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Roy Mead Good

DEEDS

PALS Atlanta volunteer returns to support pets and people

By Patrick Saunders

WHEN ROY MEAD FIRST STARTED VOLUN-

teering for Pets Are Loving Support 30 years ago, it was an HIV/AIDS war zone. “Everybody was dying,” he told Project Q Atlanta. “I would come home from work on a Friday, and the first thing I’d do is go to my answering machine and find out who had died that week.” PALS was founded in 1990 to provide pet care so that people with HIV could keep their pets. The organization also helps the pets of people with terminal illnesses and the elderly. “One of the ways that pets helped [people with HIV] was to give them comfort and emotional support, especially for those outcast from society,” Mead said. “The animals helped them survive a little longer and survive with less depression.” Mead and other volunteers would deliver pet food and supplies and bring pets to appointments. The ravages of the virus often led volunteers to provide other support as well. “HIV used to manifest itself in people’s eyes, so they sometimes couldn’t see anymore,” Mead said. “A lot of our clients had neuropathy and couldn’t walk. A lot had AIDS dementia because the virus in advanced stages caused people to have brain fog.” Volunteers would walk and feed the pets and sometimes even change sheets and do dishes. Some clients’ families disowned them, so they just needed someone to talk to. “They would call the PALS office,” Mead said. “I would answer the phones and talk with them for 30 minutes or an hour.”

Into the woods

Mead could relate. He’s gay and was diagnosed with HIV in 1984. His family disowned him. “Back then, gay people helped gay people because nobody else would,” he said. “They talk about the song ‘We Are Family.’ Well, we were the family of all of these people that were dying of AIDS.” But it all became too much. Mead moved with his dogs to an A-frame cabin at the end of a dirt road in Northwest Georgia in 1999. There was no cellphone service and no internet. “I needed to move for my sanity,” he said. “I just escaped. I isolated up there. I just had to.” In 2019, Mead returned and now lives in Morningside. And he returned to volunteering for PALS. “It was like going home,” he said. The rise of antiretroviral medications and regimens like PrEP and PEP changed the landscape of HIV, but it’s still an epidemic. So the work continues at PALS. Volunteers like Mead are “gems,” said PALS executive director Buck Cooke. “PALS could not do what we do without the help of our talented and dedicated volunteers,” Cooke said. “We welcome others to join our volunteer ranks, so if you’d like to help deliver pet food, walk dogs and cats at our monthly vaccine clinics, want to serve on our board of directors or one of our committees, please get in touch with me!” Visit palsatlanta.org

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