Dave Davenport (dogspunk)

PBC pg.7 sneak peek

Added 2025-01-03 20:50:17 +0000 UTC

Researching this panel made me very sad. This doctor was a leading aids researcher who had written a book about the virus and how it could not mutate around a triple drug therapy… I was very pleased to end up in his care. I wanted to do more than just draw him from memory, but dig as I might, I couldn’t find anything better than one very blurry photograph.

I did find a lot of yelp reviews of him from about 15 years ago, around the time doctors’ offices had to start hiring staff just to deal with insurance companies. I have friends, a couple, who are an HIV doctor and his husband who works in his office, and they were telling me about this at the time, about half of the practice’s efforts were now suddenly going towards interfacing with the healthcare insurance industry bureaucracy. They hated it, but it was the way things were then (and now).

These yelp reviews told the story that was otherwise conspicuously absent from the internet. It seems around this time he had to open his practice up to general practice, and the glowing reviews became more and more peppered with people upset with his bedside manner and lack of enthusiasm seeing people over their mundane issues. There were lots of complaints about his office not transferring records, and then legal documents pop up online… he lost his license because he wasn’t transferring records.

Then a few years of silence, and lastly a legal notice posted about his estate being sued for monies owed to people with his same last name.

Idk, I can only read between the lines here, but it seemed to me like bureaucracy killed his passion and, having lost his drive he soon lost his practice, and then faded away.

Fuck.

Thank you, doc. Rest in peace.

Oh, also a bonus shot from page 7 of the wolf’s muscle butt.