I Am John H. Holliday DDS. You May Call Me Doc

About the Book

This book takes the facts about Dr. John H. Holliday and breathes life back into Doc himself. The author has lived through many of the same most crucial moments as Doc; in fact, it is a name that his patients called him and still do. He is, like Doc, a Catholic. It is singularly amusing that they both have so many, many things in common, except that Pat stinks at poker most of the time. This is a very unique book. There has never been a book that tells the tale of Doc Holliday from Doc’s side as consistently as this, knowing the disease intimately and living with an almost identical set of symptoms. He has a chronic cough at times so severe that it results to severe pain in his intercostal (chest muscles) that lasts for three days, making it hard to breathe, move, or even bear down. Coughing or sneezing double him over. At times, he coughs up blood. He is often hypoxic and unsteady on his legs. He cannot walk without a cane due to dizziness. All this makes his appetite poor. He may be dizzy enough to fall down, with the room spinning and unable to move for twenty minutes to two hours. The facts were gathered for over forty-seven years of research, off and on. So it truly is a fictional book, perhaps more true to facts than a nonfictional one.

About the Author

Pat Gillen is sixty-seven and lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his wife, his “soft, sweet, Hungarian beauty,” Dolores. He has two boys and two girls; the youngest are thirty-five and twins, a boy and a girl. He has been completely disabled since 2007 and so has insight into having to let go of a profession he loved very much. He has lost many friends to death, and death has brushed against him as well. He has looked it in the eyes several times. At an early age, suffering some of the same circumstances as Doc; he long ago died to the fear of death, which makes one an interesting character. Pat has had a book on leadership published, and he has published others under an assumed name. He has long been a gun enthusiast and enjoyed shooting with his father and brother from around the age of fourteen. He has improved much thanks to military trainers, Olympians, and tips from Louis L’Amour and Doc. He graduated college after studying pre-medicine, became a registered nurse, and then worked as a nurse practitioner for thirty years. He was trained at the Cleveland Clinic. His practice involved caring for many terminally ill and disabled patients, and he was privileged to be with many as they died. As a result, he has many insights regarding the dying, the disabled, and their loved ones—forty years’ worth. He has indeed both cared for patients with consumption (tuberculosis) and helped perform nine hundred autopsies on patients, many with tuberculosis. He has studied history since he was eleven, especially WWI and WWII aviators and aircraft, the War Between the States, and the West. He has long been a fan of Doc Holliday and has read extensively on Doc over the past forty years. He researched Doc and his intimate friends, gathering facts from twenty-five or more books on Doc and his times. He lived and practiced in the South for four years and loves Georgia. So this book is a combination of fact and lived experience as a health care provider with an increasingly debilitating illness. He was also a military officer for a time. His “best friends” are Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Doc. Too bad they are dead—they have been sterling examples and mentors.