So yesterday I took a little day trip home to see my parents. I haven't seen them in a while so of course they wanted to know how school was going. I told them about how this class has been a little challenging because it is a lot of work but I am very glad that I am taking it. She didn't even know that there was an "HIV" class that you could take. So we started taking and she had an interesting story to tell me. It was about one of my neighbors who had lived by me my entire life. My mom told me that during the 80's, my neighbor, lets call her Pat, and her husband Bob, had been living happily together. Bob needed to have some surgery for something minor but other than that was relatively healthy. When he went in for his surgery he was given a blood transfusion. During this time, blood wasn't checked as rigorously as it is today and Bob was given HIV positive blood. He eventually got AIDS and died. Pat was of course devastated and she had to raise two twin boys all by herself. There was a big lawsuit between Pat and the hospital and Pat was given a big settlement to make sure that she wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of her life. But I know that money doesn't replace losing someone that you love.
When my mom told me this story I was so shocked! I had heard about things like this happening but I had no idea that it has happened to someone that I had known my whole life. It was such a terrible story and it really made me appreciate how lucky I am.
On a different note, I am still finding some surprising and rather sad facts about children with HIV. I was looking on the AVERT website and I saw that in many poor countries, both children and their parents have HIV. This puts a lot of pressure on the children and in many cases, the children end up taking care of their parents. Even if the child doesn't have HIV but his/her parents do, that child basically becomes the bread winner for their entire family and has to work to support them. Many of these children eventually become orphans.
I bet that was surprising for you to find out that people as close as your neigbors were affected by HIV tainted blood during a transfusion. Imagine if scientist didn't know that HIV is spread through blood and blood donations wasn't so rigorously check now in 2009. The HIV/AIDS rate would be through the roof!
ReplyDeleteI find it very sad that some children and their parent's as well have HIV. In most of these cases, it's probably that the mother had HIV and it was passed on to the child during birth. It is sad that a child would have to take on the responsibility of an adult by taking care of the ill parents, but I find it amazing that some children are even willing to do so.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog.
Sometimes putting a face to HIV makes it hit home harder. I am assuming that Pat was tested for HIV and found to be negative. There are a lot of people who acquired HIV through blood transfusions. Remember the blood banking industry didn't want to test because it added to the cost of the pint of blood.
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