Kristen Davis

speaker

1,669 appearances 27 recordings 6 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 13 Apr

Kristen Davis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 3.

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark · 457 - In With The Goths · 5 Dec 2024 podcast

So for days, Cliff does everything he can to care for Wayne at home, but Wayne's condition doesn't improve. And it's not easy to find a hospital that can or will admit him, which is such a weird thing to think of. The place you're supposed to go when you're sick.

Or we're just going to, to protect ourselves, we're going to not admit you. Right. Sounds so familiar. Yeah. So Cliff reaches out to his colleagues at San Francisco General. He's finally given the name of a doctor who works out of a private hospital that will take Wayne.

And there Cliff watches as his friend is rushed into an isolation room, surrounded by fearful staff, then shut away and left alone. When Cliff tries to go into that room, the medical staff stops him. They warn him that it's too dangerous, but Cliff doesn't hesitate. He tells them, quote, I'm a nurse and I've been taking care of Wayne for days. Whatever he's got, I probably have.

And he goes into the room. So at the time, it's very common for medical staff treating these patients to wear head-to-toe PPE, including what's casually referred to as a space suit, which are those heavy-duty biohazard suits that we've all seen in movies. So...

The staff who have been wearing suits like that, if not the heavy duty PPE, is just staring at Cliff in shock and horror as he walks into Wayne's room without any protective gear on at all. Cliff later says, I didn't want to wear a space suit to take care of my friend.

So seeing these patients at San Francisco General, as well as his roommate, being neglected, isolated and denied compassion in the final days of their lives infuriates Cliff. The fact is, at this time, most patients with AIDS do not survive. And Cliff sees that their deaths are neither peaceful nor dignified.

They're not allowed in or like their friends don't know that this is the part that they're in. Like they're just not. It's like everyone's freaking out.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So these patients die in pain, surrounded by fear and often alone. And this the diagnosis of this disease cuts them off from care in a time that they need it the most. So Cliff decides he needs to change this.

He starts by volunteering with the Shanty Project, which is a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides people with terminal illnesses compassion and human connection as they die. By the early 80s, many of the people they work with are sick members of the gay community. So for Cliff, this volunteer work becomes an invaluable education in palliative care. Yeah.

Back at San Francisco General, word spreads quickly about his work with the Shanty Project. And before long, doctors, nurses, and even patients are coming to Cliff for guidance. He's suddenly a very helpful middleman who can see, share, and translate both the clinical and patient perspectives in a time that's incredibly confusing and incredibly scary. Wow.

But as more people get sick, the hysteria is dialed up and the misinformation only increases. Meanwhile, ICU beds at San Francisco General hit capacity as hundreds of patients being diagnosed with AIDS all spread throughout different wards. The quality of their care is entirely inconsistent depending on their respective nurses and doctors' mindsets.

So you get a bad area of the hospital, you get a bad doctor or nurse response. Yeah. The idea of that is like we take it for granted. I mean, anybody that has insurance and that gets to even go to the hospital takes it for granted. I definitely do. But then this idea that you would get a thing that would suddenly turn those people against you. They have hatred towards you. Yeah.

And they're supposed to be treating you while you're actively dying.

Yeah. So the hospital administrators quickly realize that they're in over their heads. And again, they turn to Cliff for help. They want him to take on a clinical coordinator job so they can oversee these patients with AIDS in the hospital. And Cliff accepts. There's immediately a plan to quarantine these patients in a separate part of the hospital. But at first, Cliff hates this idea.

He compares it to being sent to a leper colony. But then the more he thinks about it, the more practical a separate ward feels. They'll have dedicated space and an opportunity to provide a more tailored facility. So he agrees. He's given an area of the hospital on the fifth floor used as a sleeping area for resident doctors known as Ward 5B and an outpatient clinic called Ward 86.

But Cliff realizes he's going to need money to set up and fund this new dedicated clinic. And that's when Dr. Mervyn Silverman, San Francisco's director of public health at the time, invites Cliff to meet with Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Cliff remembers, quote, we went to her office and sat down and she said, we just so happened to have several million dollars surplus in the budget this year.

If you promise me that you will spend this money appropriately, I will give you some of the surplus and you do what you need to do. Just make sure you do it right. Wow. When does that fucking happen? I mean, for real, especially considering at this time, 1981, President Ronald Reagan hasn't even addressed this public health issue, a very pressing public health issue to the country at all.

He has not acknowledged it. Yeah. And he won't until 1985. Holy shit. And even then in 1985, he just very briefly mentions AIDS in a press conference, just like in passing. Yeah. And then after that, it's two more years before he addresses this national health crisis in any significant way. It takes them six years to talk about AIDS. As people are actively dying. Yes.

And by then, nearly 47,000 Americans have been infected with HIV or have died from AIDS. Wow. Cliff adds, quote, as I look back on that meeting with Dianne Feinstein, that was one of the more wonderful moments of my career. That's the first time I'd actually seen a politician show true leadership. So now that he has both the space and funding, Cliff needs nurses and doctors to work in Ward 5B.

So he posts notices about the forthcoming AIDS ward throughout the hospital. He ends up hiring 11 nurses, as well as a team of social workers, physical therapists, dieticians, chaplains, and occupational therapists. And for him, staffing 5B isn't just about finding qualified medical professionals. It's about hiring people who genuinely want to work there.

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