Patrick Treacy - Behind the Mask: The Extraordinary Story of the Irishman Who Became Michael Jacksons Doctor
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Behind the Mask: The Extraordinary Story of the Irishman Who Became Michael Jacksons Doctor: summary, description and annotation
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This is the story of a boy from a small Irish village who became an adventurer, a humanitarian and a doctor to the stars. Part travelogue, part thriller, part celebrity tell-all, youve never read anything quite like it. Patrick Treacy grew up in rural Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Determined to become a doctor, he raised the money for medical school by smuggling cars from Germany to Turkey. Working in a hospital in Dublin in 1987, a needle he had used to draw blood from a patient with HIV jabbed him in the leg. He took blood test after blood test, wondering whether he was going to die. Overwhelmed, he moved to New Zealand, away from everyone who knew what he was going through: his girlfriend, his friends and his colleagues. Thus he began a peripatetic existence, working as a doctor around the world. In Saddam Husseins Baghdad, Treacy was arrested and imprisoned, spending days wondering whether he was going to be hanged as a spy. In Australia, he worked for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. On returning to Dublin, Treacy set up the Ailesbury Clinic, where he worked on the cutting-edge of the new field of cosmetic dermatology, championing treatments including the use of Botox. This brought stars to his doorstep, including the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson. Central to this memoir is Treacys personal journey: his efforts to escape the Troubles, cope with the fear that he might have contracted HIV (until he found out that he had not), get over his lost love and defend Michael Jacksons legacy.
Patrick Treacy: author's other books
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Dr Vinod Wadhwa
Kay
Taylor
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To my friend Frances Kenny, who co-authoured part of my story, giving me the inspiration to keep writing on days when my passion ebbed, and, on many nights, taking pen to paper and helping me to document the painful memories of the deaths of my mother and father and, more so, of my lost love
And to Trish, for the wonderful days we spent together, and without whose love this book would never have been written
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I first met Dr Patrick Treacy in February 2010, shortly after the dreadful earthquake that nearly destroyed a great part of Haiti. I was blown away by this total strangers kindness. Dr Treacy stood in the midst of the debris of what once was our school and our home, holding an envelope. My heart opened to him immediately. I was amazed by the powerful speech he was making about the natural disaster that had struck the country.
My wife and I only knew that he was an Irish doctor. We stood there in disbelief when he simply presented us with a cheque. We didnt know what to say. In his eyes, we saw hope. He was ready to offer himself to humanity. Walking with him in the neighbourhood, I was filled with joy to see him comforting, touching, loving all these unfortunate people left with nothing. Dr Treacy made them laugh.
Soon after that, he invited us to come to his country to walk in the path of many great men by commemorating the annual Doolough Famine Walk with the people of Ireland. He said: Archbishop Desmond Tutu walked with us and three years later South Africa was liberated! Come and walk in his path for Haiti. I strongly believe that the compassion and the love he has for the poor, the weak and the unfortunate would impress anyone on this planet, because he carries the worlds problems on his shoulders.
It is a great honour to have been asked to express myself in the foreword of this book written by this remarkable man. Dr Treacy is a faithful servant with a strong personality, a friend of humanity. He is without borders and sees everyone in this world with one colour: the colour love. Yes, he is colour-blind.
I am proud to present Behind the Mask. I trust it will speak to millions of hearts, as it did to mine.
Pierre-Pressler Dorcilien
Presiding Bishop
Restoration Ministries
I have a story to tell, and if you follow me to the end of this book you will understand why I have decided to write it down. It is a story that exposes many personal intimacies, from my financial struggles as a young doctor, to my time as the personal dermatologist of the most recognised face in the universe, Michael Jackson. It is the story of how I got to know the singer as a friend and witnessed the personal agonies he suffered during the treatment of his vitiligo, of watching him cry as he took off his wig and showed me his scarred scalp. It is the story of how I smuggled cars to Turkey to finance my college studies and had to have a piece cut out of my leg to debride an HIV needle-stick from a Dublin heroin addict, in the days before there was any treatment for AIDS.
I never speak publicly about my patients, but in Michaels case, I have decided to make an exception, because I want to defend him from his detractors. I want to show you the humane side of Michael Jackson, a person who always cared deeply about others its a side of him that is not seen often enough in the media.
This story begins with my childhood in Garrison, a small village in rural County Fermanagh. In the early pages, I nearly lose my life in Northern Irelands ethno-political conflict, and I witness the death of our bread-delivery man, Jack McClenaghan, one spring day in May 1979. Retired from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), he was out making deliveries when the IRA motorcyclists fired their bullets. His next stop would have been our house.
From my earliest childhood, I dreamed of travel and adventure, of living amongst the Marsh Arabs that Wilfred Thesiger wrote about, of experiencing the thrill of flying with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, like on the TV series from Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia. If life is about living out your childhood dreams, then I have long since achieved that ambition, lived those adventures. I will tell you how I was captured by Saddam Husseins army near the town of Halabja, while working as a doctor in Iraq.
As my story unfolds, you will see how my parents were influential in determining my decisions. My mother instilled in me a passion for education. She had achieved one of the highest mathematical examination results in Ireland, but had been unable to go to college. She was determined that her children would all go to university, and encouraged me to study medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. I could probably give her credit for my first meeting with U2 when they were just a fledgling band playing in the flea market outside the college, and my later sitting with Bono at the 2003 United Nations Association of the USA Global Leadership Awards in New York.
My father, meanwhile, had a gift for making me believe in myself. He had a variety of passions, including local history, and together we would spend our Sundays exploring the megalithic tombs and Mass rocks in the west Fermanagh area. In those historic places, if we listened closely to the wind, we could almost hear the spirits of our ancestors and the heartbeats of the generations of people who came before us. My father showed me where teachers had once run hedge schools, and nearby holy wells that the saints of Ireland once visited. My teacher brought life to these monuments and told me stories about a Catholic people who had to practise their religion in secret, away from the prying eyes of murdering English soldiers.
My father also loved music and mechanics, and his energetic attitude made me believe there were no limits to what I could achieve. You will understand my gratitude to him when I tell you about the night he cut down the expensive billboard outside our garage and used it to build some sound-proof boxes that I needed for my research but couldnt afford to buy; they helped me win both the British Amateur Young Scientist of the Year title and the Irish Aer Lingus Biochemist of the Year title. I treasured these memories and later recounted them to Michael Jackson after he told me of his very different childhood, when his father beat him with a belt until he cried.
This is not meant to be an autobiography, but a memoir. As you read it, we will stand together at the Berlin Wall on the night it falls, and in Moscow on the night the Soviet Union ends. You will see how I helped start a whole new field of medicine from a small room in an apartment in Dublins embassy belt, and how the rich and famous of the planet eventually came to that small room. You will hear how cosmetic medicine developed into its own speciality and how, within ten years, I was invited to lecture to doctors worldwide about techniques I had pioneered in Dublin. Later, you will hear how I weathered the Great Recession.
As Ben Franklin said, Out of adversity comes opportunity, and I wrote this book largely as a means of filling the time that the recession created for me. It has been cathartic, cleansing my mind of some memories that had been haunting me. This is the story of my personal journey, of surviving life, of how I got to where I am.
Garrison, the picturesque little fishing village where I grew up, lies perched on the border of the Republic of Ireland, snuggled into the scenic shores of Lough Melvin and is favoured by tourists from all over the world. The older boatmen told stories of famous people, like Charlie Chaplin, having once visited the locale to fish for salmon and trout. The regular influx of different nationalities to the area meant that, although it had a distinctly rural character, it wasnt insular. I learned my first Bob Dylan songs on guitar when I was twelve, from some long-haired Americans who stayed at the local youth hostel. The village had a caravan park, two hotels and a smattering of public houses, so when I was young, the place was a hive of activity in summertime.
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