Refuses to quit—————-—
Lincoln woman educates others about prevention of AIDS
Editor’s note: To protect to the
Erivacy of the woman in this story,
er name has been changed.
By Cindy Kimbrough
She is surrounded by clowns.
Clowns sit on shelves and hang
on the walls.
Some are happy, some sad.
One clown pops out of a drum. It was
gift from a friend. A clown on the wall
leads a duck by a leash.
There is a numbing brightness to the
room — bright mauve walls spotted with
bright tropical posters. It forms a bril
liant environment for the clowns.
She reflects the brightness ... a neon
green, pink and orange outfit. .. bright
pink lipstick.
Everything about
the tiny robust woman
aj seems bright and
^0 happy.
Everything, that is,
^^^F except her future.
Two years ago
Martha learned she
^ was HIV positive.
Now she is struggling to put herself
together and live out the life she has left.
Martha sits up straight and begins her
story. It all started in 1988, she says,
when she went into treatment for alco
holism.
She drank a lot and did some drugs,
but never intravenously.
“I made some bad choices,” she says,
but had decided to take charge of her life.
During the time she was in treat
ment she learned a lot about
AIDS and the HIV virus, but she
thought little about it.
Then in 1990 she sponsored a woman
in the alcohol treatment program. The
two became close friends, Martha serv
ing as the mentor.
While helping her friend get through
treatment, she heard the whole AIDS
story again.
On a whim, the two women decided to
get tested.
Martha was getting divorced and trying
to recover from the destructive relation
ship.
“I thought I would get tested so I’d
know for the next relationship I’d go into
that everything would be okay . ..” she
says.
At age 32 she planned to go back to
college and get her life back on the straight
and narrow.
She would get tested and this would be
one area she wouldn’t have to worry
about.
“I didn’t even think about it after I had
the blood count — I just thought it could
never happen,” she says.
Understandably, she wasn’t pre
pared when she received the call
at work. The test had come up
positive, the doctor told her.
“My first thought was that I was going
to die ... and soon,” she says.
“I was in complete denial. I was tested
again. I knew they had made a mistake."
But the test came up positive again.
She went through disbelief, shock,
anger, denial, frustration, fear.
For six months to a year she says she
was like a crazy woman. Her life seemed
ended. She was severely depressed.
She quit her job. She couldn’t get any
insurance.
Martha says she, like most people with
the virus, went from being somewhat
successful with a good job, to being forced
to live in poverty, just getting Dy.
She returned to college but questioned
why. Who would hire her?
She considered going back to drinking.
“As an addict knowing that you are
going to die soon, you think you might as
well drink."
And to this day — over the last two
years — she still has moments when she
can’t accept the reality of her situation.
“Even now I want to get tested again.
... It has to be a mistake."
Physically, Martha says, she feels
healthy. Her T-4-cell count is normal —
between 1,000 and 1,500. The T-4-cells
help the body defend against infection.
But she gets tired easier now. She can’t
get through the day without taking a nap
with her overprotective Stratford terrier,
Henry. ...
Eating has become her new addiction,
she says. It’s harmful to her because she
has diabetes, and she’s put on a lot of
weight.
But she says she’s not concerned about
that. She’s seen her friends waste away
down to 80 and 90 pounds.
“I keep thinking as long as I’m fat, I’m
healthy.”
Martha says she tries to keep the
rest of herself together by at
tending an AIDS/HIV support
group.
“The support group probably saved my
sanity.”
The group provides a social network,
she says. Those in the group know every
thing involved with tne disease. They
know what to do and what drugs to try.
“I have found some of the most loving
people and the most caring people in my
support group, even more so than my
family.”
But that closeness has made her situ
ation worse, or at least more painful.
Out of the original support group she
entered two years ago, no one remains.
She’s seen her friends slowly die and
witnessed the pain they had to go through.
Martha went to eight funerals last
year.
She keeps the funeral programs' in a
little basket by her bed.
“I find it helps the grieving process.”
She says it also helps to talk about her
situation.
Born and raised in Nebraska, Martha
talks at schools around the state. She has
spoken to parent groups and has even
addressed an auditorium full of college
age women.
“If you’ve never done any public speak
ing before and then step on a stage in
front of hundreds of people, it’s very hard.”
She knows the minute she steps on
stage, she will be judged, stereotyped.
“If you have AIDS or the HIV virus
you’re either a intravenous drug user or
a slut."
But it’s worth it, her mission to edu
cate people—especially young women. It
coula happen to them.
Unlike most people, Martha savs, she
knows how she was infected. Her ex
husband infected her.
But, to this day, he refuses to be tested,
she adds bitterly. As long as he puts off
taking the test, she says, ne can avoid the
truth.
Monogamy, she says, does not ensure
you are safe.
If it happened to her, it can happen to
anyone.
And Martha says she speaks out be
cause she is disgusted at how long the
disease was ignored and how ignorant
people still are about the ways oi getting
the disease.
It’s crazv how people are so un
knowledgeable about an epidemic that
has been going on for 12 years, she says.
It’s crazy how people are still willing to
go out on Saturday night and have un
protected sex, yet worry about getting
the virus through a mosquito bite.
It’s crazy how former President Re
agan didn’t mention the word AIDS for
seven years into the epidemic, she says.
And, she says, it’s crazy that people
don’t realize that the disease is almost
100 percent preventable. Condoms, she
savs, have proven to be 99.8 percent
effective.
So she continues to get up in front of
people, to sing the praises or condoms.
But she admits she doesn’t just do
it to help society. She does it to
help herself.
“1 just don’t v/ant to be another
number or another person who dies of
AIDS. I want something positive to hap
pen out of what happened to me. When I
die I want there to be a reason for me
being here.
“me most important thing to me is
that I mattered to someone, I helped
someone or I prevented someone else
from going through what I had to go
through, whether it was alcoholism or
drug addiction or HIV.” •
But even though Martha is willing to
stand up in front of hundreds of people
and tell her story, she doesn’t confide in
everyone that she is HIV positive.
Unless she knows the person can handle
the news and will support her, she will
not take them into her confidence.
David Badders/DN
“I’ve made that mistake before and
have ended up supporting the other per
son,” she says.
She doesn’t need that, Martha says.
Life’s too short.
But she has told her family.
Her older sister is very supportive.
She’s her closest friend, Martna says.
She now lives with Martha and supports
her. Martha says she couldn’t have sur
vived without her sister.
It is difficult for the rest of her family,
she says, because she does not yet have
AIDS, she still only has the HIV virus.
They are in denial, she says.
Martha says she wishes they would
deal with it now.
“I wish they would talk about it. I wish
they would be supportive. I wish they
would say, ‘How are your feeling? How
was your visit to the doctor? How was
your blood count?’
“I wish they’d do anything besides never
mentioning it... never talking about it.”
Martha says it has been particularly
difficult for her mother. That’s the last
thing a mother wants to think about —
burying one of her children.
And Martha says she won’t chance
having her own children.
But she would take the chance
with another relationship.
“People think that if somebody’s
HIV positive they should go lay
down and die. I still, hopefully, have a lot
of years left to live.
“I’m a caring person. I’m a loving per
son. I know that I have a lot to give m a
relationship.”
Martha says all she is asking a man to
do is to wear a condom, something she
doesn’t think is unreasonable.
“Most men wouldn’t think of having a
relationship with me, but they would go
out and have unprotected sex.”
That in itself is unreasonable, she says.
Martha says, as her eyes begin to cloud,
that she has always had someone to love
and she misses that.
“And there’s something I have in
my mind about dying . . . you feel
like you need someone there to hold
your hand."