DOCTOR WILL FIND OUT TODAY WHETHER HE KEEPS LICENSE

GROVER - April Danner is sick of the stigma that comes with being a "Talley
patient."

Dr. Joseph Talley, 64, is the Cleveland County doctor who could lose his
medical license today for improperly prescribing narcotics, failing to
property examine or monitor some patients to weed out abuse, and failing to
check whether some with drug-abuse histories were getting drugs elsewhere.

Danner, 26, who has only 10 days left in her supply of morphine-like
Fentenyl patches to control pain from endometriosis and degenerative disc
disease, says she's been getting frosty responses -- and even hang-ups --
from doctors' offices when she tells them Talley was her doctor.

"I'm extremely proud to be labeled as one of Dr. Talley's patients," said
Danner, of Hickory, who had been his patient for about a year. "But it
aggravates me that we're all labeled as drug addicts just looking for a
high. I don't abuse my medication. I don't get high off my medication."

The decision on whether to revoke Talley's medical license will be made in
Raleigh today by the 12-member N.C. Medical Board, which brought the
charges against him in October and ruled against him after a three-day
hearing last month. The penalty could range from revoking his license to a
procedural slap on the wrist.

Talley said he expects to lose his medical license. He has been practicing
since 1963.

Talley acknowledged prescribing large amounts of narcotics, but defended
his treatment choices as reasonable. He produced letters written by board
investigators in previous years in which they told board members his
treatment methods were sound, and said he was never told until charges were
filed last fall to change his treatment methods.

"I feel guilty. If it hadn't been for him trying to help me and just help
these people, then this wouldn't have happened," Danner said. "Now he's
going to lose everything he's worked his life to build. And he's at an age
when he should retire."

His license to prescribe narcotics has already been pulled in a separate
action by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Since the DEA action in February, his two partners have left and his office
has been quiet. Instead of seeing patients for up to 10 hours straight --
as was his norm -- he spends hours on the phone with other doctors, begging
them to take his patients and continue the drug therapies.

Some doctors accept his patients on the condition that neither Talley nor
the patient tell anyone. Others have agreed to accept a fixed number of
Talley patients, for fear of getting overloaded.

One of Talley's most vehement supporters, Jaye Whitmire of Conover, said he
gets up to a dozen calls a day from Talley patients, some frantic.

"We've had people threatening suicide, people telling me that they're going
to buy drugs off the street because the pain is so bad. If they've got to
have it, they've got to have it," he said. "What I've told some of them is
just to go down the phone book and start calling (doctors)."

In Talley's office, three workers whom Talley calls "the girls" sort
through 26 boxes of patient files stacked in the clinic waiting room.

DEA agents returned the boxes last week in a Ryder truck, minus records of
cases still under criminal investigation. The files were seized in December.

Carol Boyd, a phlebotomist who has worked for Talley since June, said she's
decided to keep working for him.

"I told him I won't leave him till it's over. I'll stick with him till the
end," Boyd said. "I see what he's like with his patients. He's always got
time for you, no matter how tired he is, or what time it is."