4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2006
AIDS (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Their stories — about one deadly virus and two Lawrence women 20 years apart in age — demonstrate how medical treatment for HIV and AIDS and society's attitude toward their victims have improved.
When doctors told Cames her HIV had turned to AIDS 15 years ago, he said she would be dead within months. She was forced out of a job, shruned by friends and stigmatized because she had a fatal communicable disease associated with gay men and drug users.
In contrast, when Allbrritten learned she was HIV positive two-and-a-half years ago, doctors prescribed drugs they said should be effective in delaying the onset of AIDS friends and co-workers were supportive and she now has a steady relationship with a new boyfriend who knows about her HIV condition.
HIV and AIDS remain serious and potentially fatal health threats,
but their diugnoses are no longer the physical and social death sentence they once were.
TAMI ABONDANO GAINES'
STORY:
When Games received an HIV-positive diagnosis in 1991, the only medication available, AZT (azidothymidine), was still been tested.
Games said she was in denial for two weeks until her second test came back positive. Then she was furious.
She said her doctor told her she could continue smoking because she would be dead soon anyway.
"They told me I wouldn't see my kids turn 5 years old," she said.
Gaines immediately had her middle child tested for the virus because she had breast-fed him in the past year. HIV is transmitted through bodily fluids, such as breast milk, blood, vaginal fluids and semen. He was negative.
Her doctor and her husband advised her to abort the fetus because it had a 30 percent chance of contracting HIV. But at that point, Gaines
said, she could teel her baby moving inside her and couldn't do it. She had to wait 18 months after her youngest son, Robert, was born to test him for the virus because a baby carries the mother's antibodies until that time. Games' relief, he was also negative.
Gaines' father, Robert Preston, said the day his daughter told him the news was one of the worst days of his life. Preston said he and his wife were "miserable." They thought they were going to lose their daughter and their grandson.
"At that time, you got HIV and you died," he said.
Gaines said her family was very supportive, but others were not. Gaines disclosed her HIV positive status to her boss at the hospital in Houston where she worked as director of rehabilitation. Three days later, he transferred her to an institution 90 minutes from her home, she said. Gaines said her employer soon forced her out of her job by making the working conditions there unbeatable.
Laney Allbritten, Cunningham senior, participates in a candlelight vigil Friday at the Ribbons of Life display for World AIDS day at South Park. Allbritten contracted HIV from her previous boyfriend through unprotected sex.
Friends whom Gaines both worked and socialized with stopped talking to her the day she disclosed her HIV-positive status to them.
After she found out that HIV had progressed to AIDS in 1996, Gaines said she was heavily medicated, tired and sleeping 16 hours a day.
"My goal every day was to be able to get out of bed in the afternoon when my kids got home from school and sit with them and be up with them for a few hours," she recalled.
Gaines said she had always felt stigmatized by society's reaction to her HIV status, although it has gotten a bit better over the years.
Doctors gave her six months to live.
Gaines, who raised her three boys on her own, moved back to Kansas where shed grown up. She wanted her sons to have more of a relationship with their grandparents, who would care for them when she died.
when new AIDS medications were discovered. Gaines said she did really well on them. She was able to go back to work for six-and-a-half hours each week.
AIDS Cases by Age
She still takes three types of AIDS medications that make her nauseate and cause her to vomit. She also experiences high blood pressure, fatigue, severe pain in her legs, loss of appetite and headaches almost every day because of medications. Gaines said she had tried different combinations.
Of the estimated number of AIDS cases, person's age at time of diagnosis were distributed as follows:
Age Estimated # of AIDS cases in 2004 Cumulative cases through 2004*
Under 13: 48 9,443
Ages 13 to 14: 60 959
**Ages 15 to 19:** **326** **4,936**
**Ages 20 to 24:** 1,788 **34,164**
Ages 25 to 29: 3,576 114,642
Ages 30 to 34: 5,786 195,404
Ages 35 to 39: 8,031 208,199
Ages 40 to 44: 8,747 161,964
Ages 45 to 49: 6,245 99,644
Ages 50 to 54: 3,932 54,869
Ages 55 to 59: 2,079 29,553
Ages 60 to 64: 996 16,119
Ages 65 or older: 901 14,410
incurs people with a diagnosis of AIDS from the beginning of the epidemic through 2004.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Now, she gets 16 hours of sleep each night and lives a sedentary lifestyle. She usually lies in bed for the first few hours of the day and sews or watches television. After lunch, she tries to do something constructive in the early afternoon. On better days, she volunteers to walk small dogs at the Humane Society or goes outside. On bad days, she stays home and puts stickers on condoms for the Douglas County AIDS Project. In the evenings, she sits with her feet up.
but all had the same effect on her. Her doctor said her choice was to take them and suffer through the side effects, or to stop taking them and die. If she didn't have children, Gaines said she would've chosen the latter.
In addition to her AIDS medications, Gaines takes between 22 and 26 pills every day to help control the side effects.
She was forced to quit work three years ago after she developed an ulcer that caused vomiting and frequent diarrhea. For more than a year, she vomited every day. That has since been reduced to about once a week.
Gaines said she would love to go back to work. She and her doctor talk about it frequently, but it's not possible unless her stomach can stand the medications.
Before her sons could drive themselves, she drove them to soccer, basketball and track practices and school.
"There is not a day that I feel normal," she said.
The slow lifestyle is difficult for Gaines, who used to be very active.
The boys are now 15, 16 and 25 and she still attends their games and school functions.
Gaines said she made sure that she did not stay isolated in her house, even if she would just go to Dillons to talk to the cashier on the way out. When she is too sick to go out, she talks to girls and family on the phone.
"I can't fathom what it's like to watch this process and see Mom get sicker and sicker every day," she said.
During the past six months, she has tried to help her sons begin the grieving process, anticipating her death.
Her biggest worry is how her condition affects them. Last month, her 15-year-old son came home from school sick with pneumonia. He felt better within a few days, but Gaines caught the virus from him. Four weeks later, she was still struggling to get over it. She said it usually took three or four times longer than normal for her body to fight infections.
One of her sons doesn't show his emotions and is having problems in school, she said, and all three of her sons take antidepressants. Her 16-year-old is a talented basketball player who wants to play in college. Because his mom is sick, however, he will consider only nearby schools so he can be
close to her.
"I don't want him making that decision on me and how sick I am," Gaines said. "I want him to spread his wings and飞"
The whole family has had to adapt to her loss of job and income. Her son has needed new basketball shoes since the start of the school year. Gaines said when she was working, she would have bought him a new pair of shoes then, and another pair at the start of basketball season. Now he has to wait.
Gaines has outlived the six-month life expectancy she was originally given and is now considered a long-term survivor, having lived with HIV and AIDS for 15 years. Her doctors now tell her to quit smoking.
Despite progress in treatment, she worries that AIDS has taken a back burner to other issues in recent years. Until three or four years ago, Gaines said she had never been politically active. Now, congressmen know her on a first-name basis because she calls to express her concerns about HIV and AIDS and has visited their offices in Washington three times.
Gaines said that when she speaks in the community, most people "about fall out of their chairs" when she tells them one child dies every minute of HIV and AIDS.
Gaines had 25 friends with HIV and AIDS who have died, two of them since August. She said she experiences survivor's guilt.
"It itches who you are as a person when you lose so many people that you love and care about," she said.
"Part of you wonders, 'Why are I still alive?' "
Gaines said she was not afraid to die, but she wished she knew how much time she had left so she could plan her future. Her dream has always been to live on Missouri's Table Rock Lake and have a boat. Ten years ago, she was told that was impossible. Now she's thinking about starting to save up for it again. But she already had to cash in the savings she had in her retirement plan to qualify for Medicaid.
She no longer has to worry about whether her children will even remember her or if she will live to see them start school as she once did. Now she wonders whether she will live to see them graduate.
SEE AIDS ON PAGE 5A