Chicago doctor Cathy Creticos has been at the forefront of HIV/AIDS research and treatment for decades
Dr. Cathy Creticos with the Howard Brown Health Center has been at the forefront of HIV and AIDS research and treatment for decades, saving countless lives.
She has also been an ally to the LGBTQ+ community and, according to her patients, a friend. They call her Dr. C, with love, and she says the feeling is mutual.
"She's in that list of people I'm thankful for every day of my life," said Madrid St. Angelo. "She literally has been a lifeline for me."
St. Angelo is an actor, artistic director and instructor, and he's been living with HIV/AIDS for almost 30 years.
"I met Dr. C in 1992 when I was very, very sick and since that time she literally has guided me every step of the way on my wellness journey," he said.
Creticos has headed up the team at Chicago's Howard Brown Health Center since 1995, but she has been at the forefront of HIV/AIDS research and treatment since the very beginning.
Dr. Creticos' father was a physician whose name is on the cancer center at Illinois Masonic Medical Center, but she didn't want to be a doctor originally.
"I had an awakening, I heard a voice kind of thing, it just all gelled for me," she said. "Being a physician was something I could do to really contribute in a more concrete, meaningful way."
After attending medical school at the University of Chicago, she specialized in infectious disease at the University of Illinois, a field she found intriguing.
"You actually can cure most infectious diseases, many infectious diseases," Creticos said. "Then we ran head first into HIV and that was the opposite what I thought infectious disease was going to be about."
It was 1984, and no one even had a name for the mysterious, complicated virus that devastated the body's immune system, taking lives at rapid speed. Creticos became a part of a team working on the very first HIV medication trial testing AZT, the first drug approved to treat the virus.
"It was very interesting," she said. "My patients were just amazing people. So resilient, so full of hope and courage, and determination to still live life despite having a very difficult diagnosis."
As breakthroughs in treatment slowly came, so did joy.
"I literally saw people who were comatose and even unable to raise their head off the bed returning to a full life," Creticos said. "That type of transformation was an amazing experience. I loved being part of that."
But barriers to care remain, even today.
"Probably one of the biggest barriers is our messed-up health system. Even patients who want to take their medicine and do it every day, their job changes, their insurance changes and prior authorization changes, so the meds they're taking are no longer authorized," she said.
And the stigma around HIV/AIDS persists as well.
"It still is a very pervasive, persistent problem," she said. "HIV is a virus. It can infect anybody. Anybody. And there's nothing particular about a certain type of people, that's just hogwash."
Creticos said that's why education is crucial.
"People who are sexually active, who don't consider themselves in a category at risk for HIV are not open to the idea of pre-exposure prophylaxes," she said.
Those are the "PreP" medications that block HIV from taking hold and spreading.
While Creticos and her team know an HIV vaccine may be a way's off, there is hope in the future.
"There are some really impressive results in terms of getting the patient's immune system required to control the virus without medication," she said.
But she said no treatment is complete without the personal touch and the compassion patients deserve.
"She's a friend, she's a mentor, she's an inspiration," St. Angelo said. "I've told her many times I would not be here today if it weren't for you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
Creticos said she first wanted to be a humanities professor, but she's so happy she heard the voice that told her to change her plans.
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