When I was in medical training, much of my practice centered around the research and treatment… and pain and fear and devastation of those with HIV/AIDS.
I recall one evening as I was wandering the halls of the medical floor wondering if people outside of the hospital setting really knew what was happening. More than half of my patients had been admitted due to some medical complication of HIV/AIDS: pneumonia, vomiting/dehydration, delirium, or AIDS wasting disease. Very often the first time someone learned they had HIV/AIDS was at the time of their hospital admission and I as a young doctor of 28 or 29 years old was telling a young man my own age that he had a disease for which there was no cure.
It was only slightly different on the pediatric wards. There weren’t the numbers of children with HIV/AIDS there, but we would admit the same children over and over again due to various complications of their illness. We got to know them. We became attached to them. And then they died.
In the developed world, HIV/AIDS is a different illness twenty-five years later. Whereas life expectancy after diagnosis was 1 or 2 years back when I was in training, now the CDC says that those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and treated can expect to live nearly as long as those without HIV.
HIV/AIDS is a chronic illness which can be managed much like diabetes. We have effective ways to prevent it in children whose mothers are infected. And what’s most amazing to me is that when I speak with hospital residents these days, very little of their inpatient experience is related to the care and treatment of those with HIV/AIDS. It is largely an outpatient disease.
Today I am giving thanks for medical advances. I am giving money to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. And I am remembering G, a delightful 5 year old girl who could laugh and sing and pout and cry and loved Coca Cola and who died in 1997 due to complications of AIDS.
Jeanette
A Sacred Space 