alli kraus: April 2010

the times runs an almost identical article every few months, but I love it nonetheless:
For the Battle-Scarred, Comfort at Leash’s End
By Janie Lorber
WASHINGTON — Just weeks after Chris Goehner, 25, an Iraq war veteran, got a dog, he was able to cut in half the dose of anxiety and sleep medications he took for post-traumatic stress disorder. The night terrors and suicidal thoughts that kept him awake for days on end ceased.
Aaron Ellis, 29, another Iraq veteran with the stress disorder, scrapped his medications entirely soon after getting a dog — and set foot in a grocery store for the first time in three years.
The dogs to whom they credit their improved health are not just pets. Rather, they are psychiatric service dogs specially trained to help traumatized veterans leave the battlefield behind as they reintegrate into society....
....Under a bill written by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, veterans with P.T.S.D. will get service dogs as part of a pilot program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Training a psychiatric service dog and pairing it with a client costs more than $20,000. The government already helps provide dogs to soldiers who lost their sight or were severely wounded in combat, but had never considered placing dogs for emotional damage....
....But when Gloria Gilbert Stoga, who runs Puppies Behind Bars, received an application from Maj. James Becker, she decided, with support from his doctors, to take a chance on a veteran who had just left inpatient care.
Major Becker, 45, suffered two severe brain injuries in separate explosions, earning two Purple Hearts in his three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he came home last winter, his 24-year-old daughter, also an Iraq veteran, was being treated for leukemia.
In Major Becker’s mind, home started to resemble Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. His P.T.S.D. symptoms worsened, and a suicide attempt in July landed him in San Diego Naval Medical Center for seven months. A few weeks after leaving the San Diego hospital, Major Becker flew to New York to collect his dog, Annie, and participate in a two-week training session with Puppies Behind Bars. Still, he said he spent a lot of time alone in his room “because it’s easier to deal with four walls than it is to come out and deal with crowds.”
But within days, Annie was beginning to pull him out of his shell. “She helps me meet people,” he said, describing how people are attracted to the dog.
He added, “I like to think it’s going to get better.
[I had to make sure to include the Al Franken and Puppies behind Bars details, in case your heart requires more than vets' therapy dogs to melt completely.]

(my) City Endorses New Policy for Treatment of H.I.V.
By Sabin Russell
In a major shift of H.I.V. treatment policy, San Francisco public health doctors have begun to advise patients to start taking antiviral medicines as soon as they are found to be infected, rather than waiting — sometimes years — for signs that their immune systems have started to fail.
The new, controversial city guidelines, to be announced next week by the Department of Public Health, may be the most forceful anywhere in their endorsement of early treatment against H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. ....
Dr. Katz said that despite cuts in health budgets, a policy to add to the number of H.I.V. patients taking expensive drugs made economic sense. “H.I.V. medications have been continually proven to be cost effective,” he said, “and in this case, it is also the right thing to do.”....