Night before last I ran across a lifetime movie with jennie garth about a teen-aged girl, who feared, during her first time having sex, had gotten aids. The jennie garth character, one of the girl’s teachers, had been living with aids (in secret) for quite some time. I didn’t watch the whole movie but rather, in pure male form, flipped stations, catching snippets here and there of the story.

Maybe not a coincidence, I had just seen a show on another channel a day or so before (tru t.v. I think) about a man in jersey (I think) who moved to the small town, slept with 30-50 girls and at the very least had ended up infecting approximately half, if not more, with aids. Females between the ages of 15-40 years old. When the news got out, over a five-day period, the county health department tested over 1500 people. He claims he didn’t know he had the disease, and, seven years later while serving time in prison for doing so, he expressed remorse, and he really seemed sincere.

Also, last week, Rent was on.

Little known facts about aids:

1. A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
2. HIV found in tissue samples from an American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.
3. HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.
By 1984 we were beginning to hear about “patient o” (the letter, not the number as the news agencies reported)

We’d heard about it, but at that time it was linked, in the media, exclusively to homosexuality. Only a few years later, did we hear it was also linked to i.v. drug users.

I lived in a fairly small town in Arkansas, around 65,000-70,000 at the time.

By the late 80’s, early 90’s, I was working as a nurse in one of two local hospitals. I worked oncology and we often took in patients with other illnesses, gastro problems, hemophilia, and yes, aids.

My first aids patient has contracted it because he was a hemophiliac. They hadn’t developed the proper tests yet to screen donated blood. He was in his early 20’s, reduced to fear, anger, and mistrust.

My other patient was actually Lou Ann’s patient. When she went on vacation, I rotated to her section in the back because she insisted I do so. I was the only one she trusted to give them the same care she did. This patient we had for a long, long time.

In one sense, he was lucky. He had lots of visitors and his significant other was there at all hours of the day to sit by his bedside.
Joel was his name. He came in looking fairly good. Not quite emaciated, still without the telltale signs of those nasty purple lesions. But despite our efforts, he lasted about a month, maybe a few weeks longer. I watched that man waste away to nothing. Watched as the lesions filled just about every inch of his body. It wasn’t a pretty sight.


By the time the pneumonia claimed him, he had spent days in a coma, his skin stretched taut against his bones. And every time I see pictures of aids patients, marked with those lesions, looking like starving children…I think of Joel and my heartaches.

Then there was Rick. I talk about Rick in my non-fiction story, “The View From Life.” He was my hairdresser/high school friend’s stepbrother.

Now mind you, in my southern, right-winged, ultra-conservative town, most folks were in denial that aids had even arrived there. Add to that a staff of crusty old (OLD) nurses who should have retired five years before…well, aids patients were people to be feared and looked down upon.

I had a deep compassion and sorrow for them. It put my crohn’s disease in perspective for me. I stopped whining and feeling sorry for myself.

I did such a good job of taking care of Rick, that after several months on hospice, the family (my friend) insisted he be brought back to my floor and put in my section. He never developed the lesions, thankfully. I took care of him until the day he died (tho not on my shift…I’m not sure I would have been able to handle that)

Little know aids fact:

Once airborne, the aids virus dies. Hepatitis C, however, can live outside the body, on surfaces, for up to two weeks.

In the last week I’ve been inundated with reminders of the virus. While new cases in the u.s. have dropped since 2004, and deaths are down, we still need to keep in mind this epidemic that lives silently among us. The vast majority of us walk through life not knowing how has it and who doesn’t. The stigma attached to it is still painful.

The virus itself does not discriminate.

Not anymore.