WELLNESS STARTS WITH AWARENESS - CD8 T cells - The Body

and I told them, “Nelson has this really
great information that we need to make
more public and we need to help people
access these supplements. This was my
experience.”
I sat down with them and they said
great, I think that’s a great idea. I said,
I’ve never run a business before. I have
dreams of running a coffeehouse one day
but I don’t really know anything about
this stuff. They all helped push me along
the maze, so to speak, and gave me support
and helped me out because I didn’t
know anything about protein powder,
what brands were good, how much protein
should be in a serving. I kept my day
job, and I was providing six nutritional
supplements to six people. They were the
basic multivitamins, vitamin E, vitamin
C, protein powder, and maybe one or two
other ones. Maybe NAC was part of them?
And if a bottle of NAC cost 10 dollars, it
was sold for 10. And I kept these supplements
on a shelf in my closet at home.
Pretty soon I realized that I wanted to
fulfill my lifelong dream of roasting coffee
or selling coffee beans. It was a real
small idea. I got a thousand dollars from
some friends to start, and with that money
I bought a credit card machine and coffee
beans. Well, what ended up happening is
I developed a very small but loyal group of
people who loved coffee beans within 48
hours of roasting. And I was also helping
people gain access to nutritional supplements.
But the drive for the nutritional
supplements from people living with HIV
very quickly overpowered all my coffeeloving
friends. I decided I would have to
give up the coffee because I was already
working 70 hours a week taking orders for
coffee, roasting it, delivering it, still doing
the nutritional supplements, delivering
those, running credit cards, and I just
couldn’t do it. At that time Starbucks was
just moving to town and you know, there’s
not a buyers club within four states of
Texas but we’re going to have a Starbucks
44
every quarter mile. So I decided to let the
coffee business go.
JB: You said that time in your life was
embarrassing? Could you elaborate
on that?
FW: I was dealing with being gay and
then on top of that now being HIV-positive.
When I said it was embarrassing for
me, it was embarrassing number one, that
people would find out I was positive and/
or gay. But I think the embarrassing part
for me—the heart of it—here I was this
educated individual and now I was contemplating
thoughts of suicide because
of the HIV. So my life was over … those
kinds of very negative thoughts that occur
when the community has not yet dealt
We’re saying to people, “Here’s
a good range, a therapeutic dose
range that should be helpful to
you with this condition.”
with the issue. I felt like I had the scarlet
letter on my chest. So here I was dealing
with a hard enough issue, being gay, and
then on top of that I have to deal with being
HIV-positive. And that was hard.
JB: Yeah. And then you founded—it’s
called the Houston Buyers Club but
it has a different name?
FW: Our legal name is Program for
Side Effect Management. We started
unofficially in 1996, but officially recognized
by the IRS, I think, in 2002.
JB: So how many clients do you serve?
FW: We don’t take federal money so
we’re not required to keep client demographics.
We don’t get the indigent or
destitute population coming through because
the funding isn’t here. If I had to tell
you the number of clients—every year we
serve about 2,000 individuals. And that
is ranging from HIV to hepatitis B and C,
cancer, and diabetes.
JB: So what other kind of services do
you provide? Do you have speakers
programs?
FW: Yes, we have this program that is
community-centered. We’ll bring in pro-
fessional speakers to speak on HIV side
effects, or hepatitis B and C, or diabetes.
We found this wonderful man to underwrite
the filming costs associated with
these events. There’s this company that
we got to film our events, called Cool Arrow
Films. They film not just the speakers,
like Lark Lands, Jon Kaiser, or Nelson
Vergel, but they also interview the people
attending the conference, and make it fun
to watch.
The other thing that we’re going to
pursue is the Discovery Health Network,
because the information that we’re doing
is not just going to be about HIV. It’s
going to be about hepatitis, and diabetes.
We don’t ever hear people talking about
milligrams when it comes to nutritional
l to r: Ricky O’Neill and Fred Walters, Jr.
supplements. They don’t ever talk about
amounts. They just mention the supplements
and the herbs. No one is putting—
I hate to say this—their balls on the line
and giving the ranges and dosing. And we
are.
So what they do with these other programs
is teasing these people with really
great solutions and hope, but they’re
leaving them in the dark. So they’re left
with going into the health food store with
people who may not know anything about
chronic illness, and whoever they happen
to get on the sales floor is who they get
stuck with. Here’s a good example. Physicians
all the time will tell their patients,
“Go out to the store and get some fish oils,
and that will keep your cholesterol under
control.” Physicians who do that do their
patients a disservice because they should
be saying, “Your triglycerides are 50 points
out of range and I think 2,000 mg a day of
fish oils could help. Go and buy these at
a health food store, and I’m giving you a
prescription.” Instead, they’re doing like
all these other shows are doing. They’re
not giving specifics. We are. We’re saying
to people, “Here’s a good range, a thera-
PA • September / October 2008 • tpan.com • positivelyaware.com
Positively Aware
Photos by Ron Baker