Luis Palocios - June 13, 1989

Luis -
I met Luis at St Luke's where he and his lover, Dennis Costa had planted themselves. They were both active in Integrity and managed to get it housed at St Luke's. Luis was a social worker & Dennis was in print production.
They were also active in the early days of AIDS. Luis was one of the facilitators of 800 Men - probably the first workshop don to change men's behaviors to safer sex practices.
Luis also facilitated the first support group for KS (Kaposi Sarcoma) patients. This was well before the virus had been discovered or the Western Blot test was developed, so we're talking very early on. He came to church to speak about his work with GMHC and raise awareness of the problems people were encountering. His groups were comprised of 10-12 men. Over a six month period he was having trouble stabilizing the group: every couple of weeks half of them would die, so every couple of weeks, groups would be combined. Still the requests outnumbered the available spaces. After combining groups six times, one of the client admitted, "You know, this is no disease for sissies …"
Over the next few years, Luis would spend most of his days volunteering at GMHC, and many evenings at GMHC fundraisers. He became fast friends with Judith Peabody in those days. Judith in addition to being a patrician fixture in New York Society, was also a therapist. She dedicated her professional skills as well as philanthropic acumen to the cause. She raised a great deal of money and held a great many hands.
Eventually, Luis came down with PCP (pneumocistus carinii pneumonia). This was when there were no therapies for HIV, it had barely been discovered. PCP took weeks to recover from, if you did recover. So men like Luis would lie in hospital tethered to poles dripping bactrum, balancing killing the infection and killing themselves, wasting.
The common wisdom was that you didn't survive PCP more than twice. Hal Mozley swore he would never be treated for PCP after the first time; he preferred to die at home.
But Luis was strong. Over a three year period he was in New York Hospital no less than three times with PCP. On his third stay at New York Hospital, like the previous, he was visited by Jessie McNab.
Jessie, in addition to being a devout Anglican and Curator of 18th Century Silver Objects an the Met, was also a self avowed witch, dowser and [?] practioner of Bach Flower Remedies. Now, delivering 'therapies' alternative or not was strictly forbidden in hospital, but she brought them to Luis and many others in hospital. Luis tells the story
"Jessie came to see me … She sat quietly for a while by my bed. Then she sat up and straight and looked me in they eye and asked, 'Are you ready to go?' I nodded. 'I thought not … so let's use this …' She pulled out a vial of some tincture and put a couple of drops under my tongue. She came by every afternoon. Between the bactrum and the Bache I beat this thing one more time."