AIDS
December 1st is World AIDS Day. For three decades, many on the planet have lived in the shadow of this affliction. Its public image has evolved from moral punishment to chronic sexually transmitted disease. Those with the disease have lived through being treated as lepers to being understood as normal people with the misfortune of contracting a manageable disease.
My shame for the behavior of my colleagues was deep. Many of my professional relations suffered significantly as a result. The anger among my gay peers was sometimes vented upon me, as a representative of the medical profession. And, as a person infected with HIV since 1984, I lived in fear for years that I would be banned from my professional practice, if my HIV status was revealed.
In the wake of all this, in America, some people in the gay male subculture felt entitled to an attitude of narcissistic self-determination. Anger morphed into antisocial sexual behavior, fueled by drugs and alcohol. Infection rates continued to climb. The cross-over to bisexuals and heterosexuals was inevitable. The transmission through IV drug use and transfusions predictable.
The AIDS epidemic has taught me a great deal about community, society and social responsibility. It decimated a promising socio-political movement twenty-five years ago in the LGBT subculture. It spawned the current American mania for non-profits for every social or medical problem. It destroyed faith in the American government's ability to attend to the health needs of its people. It was the Hurricane Katrina of health care. Ronald Reagan was its George Bush.
Of the 30+ million people who have died of AIDS, most have died in miserable poverty in Africa. But, gay men in America also died in miserable poverty in the early days of the epidemic. Fired from jobs, denied disability benefits, turned away from dental and medical providers, denied housing, rejected by their families. They died alone by the thousands. I became an AIDS hospice nurse in response to this terrible reality.
I have learned to walk through the AIDS epidemic as I have learned to walk through life. I have sought the Middle Path. I have learned to be compassionate toward myself, but I have worked hard to maintain my study and practice. I have acknowledged my pain and anger, but I have continued to open my life to anyone in my path. I have accepted great losses physically and psychologically, but I continue to value and promote the health and well being of others. Continuing to grow in mindfulness and compassion in the face of the inevitable pain of life is its own reward. This is the lesson I have taken from AIDS in my life.
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| "Sex in an Epidemic" |
Weathering the seas of the AIDS epidemic has been an essential experience of my own life. As a nurse, I saw the brutal indifference of the medical profession in the early stages of the epidemic. Many male physicians, mostly heterosexual and homophobic, passed death sentences on newly infected gay men with a tone of moral superiority. Nurses, who ordinarily shrugged at the danger of infection from their patients, refused to work with HIV-infected patients, who were summarily placed in isolation rooms. They were often neglected by hospital staff, who grudgingly donned hazmat isolation outfits before entering the rooms of AIDS patients. The bedside care in those rooms was often abrupt and barely adequate, as staff rushed in and rushed out in panic.
My shame for the behavior of my colleagues was deep. Many of my professional relations suffered significantly as a result. The anger among my gay peers was sometimes vented upon me, as a representative of the medical profession. And, as a person infected with HIV since 1984, I lived in fear for years that I would be banned from my professional practice, if my HIV status was revealed.
In the wake of all this, in America, some people in the gay male subculture felt entitled to an attitude of narcissistic self-determination. Anger morphed into antisocial sexual behavior, fueled by drugs and alcohol. Infection rates continued to climb. The cross-over to bisexuals and heterosexuals was inevitable. The transmission through IV drug use and transfusions predictable.
The AIDS epidemic has taught me a great deal about community, society and social responsibility. It decimated a promising socio-political movement twenty-five years ago in the LGBT subculture. It spawned the current American mania for non-profits for every social or medical problem. It destroyed faith in the American government's ability to attend to the health needs of its people. It was the Hurricane Katrina of health care. Ronald Reagan was its George Bush.
Of the 30+ million people who have died of AIDS, most have died in miserable poverty in Africa. But, gay men in America also died in miserable poverty in the early days of the epidemic. Fired from jobs, denied disability benefits, turned away from dental and medical providers, denied housing, rejected by their families. They died alone by the thousands. I became an AIDS hospice nurse in response to this terrible reality.
I have learned to walk through the AIDS epidemic as I have learned to walk through life. I have sought the Middle Path. I have learned to be compassionate toward myself, but I have worked hard to maintain my study and practice. I have acknowledged my pain and anger, but I have continued to open my life to anyone in my path. I have accepted great losses physically and psychologically, but I continue to value and promote the health and well being of others. Continuing to grow in mindfulness and compassion in the face of the inevitable pain of life is its own reward. This is the lesson I have taken from AIDS in my life.
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