Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Dr. Bob Brandt Jr. diagnosed his first AIDS patient in 1983, just three years after graduating from the charter class at Wright State University School of Medicine.
Over the following decades he would treat many more, watching as it took its toll on his patients and their families.
“I went to lots of funerals, and I saw a lot of personal friends pass away from it, too,” said Brandt, 72.
After that first patient died, he decided to close his Xenia office on Monday afternoons in order to volunteer at Miami Valley Hospital’s Infectious Disease Clinic. There were no treatments for HIV at the time, but he learned to treat opportunistic infections that he hadn’t encountered in medical school.
The more he saw, the more frustrated he became.
“Patients would come in with more than just HIV-related problems,” he said, adding that many needed supportive care, home health care and help with mental health, substance abuse, nutrition, housing and transportation.
