And, boy, had the world got him all wrong. “I had to set my perceptions of him to ground zero and just take him at his own face value. This was also the time when the singer found himself embroiled in numerous paedophilia cases. In 2006, there were rumours in the Irish media that Jackson had been sighted near the village of Kinsale. Treacy forged a special friendship with the late singer-performer, Michael Jackson (Photo: Alok Soni/ Hindustan Times) When he visited me years later, he was carrying the article in his pocket,” adds Treacy. “I had written a few articles about my time in Africa, and Michael had read one of them. And according to Treacy, it was this “twist of fate” that brought Jackson to him. Learning about the number of people who suffered from this dreadful disease led him to move to Africa for a few years. AIDS was considered worse than Ebola, and television ads showed that even if you kissed somebody, you died of AIDS,” says Treacy. Remember, this was the time when hundreds and thousands feared being plagued by AIDS. He immediately cut off a part of his leg to avoid infection. In 1987, when he was treating a heroin addict in Dublin, a needle Treacy had used to draw blood from the patient, jabbed him in the leg.
“The first thing Michael said to me when we met was ‘Thank you for helping the people of Africa.’ It wasn’t ‘I want you to be my doctor’,” says Treacy, who worked with HIV positive patients in Africa as a young doctor.Ī life altering incidents exposed Treacy to the evils of HIV. We met Treacy during his recent visit to Mumbai, on his way to deliver a lecture at an aesthetic surgery and cosmetic dermatology conference in Goa. Over a period of time, Treacy forged a special friendship with the late singer-performer. In a tell-all memoir, Treacy chronicles his journey from a small village in northern Ireland to becoming Michael Jackson’s doctor. “I wasn’t a huge fan of Michael’s music back then, much-preferring bands such as U2, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, but I certainly recognised his genius when he performed on stage,” writes famed Irish plastic surgeon Dr Patrick Treacy, in his recently published book, Behind the Mask.
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