black bag?

Oh, Jeez... Hello, again, I want to listen to you.

I can't have all that noise.

Fauci: Each field has people who are the pathfinders.

Oleske: You don't like that idea.

Fauci: And Dr. Oleske is clearly one of the pathfinders of the HIV AIDS pandemic.

Oleske: I like the one with the panda.

Fauci: Jim is the example of what we call the physician scientist.

The physician scientist is a very interesting breed, and that was one of the things that Jim did well.

Oleske: Hello.

iPad Game: Hello!

Fauci: Someone who not only takes care of patients, Oleske: You copying me?

iPad Game: You copying me?

Fauci: But also tries to seek answers to difficult problems The hope with a child is if you help the child and solve a problem, it has a lifetime of achievement ahead.

I went into pediatrics because I love children, and I thought I would help children, and I wasn't prepared to go to funerals so many, at least in the beginning of my career.

When you're a new doctor, there's so much fear that you're going to hurt somebody that you don't know enough.

You never think you know enough.

Early in the AIDS epidemic, I was seeing so many kids getting infected with really horrible organisms and dying very quickly.

one of the bad diseases was called lymphocytic interstitial pneumonia.

I never heard of LIP.

I'd never heard of lymphocytic interstitial pneumonia before.

I knew nothing about it, and now I had twelve cases of it.

The world's expert was Dr. Tina Bilamon and she says, hold on, Dr. Oleske I'm considered the world's expert on children with LIP, and I had one case.

You have twelve cases right now, so you're the world's expert on how to take care of and diagnose and treat LIP.

And I was still young in my career and I remember saying to myself.

I don't want to be the world's expert on anything.

"music playing" OK, hi guys.

You have my bunny you have my bunny, I have the same one.

We match, huh?

Boy, someone's smiling and you've got your teeth.

I probably wanted to be a pediatrician before I wanted to be a doctor.

I didn't know you had to be a doctor to be a pediatrician.

I love working with kids.

Got your wabbit to take home?

Your wabbit.

Father: She likes that rabbit.

Oleske: Yes, she likes the rabbit.

Father: She loves that, yea.

Oleske: What a beautiful smile.

Father: She holds that rabbit.

She's going to be a beautiful, beautiful person.

I heard you guys were in the lounge and I was waiting here.

Resident: First patient actually is one of Dr. Desposito's Oleske: Another sickler.

We talked about sickle cell enough with the students.

Oleske: Have you picked up patients yet?

Students: Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, you did.

The reason I went into pediatrics was because there's three ways to, I think, get out of this poverty that affects so many people in inner cities.

You have to be healthy enough, you have to be educated enough and there needs to be jobs out there when you finish your education.

I'd just finished my training in immunology and infectious disease at Emory University.

I came back to Newark because where else could you make such an impact?

Where was the need greater?

Newark in the late sixties had been pretty much decimated by the racial riots.

Tremendous poverty and drug use.

And the majority of the children and families we took care of came from what is called the central ward of Newark, where the social and economic problems were the worst, where access to health care was poor.

Jim was the only pediatric infectious disease immunologist in the region.

I went into immunology because I wanted to bring back to Newark bone marrow transplantation for children who had in rare but inherited diseases.

As things happened, I never got a chance to do that because starting in 78, I was seeing so many kids that I thought may have immunodeficiency, but it wasn't anything that was in the books.

I had these very, very sick kids who were dying.

I was dealing with trying to treat PCP, pneumonia, wasting syndrome, vomiting, diarrhea, pain, all going on.

At the same time.

I'm trying to figure out why they're getting the infection.

Jim came to me and said, This is what is going on in the children and they have severe immunodeficiency and they have these severe infections.

And we were wondering at that time whether this is some sort of congenital immune deficiency syndrome because that will be the most common thing.

Ieshia came in in the early eighties, I think, before she was three months old.

It was clear that she was part of this new group of children and I was seeing having chronic diarrhea, mouth sores, thrush and infection after infection, some of which required her going to the hospital because she would have pneumonia.

And here she was, identical twin of Tyeshia who looked perfectly healthy, and that really didn't make sense to me.

Ieshia was probably one of my most important patients because it absolutely demonstrated to me that we weren't dealing with rare congenital immune defects.

You can't have identical twins, one having a progressively bad disease with recurrent infections and the identical twin staying perfectly healthy.

I was convinced that the new disease they were describing in adults, gay men and IV drug users had to be related to these kids, but I couldn't prove it.

My colleagues were concerned for me because I was working long hours and they thought maybe I was chasing after something that just didn't exist.

Probably the most famous doctor in immunology is Dr. Robert Good.

And he was at Sloan-Kettering for a while, and I used to bring my cases over to him because there was no one else in New Jersey that was doing immunology like I was.

And so when I started bringing over the AIDS cases, he was someone I really respected and he thought I was crazy.

Federal health officials consider it an epidemic, yet you rarely hear a thing about it.

At first, it seemed to strike only one segment of the population.

Now, Barry Petersen tells us this is no longer the case.

It appeared a year ago in New York's gay community, then in the gay communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Now it's been detected in Haitian refugees.

No one knows why.

And in heavy drug users, especially in New York City, no one knows why.

And in some people with hemophilia, a disease that prevents blood clotting so the patient needs frequent blood transfusions.

Why?

Joshi: We were thinking of a disease which could not be diagnosed with a definitive laboratory test.

We were talking about a disease, the cause of which was not known.

And the question was how could this disease be transmitted from adults to children?

Usually, diseases the babies got from their mother's, infectious diseases.

The mother had it and was sick, but these mothers were still healthy, who had babies with AIDS.

Boland: They were literally shipping specimens down to CDC and NIH places like that to try to figure it out.

There was one child, a little boy Georgie, who came in really sick.

The ICU managed to pull him through.

He'd get a little bit better, but he would never get well.

Jim was consulting, calling around the country, finally got NIH to accept the child because they would take difficult cases in and try to test them and make diagnoses, They sent him back and said, We don't know what's wrong with him.

Mom, the baby doesn't need to be in isolation anymore.

That's what we were talking about.

I'm sorry.

That's why I walked out because I was going to.

I thought, maybe I have to put a gown on, but I don't.

OK?

All right.

Well, you know, as long as you use that new special feeding and formula Oh, someone's jumpy there.

one day, I got to take care of a very sick infant who had some terrible form of pneumonia .

She was on a respirator and she was deteriorating.

It was a moment that was shocking for the nurses and myself because up to then we never saw an infant come in so sick.

And after a very short period of time, her heart just stopped.

The father was there waiting outside the unit, which had a window, and I could just see his face.

To this day in shock, I went out and told him that his daughter died.

I didn't know why she died.

She had a terrible pneumonia that I was able to call in the next day to tell him it was PCP, and that I thought she probably was born with some horrible immune deficiency that she would die so quickly.

All righty.

Did you lose my rabbit?

Oh boy.

Mother: No it's over there.

Oleske: Oh I did give you the rabbit.

I thought, maybe sometimes I don't always remember to do that.

Pediatricians are very good at drawing blood because babies have small veins.

I.V.

drug abusers are very difficult to get blood so that when they were having real trouble getting blood from an IV drug abuser in the adult clinic, they would sometimes call me down and say, Jim, could you come and get the blood?

We can't get it.

And one afternoon there was an adult drug user who was losing lots of weight and looked very sick.

He looked at me and he says, You don't remember me, do you, Dr. Oleske?

And I looked at him and I said, Well, I'm a pediatrician, I take care of kids, I'm just helping out here.

And he says, No, no, no.

Remember, you took care of my little girl six months ago that died of that strange pneumonia PCP that you said you saw in kids who don't have an immune system.

At that point.

I said she has the same disease he has.

I was convinced and just went back to all my cases and tried to find a link, tried to see which children I cared for was the father a drug user was he in part of the family?

What happened to him?

It wasn't the mother's history I needed.

I needed the father's history.

I was painstakingly trying to write an article to publish it as soon as I can, that's the only way medicine advances.

And I had, I thought, a really good article written.

It was published as the first paper on pediatric AIDS in JAMA.

It's very ominous to me and upsetting as a pediatrician to see the possible extension of this disease to children.

I think it throws a challenge at us in medicine to learn as much as we can from this.

Probably never before in medicine have we had the opportunities to learn so much about the immune system, how it interacts with malignancy and how it interacts with infectious diseases.

So I think we have a true obligation and challenge to the tragic people who have died from the syndrome to learn as much as we can.

Boland: Jim published the paper, and no one wants to believe leading people in the field, essentially saying to this younger physician, You know, from this inner city, Oh, you don't know what you're talking about.

People sort of accused me of being a second-rate doctor in a second-rate city at a second-rate medical school trying to make a reputation by claiming children had this disease.

I got into medical school.

I shouldn't tell the story because it's a little embarrassing.

On a mistake, I should not have gone to medical school.

I became a doctor by error.

I decided to make an investment.

I made enough money being a substitute teacher to cover 30 applications.

You start getting the responses right away.

And of course, those rejection letters are very thin.

I started getting back these very thin envelopes from all these medical schools, and it got up to, I think it was like 25.

I had five more left.

I get a thick envelope from Seton Hall and I'm accepted.

I was excited, but also realized that, hey, I was lucky to get into medical school, I mean being rejected by 29 and getting into one.

It turns out the chair selected for admissions was the chair of physiology Dr. Opdyke and Opdyke was also a little bit on the lazy side.

And so he decided that he wanted to fill the class up with a lot of automatic accepts.

So he didn't have to read through all these things.

And I did very well in the physiology part, so I got tossed into the pile of accepts.

They sent me a letter and I paid my money.

Well, then the the full committee met and they asked Dr. Opdyke, Why did you automatically accept this guy Oleske?

He had a 2.8 [GPA].

He has two bad letters of recommendation from his two advisors, which I did.

My biology professor said that I was probably better suited to become a veterinarian.

My organic chemistry teacher.

He thought I wasn't smart enough to even be a veterinarian.

So they decide, Well, what are we going to do?

He's already sent in his -- thank god...

I sent that check in -- he already put his down payment.

And so after a lot of debate, they said, we'll watch him closely.

And if he can't cut the mustard, we'll cut him.

Oleske: So we'll start in 221. one of the things that you're going to see a couple of patients on the floor where they can't communicate, they can't function, they have birth anoxia, so that they'll have to be put into the intensive care unit, intubated sometimes and even to the point of having tracheostomies put in.

And when that occurs, then it unfortunately makes it so difficult to send them home because it's hard enough for a family to take care of a child that's totally dependent for tube feedings and just moving around so that they don't get bedsores.

All of those challenges on the family become magnified.

In fact, the very first patient I ever saw in medicine as a junior like you guys junior medical student on pediatrics, very first patient, OK, turned out to be this little girl with papilloma of the larynx and a tracheostomy.

Now, at the time, I felt I had bad luck because when we started pediatrics, we used to have like five or six guys on it and we used to draw straws.

Unfortunately, I got the short straw, so I was picking last.

The first guy picked someone with acute diabetes and another one with another more exciting disease than that.

And the last and only patient left for me was this little girl with laryngeal papilloma who had been in the hospital already for two years and they had to go in and rip it out with a scissors.

these cauliflower-like growths.

She had to have it every six weeks.

Everyone presented their exciting case.

And when I got to my case, I said, "little girl with laryngeal papilloma."

And Dr. Kushner said, well, we know about her, she's been here for two years.

You know, sort of saying, we don't need to hear about it.

And I said, but I had an idea.

I had an idea.

In the articles I read, there was an ENT surgeon who took care of about 80 patients with solitary papilloma, which was different than in kids.

And he made up a vaccine by taking the warty growth in the larynx and grinding it up and injecting it back in.

And in that group of patients, he said, it didn't work.

But I noticed among those 80 patients, there were four kids.

And from what I could read from the paper, they may have done a little bit better.

And I started injecting her a half a CC in each arm once a week until I ran out.

End of the fourth week at the eighth dose.

When I gave her the injection, she said, Ouch.

And that's the first word she ever uttered, right?

By the time the surgeon came back, we had given her about 20 doses and she could now speak in a very soft low voice.

It resolved completely.

And of course, I started crying because I had fallen in love with this little girl and I told the parents and she went home.

Tracheostomy came out.

It was amazingly important, first case ever for me.

It influenced my whole career.

Think out of the box, Think differently.

Announcer: This is ABC News Nightline.

Reporting from Washington.

Ted Koppel.

Koppel: Surprisingly, few people are familiar with the Acquired Immune Deficiency syndrome, or the acronym by which it's frequently identified AIDS and the disease may be spreading.

Here's Nightline correspondent Betty Rollin, Oleske: and he's breathing comfortable now.

Has he been breathing comfortable at home?

Rollin: Ahmed Carlyle is only 18 months old, but he has spent most of his life fighting a new, deadly disease that no one understands.

Not where it comes from, how to treat it, or how to stop it from spreading.

Carlisle: Every month from last ... well, 1981, every month from November, he was in the hospital Rollin: Getting sick how?

Carlisle: Fevers.

First of all started out with just fevers all the time.

And then after that, he'd get pneumonia every month.

Over the last year, we've noticed we've had an epidemic of that.

We've seen many children with very unusual immunological defects.

Initially, I thought we were seeing children with these inherited defects, but then it became too many.

We have had now eight children, we've lost four and we don't want to lose the other four.

Morrison: It was, it was.

It was hard because.

The kids died and you knew they died from AIDS.

But nobody... no one talked about it.

We were in secrecy.

You know, there was no disclosure.

It was a stigma behind living with HIV.

And so people didn't talk, and when you're not talking, you know?

There's a loss there because people aren't learning, you know?

And so you have to, you know, I used to tell Shanti, you don't have to hold your head down.

you don't owe anybody anything.

You know, you're dealing with HIV and AIDS.

And if they can't deal with it, then they got a problem.

Oleske: The problem was it still wasn't acceptable in children, and the reason for that was that in the beginning there were the H's, you know, homosexuals, heroin users, Haitians and hemophiliacs.

And so children, infants, babies to get infected with the HIV virus was a monumental jump in it being scary because everyone who wasn't a hemophiliac, a homosexual, a Haitian or heroin addicts, they all felt protected.

And they don't have to worry because it's in other people.

But when a baby can get the infection from a non-sick mother that was opening up that, hey, I could get it.

And so saying that babies got AIDS was daunting.

I was young, inexperienced in some ways.

I thought I was on the right track.

But people just didn't want to believe it was happening.

On top of that, when I finally was able to publish, I realized from my understanding early on that this was a virus that was transmitted but by very special means, and you had to have close intimate contact with blood or blood secretions or genital secretions.

Basically, you had to have sex with someone who was infected or get blood from someone who was infected.

And early on, I decided that we needed to embrace the children who were infected.

We didn't have to wear gowns and gloves.

My professor that taught me down in Emory, he said, Jim, how can you show pictures of you holding a baby or kissing a baby?

You have to gown and glove and mask and don't get infected.

We don't know yet.

We don't know enough.

I said, Andy, I think I understand this.

We got to give people who are infected love and care.

And we can do it without worrying about getting HIV.

Being a physician and a healer.

To do that, you need to touch and hold.

And I used to think that I could wish them well.

I mean, I did wish them all well, but I mean, touch, cure put the emotions into it.

Morrison: I was at the hospital, and I don't know what was wrong with Shanti, but I took her to the emergency room.

The nurse came in and she said this is the one I didn't want.

I did not want.

And I said to her, don't put your "blink blink" hands on her and don't touch her.

You know, if you, if you if she felt that way, I didn't want her to touch her.

Somebody else took care of her.

Who's that Resident: The kid from yesterday.

Oleske: Alright, now Could someone I forgot?

I know I want to see the X-Ray with the thymus, In the early part of the epidemic, no one who ran a hospital wanted to say we were an AIDS center because it would turn people off to come there for cardiac or liver transplant or for some reason.

And University Hospital is no exception.

Even some of the people in the hospital, like the food handlers, would want to shove the food trays under the door.

The newscasters were the worst.

They wanted the story and they wanted to be in the room and they want to talk to the patient.

And... but they were demanding that they get gowns and gloves and masks.

I wasn't wearing them.

I said, You don't need them.

That's for us to decide doctor, they would say.

And of course, to me, the image of a reporter holding a microphone like this with gowns, gloves, masks on, talking to a mother and a baby gives an instantly wrong message.

Well, you did really very well.

I'm going to give you this rabbit so you have two of them.

I had these very, very sick kids that were dying, so it was a desperate time.

And we built a team, even though we had no money of people committed to taking care of children with HIV.

Mary was hired to work half time with an intensivist.

Boland: I think it's wonderful to be able to be young, to be naive at a certain level and be able to do the work.

I really do.

Resident: Before I forget, I think you lost a pin.

Oleske: Yeah, I have in my pocket.

It says C-H-A-P on it.

We had to come up with a name when we first got our first check from the Lifers' Association at Rahway State Prison, which is another story.

The first money we ever got for AIDS work in kids was from the lifers people in for murder.

At Rahway State Prison and you walk through bars and they close behind you and the other bars open.

And then they they close behind you.

and they led me to an auditorium with guards, with rifles.

And next to me is this humongously big guy.

I mean, really big.

And mean-looking and tattoos and all that, he said to me, You know Doc, what I like about you?

And I said, what?

And he says, every time someone comes in here and talks with us, they ask us why we're in here?

And of course, that was going to be my next question.

So I was so glad I didn't ask it and I said, "Well, I ..." He said, "Well, let me tell you, I killed two people, but they deserved it!"

And he could've squashed my head like that.

I'm glad I didn't get him angry.

But he said, What are you going to do?

What your thousand dollars?

And I said, Well, there's a new thing called VCR and you can play tapes.

And our kids were getting I.V... gammaglobulin, which was the only drug I had to treat them, so they'd be there for two, three or four hours.

So I was going to buy one of these new things, VCRs.

And he looks at me, says, Don't use it for that.

Don't worry about it.

And about two weeks later, I get this box has no mail stickers on it has no delivery stickers on it.

I opened it up and it's a VCR.

Now you and I know that that was ill-gotten goods.

The NIH was going to select eight to ten sites to be early places to do research on this new disease and its spread, and that it was going to be a vigorous process.

But I thought, well, we had the only group of pediatric cases really described and we couldn't afford, because we had no grant monies, I mean, you have to understand I was doing all this without any support yet.

This was going to be the first grant hopefully.

The grant requirement was huge.

You had to do basically 800 pages.

We stayed at the hospital in my lab for about eight days in a row trying to beat this deadline, and we only got it finished in time to print these 20 copies.

And it was the evening before the due date, the next day to be delivered to the NIH at Silver Spring, Maryland.

They announced the funded sites.

We weren't funded.

And they funded sites that had no patients, but had People with a reputation.

When I got it back, it was critiquing it for the strengths in the grant we wrote.

We were the first group to notice that the brain was involved, and yet they criticized our grant by saying Dr. Oleske did not appreciate the neurological implications.

And so I said to myself, they didn't read it.

I had a wonderful old professor.

He says, "Jim.

If you go down and complain, your future grants will be... they'll blackball you."

And I said, "I don't care."

So I made an appointment.

They said, "Well, Jim, you know, your grant was not up to snuff."

And I then pulled it out and I went through every sentence where they criticized it, where it said just the opposite in the grant.

And I says "Off the record, you didn't read the grants, did you?"

and he said, "Jim, I'm sorry, they never read your grant.

Wasted all that time "and we gave it to the people we thought had virology labs and distinguished."

I said, "But they have no patients to study.

They don't have..." He says, "Well, we'll figure that out."

Conressman: Thanks so much for your testimony?

For our next witness?

I'd like to call Dr. James Oleske, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics.

Dr. Oleske You mentioned that the money was not filtering down to Newark, New Jersey, on the research.

Isn't it true that the peer review determines how much goes to various people?

Peer review determines whether your research projects are considered valid and eligible for aid.

Oleske: As I've tried to emphasize, there has been a reluctance in the past for the NIH to fund therapy and care programs.

I can just give you one example it was somewhat frustrating to me to find out an investigator who never cared for an AIDS patient because he had received some blood from some of my patients, and others was able to receive a large grant to do some basic research on, on serum factors.

Now, I don't criticize that because I support all basic research on AIDS.

I think it will give us the keys to stem this problem.

But at the same time, it's somewhat frustrating to be, if you will, in the water splashing and drowning and not be eligible for help in providing clinical care.

Congressman: Have you discussed this bias with the NIH, try to get them to change their attitude.

Oleske: One clinical investigator, like me, in Newark, New Jersey, has no influence on on the people at NIH.

Congress: That's not my question...

I'm very happy to have received over the last four years at least the $75,000 I got.

I would imagine by this testimony, I might even have jeopardized that.

I sometimes fear that he might have a stroke sometimes when he's talking, and he doesn't necessarily want to be moved to become more calm.

And and because it happens frequently, it sometimes creates a problem for him because people turn him off without necessarily listening to what he has to say.

Panelist: All of the solutions you would propose are, appear to be more people intensive than technological, and I would really appreciate it if you would give us a really comprehensive annual budget to put it into perspective with some of the other things we're looking at.

Oleske: Without appearing to be fresh, while I'm doing that.

Who are you going to send up to take care of the patients in Newark, New Jersey while I'm doing that?

It's a little bit unrealistic for you to ask, for example, me to go up and write a detailed budget for a program that probably will never get funded when I have at least 200 priorities ahead of that.

I understand that process, but I believe that there are in your systems the systems in which you work.

A good number of fiscal experts who in fact work with this kind of thing.

a good deal of the time for whom it is a relatively simple task to round out some of the numbers.

Oleske: Let me expand.

I am naive and I will plead guilty to that.

But the problem is, take my university.

My university doesn't want to be designated an AIDS center.

The people there that the experts that could help me, are told not to encourage the development of programs and provide the services, the numbers in them, and, and, and that to develop these programs because they don't want them in their centers.

So that when you say to me, Doctor Oleske, just go back to the University of Medicine and there's a whole bunch of people that will help you generate the monies uh...the numbers, I'm telling you that that's really not the reality.

I was sitting waiting, you know, and I'm on a break and I heard a couple of renowned physicians.

They were behind me starting to talk about Jim.

Boland: You know this Oleske, they would say, if he just understood if he calmed down a little bit and played by the rules, it would be much easier for him.

I think people probably have been saying that to him, certainly since he was in medical school, that he could accomplish a whole lot more if he could figure out how to moderate his personality.

But his personality is who he is.

Oleske: OK.

Mom: How old are you?

Boy: Four Oleske: I'm listening to you heart now.

I'm afraid you're healthy.

We don't need to keep you here.

We're going to kick you out, you're expelled from the hospital, not discharged.

Expelled.

By the way, I went to Catholic school for a while in Corpus Christi and Hasbrouck Heights, Mom: Uh huh.

and in the seventh grade I got expelled.

I was enrolled in Catholic Grammar School in the first grade.

I was a comedian.

I also had dyslexia, and back then they didn't... the nuns didn't know about dyslexia, so they thought I was just making up words like if I had to read in class from the book of Jeremiah.

about the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.

I used to call it Nebucha-dinosaur, and they thought I was doing that to make fun.

So I got a reputation for being a bad kid.

I didn't get chosen for the good jobs, like clapping the erasers or going down, to get the milk in the basement, and bringing it up and selling it.

Those were the plum jobs.

In fact, I was put in the coat closet for about two months for my behaviors.

In the beginning, I didn't like it, but then I realized that I could go and get everyone's lunch and take whatever I wanted and people would say, Geez, my mom didnt' give me anything today, you know ?

And then one day I got sent out of the classroom for talking during geography.

The principal sees me standing out in the hall.

She really physically threw me down the stairs, dragged me into her room and wrote a pink slip.

And then I said, Well, what am I supposed to do now?

She says, Go home, you're expelled.

Oh, excuse us, excuse us.

Oleske: The A team... oh, no we're B team.

Second Doctor: You're B team, you're the best.

Oleske: That's right.

We're the best.

OK, let's do this.

Who picked up Katrina?

OK, why don't you tell me a little bit about Katrina?

So she's a 14 year old female who presented with right upper quadrant pain, 10 out of 10.

Exacerbated by eating prior to admission, she had decreased P.O.

intake because of this pain.

Her ultrasound was negative.

Her CT scan showed no appendicitis.

Yesterday, she went for a HIDA scan and showed no obstruction.

The CBD was patent, but it did show gallbladder dyskinesia with an EF of 14%.

I was talking to the tech.

Mm hmm.

Student: He found that the ejection fraction was still very low... Oleske: Which really confirms Oleske: that this kid... Student: The literature shows that, some say 40, some say 35.

But less than that is diagnostic for gallbladder dyskinesia when the ultrasound is negative and ruling out other possible causes.

OK, so that's where we are with her right now.

Oleske: What are we doing about it?

Now, this is another one about pain.

She came in actually for pain.

And in the old days, you wouldn't give anything for pain because you wanted to observe what was causing the pain.

That was the thinking.

Then I mean, kids could be writhing in pain and you wouldn't give them anything because you want to see if it was developing.

And when you think about it, that was awful cruel.

Now, in modern days with cat scans, et cetera, et cetera, to let someone suffer because you want to watch the fever curve or you want to watch the pain, if it gets worse.

I think that's unethical.

You guys are lucky.

We had X rays, basically and and we'd have to bribe the technician to do it.

Resident: You'd take it yourselves.

What I did was, my key to getting a chest x ray on a crying baby when I was an intern, resident was I learned that if you sent the lab slip down on a kid, you really needed a chest X ray on It would take two days.

And so what I used to do is I would take the request, have the baby, jostle him a little bit, so it was crying and go to the technician at the desk and hand in the paper and saying the baby needs a stat X ray.

And he'll say to me, Well you gotta come back.

And I said, No, the baby so sick, I'm going away here with it.

And hopefully the baby kept screaming, because then guess what?

OK, let me come on and I'll take the x ray, right?

By the way, I forgot.

Guys give you the one order that's most important.

And that's because I was distracted.

But the most important thing you got to do is this, put some soap and water, certainly before you go into the room and probably after.

Another thing is to learn how to turn on and off the faucets.

I don't know how many of you know the story of Semmelweis.

What was Semmelweis famous for?

Dr. Semmelweis?

Dr. Semmelweis was an obstetrician working back in Vienna.

And he made a simple observation, the observation was that the nurses who washed their hands were different than the doctors who went from the O.R.

to a conference to another patient and never washed their hands.

And puerperal fever occurred in about 40% of women.

They died from it and the babies died from it.

so Semmelweis convinced his associate and himself to wash their hands at the end of a year, he showed that they had no puerperal fever and the other clowns That didn't wash their hands had 40%.

So guess who was believed?

Student: Not the clowns.

The clowns.

They made fun of him.

They kicked him out of the society.

He ended up in jail.

Well, not jail.

Insane asylum, which was back then almost the same thing.

And yet his sentinel work eventually was accepted and by simply washing hands...

Very early on in the epidemic, I was doing everything I could to figure out what was causing this disease.

one of them was to send blood to both the Center for Disease Control and to Dr. Robert Gallo, who was at the cutting edge of trying to isolate what the causative agent was.

I had heard of Jim as a pediatrician, as somebody who really knew pediatric AIDS, as someone who really cared about pediatric AIDS.

He actually drives down with samples to us to make sure that we got them.

Personally delivers them and makes sure that we're working on them right away and they're not being wasted in any sense with that kind of dedication and drive.

You give extra attention, don't you?

And the MN strain blood, I sent to Dr. Gallo helped isolate the very first retroviruses.

MN was a very important isolate because it's one of the first we were able to grow forever.

It's a huge... changed the whole field.

It was the first time we had a Eureka!

moment because we knew one thing for sure.

Now, within two months, the maximum three, we will know this is the cause or it's not.

Announcer: This is NBC Nightly News reported by Tom Brokaw Brokaw: Good evening.

Researchers now believe that they have made a monumental breakthrough in the fight against AIDS.

US government scientists announced in Washington today they have isolated a virus.

The cure still is a long way off, but this breakthrough makes it possible to identify AIDS victims and carriers.

Reporter: Health Secretary Margaret Heckler introduced the scientist who led the team, Dr. Robert Gallo.

Gallo says a blood test for HTLV 3 will be ready in six months.

It could screen out virus carriers from blood donation programs.

Oleske: I have to say every time I read an article that talks about the HIV test.

I think of that patient.

And how much he contributed without knowing it.

And it made, to me, some of the suffering he went through and the family, at least that they made a major contribution.

News Anchor: Of all the stories about those suffering from AIDS, probably none is more heartrending than the ones involving children.

Reporter: In Arcadia, Florida.

Clifford and Louise Ray have suffered a week of AIDS hysteria after they tried to send their three young boys, all of them hemophiliacs and AIDS carriers, to school, where they were shunned by classmates and threatened by parents.

Reporter: The reason Eliana isn't in school today is that a federal judge ruled the only way she could attend class would be to sit inside this eight by ten foot glass enclosure in the back of the room isolated from the other students.

I remember one absurd school board meeting where we were trying to explain how we thought it was safe for children to be allowed to go to school.

And this one guy in the front row kept saying, you're a lying son of a bitch.

You're a lying son of a bitch.

He says, I have a question for you.

Well, what if?

A rabid dog bites a child with AIDS In a neck and it has blood all over its mouth, and it turned around and it bites the neck of my child who doesn't have AIDS?

Are you telling me that my child's not going to get AIDS?

And I said.

Under those circumstances, she would be at risk.

Reporter: Do you blame the doctors and the nurses and the cleaning people in the hospital staff?

Do you blame them for being scared?

DiPaolo: Do I blame them?

Listen, they have a job to do.

You know, if you go into the medical end of it, you know this is your line of work.

Then you have a responsibility.

Or perhaps maybe you should get a different line of work.

Reporter: Carol DiPaolo is running an AIDS Action Network out of the basement of her Brooklyn, New York house.

Joey: I'll call you and come pick me up.

Reporter: Carol knows a lot about discrimination because of her eleven year old son, Joey.

He got AIDS from a blood transfusion in 1984.

He hid his disease from everyone until recently.

Hi, my name is Joey DiPaolo, I like to skateboard, I like reggae, heavy metal, rap, collect comic books, I look normal.

I feel normal.

I'm 14 years old and I have AIDS Joey DiPaolo was the first case I saw that was infected from a blood transfusion at birth.

This was a major problem back then until they screened blood, and unfortunately, Joey was given a blood transfusion from a known HIV infected donor.

Joey: Hello!

Oleske: Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Joey: How are you?

Oleske: Hey, it's a real Barber shop, huh?

Joey: Thank you.

Oleske: You can get a shave and a haircut?

Joey: Look at you, you look great.

Oleske: I lost some weight.

Joey: Me, too.

Oleske: You look terrific.

Joey: Thank you, you don't look so bad yourself.

- Oleske: You need a shave, though buddy.

Joey: You want to give me one.

I'll give you one.

Oleske: You give me one first.

OK. How long have you had this shop?

Joey: Ahh, it's going to be nine years in January.

Oleske: Holy God.

Oleske: And you have to have an appointment, huh?

Joey: I'm around doctors So much my whole life that I just got used to the appointment thing Oleske: Boy we do go back a long way, don't we?

- Joey: Yes.

Well, I'll tell you, Joe, wanna know something?

I never thought I'd live to see that day that you're older... That I'd be taking care of you?

giving me a haircut.

Let me see here.

Holy Gamoly you made me look good.

Joey.

You made me look young.

My wife.

will like it.

Joey: I took maybe 25, 30 years off.

See, all this care that you gave me now, I give it back to you a little bit.

Oleske: I don't even have to have an I.V.

Joey: It's the least that I could do.

Oleske: What do you remember about it Joey: In junior high school.

they protested to keep me out of junior high school.

Yeah, I remember that.

There was over 100 families that were afraid this was back in 1990, and they were afraid, they were afraid of me sweating in gym.

They were afraid of me chewing gum and sticking it underneath the desk, you know, back in the day when I first went public.

There wasn't a lot of AIDS education out there.

It was all new, especially for kids my age coming down with it.

I guess it was because I was dealing with it and my family was dealing with it, and we knew because we were on the forefront of it, the risks and how not to get it.

It was the parents that didn't know they were looking out for their children, which is understandable, I guess, in a way.

And, you know, Dr. O.

It's pretty funny because three years later, when I actually graduated, it was the same families Oleske: that were clapping.. Joey: Clapping and giving me a standing ovation.

Now, I'm not sure, is it because they were happy for me because now they were educated or they were happy that I was getting the hell out of school?

I'm not sure.

A little bit of both, maybe.

How do you tell someone that they they might die at such a young age Oleske: Well, I didn't want any of you to die.

Joey: Oh, you did a hell of a job keeping us alive, that's for sure.

Oleske: Hello.

How are you doing?

Another people who bother you?

I'm not going to bother you too much.

OK. Hi.

I didn't meet you.

Mom: That's her stepdad, Paul.

Oleske: Paul, Jim Oleske.

How you doing?

Young girl: Fine.

Look over at my rabbit here.

OK?

Can you look over here?

So she still has... notice that?

And that's one thing.

that's nice about a rabbit because she looks at that.

pretty good.

This is yours.

I'm going to give it to you.

You have to promise you're not going to lose it.

OK?

Mom: That's her favorite color purple.

Oleske: It is, purple?

Yeah, it's my favorite color.

Purple.

I've been carrying a rabbit like that for about 18 years...

I always carry a rabbit in my pocket.

And the reason I do is that one of my patients had this raggedy purple rabbit that he hung on to for dear life, through every procedure.

Whenever he was sleeping.

He was very close to that rabbit.

I think his name was Fred.

So 7:00 at night, I went into his room because he was easy and said, Look at you, go to sleep and things will be OK and I'll see you tomorrow.

And with that, he says, I want you to take my rabbit.

And I knew that this was his really favorite thing and, I says, well I don't need the rabbit.

and he says, yes, I want you to keep it for me and keep it safe.

And I said, why?

And he says, I'm going to die.

I said, you're doing OK. Don't worry about it.

But he was very insistent, so I said, Look, I'm going to take Fred.

Put him in my pocket, make rounds with him.

I'll show Fred to all the other kids and then I'll come back after rounds are over.

Well, it was one of those nights where lots of things had to be done.

So at 1:00 in the morning, I finished hanging up my lab coat on the back of the door and just drive home.

And I'm not home An hour, hour and a half.

And I get a phone call from the nurse that He died.

And I did not believe it happened.

But I forgot about the rabbit.

When I went to my office and put on the lab coat, I realized I had his rabbit my pocket.

I carried that around for a long while and I learned something from him because most of the kids that I took care of They loved having me have a rabbit in my pocket.

They all wanted to play with it.

The problem was it was getting kind of ratty.

So I retired Fred.

He's still on my desk in a special cup.

But then I've had over the years now, three or 4000 rabbits, I must have given away.

And you ask me how would I cope?

Well, those things help you cope.

I've seen almost 200 children die in Newark, New Jersey, since 1980.

There hasn't been a cry to do something about it.

Reporter: Dr. James Oleske says most AIDS babies are born to poor parents without political connections.

Minorities, drug users and mothers who are themselves infected with AIDS.

Remember, they're poor, they're frequently sick, and it's difficult for them to be effective advocates.

I was never well liked by leadership at the university.

I had put my foot in my mouth a little too many times.

Hierarchy is something that, for Jim, just makes no sense.

He doesn't see the value in it.

The purpose of it.

Very rarely is he willing to play by people's rules.

I had gotten in trouble arguing with the president of the university and the director of a hospital that had a children's unit in Newark.

The paper's had called me up, The Newark Star-Ledger and I had said.

Well, President Bergen and Mr. Del Mauro fight, women and children are not getting health care and children are dying of AIDS.

Well.

The next morning, around 6:00 in the morning, I hear Barbara yell up to me.

Jim, what did you say?

Well, I get angry and passionate.

I think it's not angry.

I get passionate and people perceive that as anger, one night around 7, 8 o'clock on a rainy day after clinic and I'm trying to open my mail.

I used to get a lot of mail.

I was trying to open it.

And this lady calls me up with her French accent.

And she introduces herself as Albina and gave me the impression she was either a social worker or a nurse working for a small foundation in Switzerland that wanted to fund programs for pediatric AIDS.

About an hour later, a knock on the door, and it's this woman in a sweat suit with stringy wet hair.

She says, I'm going to cancel going back to Switzerland.

Can I see your clinic tomorrow?

And she said to me, why don't you write up a grant?

I said to her, look it, what I need is so much that ... What you need to understand is we had somebody every week coming by wanting to help us.

A lot of people were attracted to the, I don't know, to the pain and suffering in it and would want to come see it and then you would never hear from them again.

My attitude was, look, you know, you're not going to give us this money.

You want to know what we need, this what we need.

And I figured it would shut her up.

And then the middle of January, Jim gets a call from the University Foundation who say to him, You need to come over and talk to us because the countess's lawyers are in negotiations with us.

We went over, met with the president of the foundation and said are you talking about?

It turns out she was Albina du Boisrouvray the Countess Albina du Boisrouvray.

Our friend, Albina, is a countess.

And the foundation was named after her son Francois Xavier-Bagnoud.

And he said, well, she's going to fund you.

And we thought, Well, that's great.

What is she going to fund?

And he said, all of it.

No stipulations.

She's gifting you with this money.

She raised $100 million by selling her jewelry.

She was still wealthy.

Even if after that, but...she came through.

It was sort of a shock.

But it also saved my job.

Because you get an endowed chair, people, you know, they'll they'll excuse your exuberance.

My vision was to bring Jim's expertise to the world of pediatric AIDS.

Jim was hands on.

He had his hands in the mud and the blood in the sweat, in the in the pain and everything.

So I felt that the knowledge of Jim was essential to be brought to the rest of the world.

We had people from Latin America, we had people from India.

We had people even from China, all sorts of countries.

The people who had been trained went back home and, in turn, snowballed the knowledge and trained the others who they knew.

And I think the hope we all had by being together in a small building was to develop that camaraderie and commitment to the patients.

There was some sort of deep non-verbal commitment to the work that none of us could articulate.

We're so committed as a group.

We're working so hard and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

Fauci: When you have a new evolving situation, the people who were there first feel a responsibility to share that knowledge.

Remember when you look back and realize that this was a global disease all along, we just recognized it, but by the fact that we did recognize it early, we did have a responsibility to share our knowledge with the rest of the world.

And that's actually what Jim did.

Oleske: And so many of the early doctors who treated AIDS in the developing world got trained in Newark.

Clinic was sort of a communist manifesto of rights of everyone.

It made it chaos, but it made us really one family, and Shanti was one of the leaders of that.

She would be the most outspoken, the most demanding.

She would negotiate almost every part of the way.

Definitely was a learning process.

I'm one of those that.

I believe that if you have an illness, you need to know.

What it's all about, and the only way you can take care of yourself is to know what the disease is about, what it does and what you need to do.

I read everything I could and I asked questions.

And if I didn't like the answer, that I got.

Then I'd ask another doctor, another nurse.

This whole model of partnership came forward.

We learned from the families, particularly the African-American families.

They struggled with so much, the stories were just incredible, I mean, HIV and AIDS was many times just the last thing that hurt them.

You know, I noticed that we would look out for each other's kids, you know, like maybe the mom would downstairs to get something or whatever.

We'd all be in a room and we we just look out for each other's kids.

And I guess that's what brought me into, you know, like when the kids died, you felt like, or, I felt like you needed to be there to support that parent, you know.

So that's a closeness that we had.

And even even the professionals, they had a compassionate spirit.

Frequently, the mothers and fathers would die before their children, and these children would be then cared for by wonderful grandparents or adoptive older people.

one of the first patients that are reported in the literature, first back in 82, was Ieshia.

She was one of two twins.

Ieshia was the first born and Tshia, the second born, and we learned from that case that the first baby born through the birth canal would be exposed to more blood and infected virus and would sort of cleanse out the birth canal so that the second of two twins would be less exposed to the virus.

And so Ieshia was the first twin and was infected, and Tyeshia came out and she didn't get infected.

Ieshia was adopted by Doris Williams.

She was a very deeply religious woman, and she expressed that religiousness, if you will, by her kindness and gentleness, but also how she greeted you.

So every time she would first greet you on the phone or in the hallway or on the way back or even when leaving, she would always start everything she said with "Praise the Lord."

And so over time, a lot of the kids in the early days of AIDS would be sick a lot, and I always encouraged the families to call me up.

And so Doris would call me up frequently.

And every time my kids answered the phone, my young kids, she would say, "Praise the Lord," it's Doris, and is your daddy there?

And of course, my kids got into the habit of saying, Dad, "It's Praise the Lord."

I promised Doris Williams that I would do everything to help.

Ieshia.

I became very respectful to foster families and adoptive families and grandmothers because they took on a burden that they never realized they'd have to take on.

I remember one little girl died, Quinetta and Quinetta Gillespie was suffering when she died, I went in to talk to her grandmother who I was very close with and the next thing I know I'm in her arms crying and she's comforting me.

Quinetta meant a lot to me, and I realized I didn't do as good a job as I should have for the pain management.

And I was telling all this to Mrs. Gillespie and she just held me in and she said, You did the best you could.

You did good by Quinetta.

I told her I think I could break my heart.

And she comforted me.

She really comforted me.

Song: "This is the day...This is the day that the Lord has made that the Lord has made."

I thank God for Shanti.

I thank God that he allowed her to be in my life for 28 years.

Her mother died when she was almost three.

And I've been her mother and I've tried to fill her mother's shoes.

But I just did what I had to do.

And I thank God for her... her spirit.

Shanti was a piece of work.

She was a piece of work, but she was she was special.

I would say that Shanti rates up there with one of those unforgettable people you meet and as a doctor, one of your most unforgettable patients.

But just as important to me is the most unforgettable person that I've ever met.

And that's Geneva.

And I want to thank her.

For always showing me love and respect and bravery.

Hi, old friend.

Morrison: Glad to see you.

Oleske: I'm glad too.

Oleske: beautiful picture of the baby Morrison: that's my God child.

You know, even though it was worst part of the epidemic, we lost so many during those early days, the families were always supporting each other and supporting us.

And Shanti's passing was an era for me.

You know, we're all here on purpose and and that's part of your ministry, you know, to to reach out and try to heal.

You know, that's what God has given you to do.

I always wanted to stay here and make this town better, at least make the kids healthier.

Mm-Hmm.

And it's still a struggle.

It really is.

Jesus, this is it.

I want to go and see it.

I haven't been here in 15 years, 20 years.

I said, say never come back because I was so angry that they went bankrupt and I haven't been back here since we had a garden all in here and in here.

Every one of these.

Trees and bushes and plants were dedicated to a child who died every time a child died, we would plant something.

We used to keep this garden up.

It was all voluntary.

The nurses, myself, the other doctors, the fellows, the students and I haven't been here in such a long time.

Hospital went bankrupt on Friday.

We had to move all the materials, everything that we needed to take care of the children.

And I remember it like 1:00 in the morning.

There was a driveway up here.

We had some trucks we rented to carry the charts over and there were there were bankruptcy lawyers who I ended up hating , who would look through every box and saying, Why are you taking these charts?

I said, Who's going to take care of these patients without their charts?

I never met such an evil group of people in my life than bankruptcy lawyers.

The people who sold this and let it fall apart didn't realize the evil they did.

I really.

The worst year for me was when we had 37 deaths.

That was overwhelming.

Our staff was demoralized.

We were trying to put the best face forward do the best we could, but the numbers of deaths were overwhelming.

We had one little girl who was really, Cynthia.

We loved her dearly.

The whole program did.

and she had a foster mom who was a crossing guard, and she adopted this kid knowing she had AIDS and she was with us lived through her, doing OK for a while, but then getting sick and then dying .

So after the funeral was over and the singing, there was a talk given by the sister who ran this children's choir.

That Cynthia belonged to.

And she came up to me and said, you know, I liked what you said.

Would you be willing to come to the Children's Church some afternoon to talk to the kids about Cynthia after everyone calms down?

And about two months later, I got a call from sister Evelyn, and she says, Could you come over tonight?

And I had just finished clinic.

I was tired and I says, you really want it tonight?

She says, oh, yeah, everyone's here, could you?

I said, OK.

So I got the address from her and I'm looking for this children's church and I can't find anything and I'm on the right block.

It's one of the worst blocks in Newark.

You know?

And so I pull over to the side and outside of a closed liquor store, there's a telephone, so I call up Sister Evelyn's number and her husband answers and he says, "Well, describe where you are and I'll tell you where the church is."

And I said, "well I'm by a bar that's burnt out There's a car with no tires, jacked up.

And he says, "You're on my block!"

And so he looks out the window and he waves to me.

And he says, "t's just down the street.

Just leave your car there.

Go down the street.

So I walk down the street and there's a lean-to, a wooden lean-to against an abandoned brick building and has a little sign in front, Children's Church.

So I open the door and I hear singing and lights, so I go in this little hallway and there's this room with about 15 adults sitting over here, about 20 children singing in the choir.

And this little homemade step-up altar with a podium and this big old chair there and Sister Evelyn, who I recognize.

And she says, "Come on up Dr.

Oleseke!"

And she says Dr. Oleske is here to tell us what happened to Cynthia and answer your questions.

three hours went like.

I was there till really late at night, but finally Sister Evelyn says, look, we know Dr. Oleske has to go home.

We'd like to give you a gift an honorarium, we don't have any money, but we'd like to sing our blessing to you.

And the choir is going to sing the blessing to you.

And a little 5 or 6 or 7 year old girl from the choir comes up and she's carrying a obvious Choy La soy sauce bottle.

You recognize those right away, but it has no label on it and has oil in it.

And she comes up to me and she put some oil on her thumb.

She puts a hands on my head and makes the sign of the cross, and these little kids start singing a blessing.

I have I have not been and I am not a born again Christian, but I certainly was born again at that moment.

I said goodbye and I started walking up to my car.

on one of the worst streets in Newark, and as I look up, I see about six young African-American males standing around my car a new car.

I remember thinking, well, God you blessed me, and now you're going to take me.

I walked up to the car, the kid by the driver's front door said, Are you Dr. Oleske?

And I said, Yes.

You were down at the Children's Church?

I said yes.

He says, You didn't like your car... so we were watching it for you.

He opens up the door.

I get in, turn on the car.

And it was something I'll never forget.

I still am mad at myself for not being trusting.

After years of distressing reports about AIDS, we finally got some good news.

Thousands of adults with the AIDS virus take the drug AZT.

Not to cure it.

Nothing does but to slow down its development.

AZT was approved in adults, and people were still trying to figure out how to use it.

It was the first antiretroviral.

Again, it was another one of Jim sitting down with a couple of the other physicians who worked with him and starting to say, well, wonder if we could interrupt transmission.

We know the mother gives it to the baby.

We don't know the conditions under which that happens, but we know enough to see some kids don't get it and some kids do get it.

It's hard to to not get emotional and not talk about what it was like before we had the 076 protocol.

The very first drug that was available was a drug called AZT.

AZT, believe it or not, was an anticancer drug that was put on the shelves because it was too toxic.

OK?

And yet we were trying to convince the FDA to allow us to give it to pregnant women during pregnancy and during delivery, and then give it to the baby.

So a drug that's not being used in cancer patients cause it's too toxic.

That's how desperate we were, though.

There was a lot of yelling and screaming.

My former boss who had originally said, Oh, you should gown and mask and everything, right?

Well, when 076 came out, he and a lot of people said, You can't do that.

That's a crazy idea.

You're going to kill women.

You're going to maim babies.

You are going to have congenital malformations.

We didn't give it in the first trimester when organogenesis, when the organs develop initially.

That's the worst time to give a drug.

So we gave it in the second and third trimester.

Even Act Up got a little involved and felt that this might be dangerous to Black women.

We're taking advantage of them.

The Act Up groups in New York would yell and scream in my face, really angry.

The group was wonderful because it advocated for all people with HIV, but women wanted to take drugs during pregnancy.

If it gave a chance that the baby wouldn't be infected.

Our site had the first women who were pregnant that understood the study and were willing to take a chance.

We enrolled the first woman in 076, and the baby was born.

In the early days we'd have to wait till the child was 18 months before we could, with confidence, say the baby wasn't infected.

But I had a lot of experience seeing babies born and having infection.

And by three months, even though the final testing wasn't in, I knew the baby wasn't infected.

Word tonight that one of the first and few front line treatments for AIDS patients has an important new use.

AZT, a drug that is already widely prescribed to treat the AIDS virus, now has been found to be effective in protecting the babies of infected mothers.

The National Institutes of Health is rushing to spread the word.

The urgency is that when you get information that's potentially life saving, then you really want to make sure that you do that as quickly as possible.

About 7000 infants in the U.S... To do the kinds of studies that you have to do, the kind of research that walks that delicate balance of doing experimental work.

In this case, testing drugs to see if you can prevent infection or treat infection at the same time that you give the absolute optimum care to patients.

That, again, is something that Jim devoted his career to.

We saw the transmission rate go from 60% to 40% to 12% during the course of the study.

Unheard of.

Now it's less than 1%.

Because we have other drugs to use, but.

For some reason, even a single drug in a pregnant woman who's HIV infected will prevent the transmission from the mother to the baby.

And that was a wonderful feeling.

I had to fight tooth and nail for one of my patients ...

The joy I get now is trying to be a good role model for medical students.

To teach them not only good medicine, but what I learned when I was feeling my way through how to take care of children with a new disease that we didn't know what the treatments were.

We didn't even know what the disease was?

And that is to show compassion, to not be afraid, even when you don't have the absolute diagnosis or best treatment, you want to make a child's life as normal as possible, even if they have a life-limiting illness.

Anyway, to you guys... Well, you know, you're going to get this free Thank you!

At the end, everyone gets one And this one you keep.

Don't give this to a kid.

I'm keeping this one.

Yeah.

Now, don't get mad, but I give one extra gift to the medical students.

OK?

OK.

I think on rounds, I already asked you guys what the greatest book ever written is Student: It's not the Jungle Book?

Oleske: Didn't we talk about this?

Student: yeah!

Resident: The greatest?

Student: The greatest book ever written.

Student: Oh, Don Quixote!

You guys weren't here.

Oleske: Cervantes greatest work.

I know it sounds silly, but I think it's the greatest book ever written, and I think there's a lot of wisdom in it.

You know, Don Quixote, I take to heart, as you guys know, I'm a little bit of an idealist and a sentimental person.

But the idea of always doing the right thing, you know, of of charging at windmills, even if you're going to get knocked down and getting back up and charging at the windmill again, I take that character to heart, but it's influenced my whole life.

I mean, I I don't mind being accused of being Don Quixote-like.

Student: How old were you when you read it?

I was in high school, one of my Brothers, Brother Walsh, who was still alive and I still see every once in a while he told me, You must read this one and don't read the Cliffs Notes.

And I did Thank him to this day for making me read that book.

I think the character Don Quixote is someone who transcends the foolishness of the dream.

And I think that always inspired me.

Try to do what's generous, what's right, Knightly, if you will.

Some code of conduct that's supposed to supersede all the reasons why people don't follow a code of conduct.

You get in trouble sometimes just like Don Quixote got in trouble.

I hope I'm not as impractical as Don Quixote.

But I would like to be a little Don Quixote-like.

I would like to ignore the realities of people saying, You can't do that.

I'll get the door.

Coming...

I don't believe it.

You're here.

Oh, oh, oh, Oleske: Oh, how you doing?

Ieshia: Good!

Give me a kiss.

Oh, and you must be Praise the Lord!

Gennean: Yes, I'm here daughter.

You're the stepdaughter.

No, I'm the real daughter.

Yeah.

Oh, sit down.

Come on.

Oh my goodness.

You know, you look.

Let me show you the pictures.

Let me show you these pictures.

Ieshia: Oh my goodness.

Come on in Gennean.

Remember this picture?

Gennean: I remember this picture, I do.

Oleske: That's, that's, this is my most favorite picture.

Don't have that.

Yes, you do.

You have that picture.

By the way, I'm going to give you these?

Ieshia: Oh, OK. Oleske: And I have them on I have them on the computer and you can see how I printed them out.

They're not very good.

This is, this is Do you remember this?

Ieshia: No!

The white dresses... She was supposed to give the Countess these dozen red roses, and and this is the Countess by the way.

Gennean: I remember her!

Do you remember when you went to see her?

Ieshia: No.

Gennean:You don't remember her.

Oleske: All right, you.

She's the one that gave me the money to support the work, and this is and this... And she had this white dress on.

And but she she ignored Ieshia.

I mean, she ignored the Countess.

You know, Tyeshia was nicer, but you were just like I was, and she was supposed to get up and give her the roses and you were just being cantankerous.

I, I fell in love with her and I was determined that she was going to live.

Gennean: Yeah.

through this disease Gennean: So was mom, too.

Oleske: Oh, by the way, Doris?

Oh, she was.

She was determined.

She was more determined, than I was.

And so I promised.

I promise mom I would do everything I could.

And we made a deal.

Your mother and I, that she would trust me to take care of you as best I could.

And she would because she had to sign permission, because she was, you know, she was in charge of you.

And she trusted me, and I promised her that I would never break that trust.

And I remember...

I was so frustrated because we couldn't treat this disease with drugs.

Here we go.

Families are good, aren't they?

Oh yeah.

You got to love your family and you're like family, you know?

Ieshia: That's right.

When you got sick, you got powerfully sick.

You didn't fool around.

Ieshia: Oh, I remember.

Ieshia: I'm the sick one.

Well, not that sick, but... well.

You know, for someone who's sick, you work and you carry on a normal life, which is pretty good from my point of view.

I think I keep my sanity.

In being a little bit like Don Quixote.

Don't look at the reality maybe, but look at what you would like the reality to be.

Oleske: Well, look, let me say goodbye officially, I love you.

Ieshia: I love you too.

Gennean: Oh gosh... Oleske: I am so glad I found you.

Alright take care, you know how to get out of here?

Bye now.

That was a wonderful visit, wasn't it?

My wife says I'm stubborn.

Rather than an idealist.

Great.

That was good.

It may take both, but you need to have a dream.

"music playing"