Dr. Peter Shalit: “It was like being in a battlefield.” MATT BAUME
It was on a recent visit to the First Hill office of Dr. Peter Shalit that I asked what it’s like to treat HIV these days.
“Boring,” he smiled, and then waved his hands. “I mean, it’s not boring,” he hastily added, “but…” He reached for a little green box sitting on the desk in the exam room. It was stamped with a caduceus (serpents coiled around a winged staff) and inside was a stack of index cards like a recipe collection. On each card was a list of dates, handwritten, most of them from the first half of the 1990s. Next to each date was a person’s name.
“So many of these people were my friends before I started here,” he said, studying them. “There was not a lot we could do”…
