(flame ignites) (somber music) Kira has Aids.

My husband died of AIDS two years ago, and I'm HIV positive.

(music) (music) This ones Dale, and this one is Chris.

And you know this one!

(off camera: doesnt look familiar to me.

Who's that?)

It's me.

That's you.

Oh, and this is my mama.

For my whole family.

And this is part of my family.

He's my Daddy.

My husband was infected by IV drug use.

I was infected by sexual intercourse, and my daughter was infected parent-to-child.

Our family represents all three modes of transmission.

My name is Patrick France, and I have full blown Aids.

I don't know how much Aids education any of you have received, but, Joyce briefly mentioned T4 counts.

A normal T4 Carol for somebody like you is probably around 1200.

I'm now down to four.

Technically speaking, I should already be dead.

Well, in 79, 78 or 79 is probably when I was infected.

but Aids, it's as we know it.

Today was not known as a disease until, like, 1981.

And, but I can trace my own behavior back to, to 78.

79 is when I was sexually active.

I doubt that any one of you would normally be able to say, if you saw me walking down the street, would be able to point to me and say, there goes a gay man who's had Aids since, you know, 1978.

You know, none of you would be able to do that.

If you can't do that with me.

How do you know where your next sexual partner has been?

You don't .

You can't walk into a room and someone says there's two people in this room.

that have Aids.

And look around that room and say, oh, well, that person and that person right there.

I know those are the two people in this room that have Aids.

Because what you may find out is that it's the person sitting next to you and yourself.

When my husband told me that he thought he had Aids, it was like, come on, this doesn't happen to me.

I mean, I'm a homemaker.

Not the best homemaker in the world, but homemaker, mom, wife, you know?

Now, Patrick, he's a gay man.

He can have this disease, but me?

No way.

That wasn't true.

I did have it.

so then the wake up to reality was like, okay, people need to know it's real.

It affects everyone.

Not just gay men, you know, not just Patrick, but my husband.

Me.

My child.

It affects everyone.

so I'm really up front and try to make sure that the people around me know again, as I mentioned, I'm going to talk about AIDS a little bit.

This is the time that I prefer to make parents.

We're in the program for the first time, aware of the situation with myself and my daughter.

I am HIV positive.

My daughter has Aids.

Kiara always wears a face mask in class to help protect her from anything that she might come in contact with with the other children.

I honestly believe that we shouldn't be treated differently.

It's like you really can't get this from just being around people.

the only way it could happen, just being around somebody would be a really bizarre accident.

Blood to blood contact.

in an accident.

Well, those kind of accidents just don't happen every day.

But at the same time, I know that I have no control over when an accident is going to happen.

So if everybody around me knows I'm infected, then there's no way they should be infected.

Because that type of an accident can be avoided.

That's on the first day of school, the children in her class had a pop up play where they talked about other children with immune compromising situations and explain why she wears the face mask.

And Kiara immediately will tell anybody that asks her that she does have Aids.

which is another reason why I see no reason in trying to hide it.

I haven't taught my daughter to, so why should I hide it?

I don't think Aids education can start too early.

I don't consider Aids education and sex education to be synonymous.

Initially, when kids are younger, they need to know that Aids is something that you can get from someone else's blood.

The older they get, the more information you can give them.

I value the time that I have with my children.

They know who their godparents are and who they'll be with in the event of my death, and they're very much aware of the fact that their dad died of Aids, and their mom and their sister both have the same disease that killed their dad.

My third grader told me that he was afraid that he might wake up one day and find me dead.

So we talked about it.

I explained to them, you know that dying from Aids is a process.

They saw what happened with their dad.

They were there the whole time.

so they saw the process.

And I explained to them that that's not I'm not going to die suddenly overnight.

They're not going to wake up one day and I'll be gone.

They'll know it's coming.

that's the way this disease works.

Oh, mom, I'm glad you got help.

Eric, wrap the book.

The present.

Okay.

I try to talk things through with my kids as much as they can.

Christopher displays a lot of anger.

And I keep hoping that he'll start opening up more and verbalizing that.

And I know that when he's ready, he will.

but I love them both a lot.

And I keep hoping that I can show them enough love that they'll be able to deal with whatever happens.

But they are scared.

And.

Okay, I'll help you.

Okay.

Okay.

Don't.

Please listen to me.

Can I help?

Cara's T-cell counts when she was 18 months old were 1800.

By the time she was two and a half years old, it had dropped down to 600.

And within three months of that time, it was down to 240.

That was when she began AZT therapy.

Happy birthday.

Are you happy birthday dear.

Yeah, I have happy birthday to you.

And you are ready.

Make a wish.

Lots more, lots more to.

Yeah!

(clapping) It's like five years old and yeah, she's got full blown Aids, but she's still staying really healthy.

But remembering that when she was six months old, being told that a child born with full blown Aids was lucky to see two and now she's five, you know, and and she does have full blown Aids now, but, you know, she still seems really healthy and she still seems to be doing really good.

And she's still here.

(piano music) Got your hands.

Just let it go.

Limp like a rag.

Yeah, right.

That always amazes me how good she's at the hospital.

Even when it hurts, she won't let anyone know.

And yet, at the same time, she screams when I comb her hair.

So is she protecting me?

I think it's more a matter of, Maybe she's already at a very young age, has an image to uphold.

She has been complimented and praised that what a wonderful patient she is.

And and how good she is.

And you know, when she's just getting a normal I.V., that it just kind of goes right in and, you know, being tough and not putting up a fuss, that's that's really cool.

But when something is (unintelligable) and it's hurting her for her to still feel that it's not okay to even let a few tears come out, maybe I have taught her to be too tough.

But she's probably going to need that when she starts to school next year.

Want to be a nurse when you grow up Kera?.

Good Girl.

Really good, always.

And this is the most miserable thing that I have to do.

I'm.

I'm pretty bad about taking my medicine, and I even miss my breathing treatments a lot because it's just like.

It's like I feel great.

Why should I do this?

But, you know, that is something you need to do.

And part of taking care of my kids means taking care of myself.

So that I'll be here for them as long as possible.

I just I don't like this process here.

I know,.

Am I going to have to do this the rest of my life?

Okay, I don't know yet.

Undecided.

I haven't decided yet.

You know, we're still too early in this to see what kind of response well get.

To know for sure what?

We're going to do it for a while longer.

Until one of us decides not to.

That it's not working or you've had enough or something, so far, so good.

About last October, my T4 count dropped down to four and I started having really bad lung problems and I ended up in the hospital.

And during the time I was in the hospital, they decided to do an open lung procedure and they removed one quarter of my right lung and they accidentally collapsed my lungs during the procedure.

When I woke up out of surgery, there was a big tube sticking out of my side, draining a lot of blood and pieces of flesh.

And it was it was pretty grim.

Right after surgery, I suddenly had over 100 lesions all over my body.

So I started chemotherapy, and that's been a real touch and go.

The first time I did it, I went very, very well and I was very pleased, but I just did a bout of it yesterday.

I've done a couple more bouts and I just did about a chemotherapy yesterday, and it's one of the reasons I look so haggard today and, it drains me, but it's working.

That's the good news.

It's working.

It seems like I eat, drink and sleep AIDS.

I used to be able to get by on about six hours of sleep a night, and now I have to sleep at least 12 hours of sleep.

And sometimes I take, naps during the day because I'm so tired.

I have to watch now what I eat.

I have to eat a lot of food to be able to maintain my weight.

But it's now gotten to the point where I'm financially busted.

So I have to live on Medicaid and Social Security.

It's also very complicated, but it's very, very expensive.

I've seen what this disease can do, and I have no illusions that I'm going to beat this disease.

I'm not going to beat it.

You know, it's already gotten the best of me.

It got to the point where I was even afraid to go out in public.

I became frightened of people, and I was removing myself.

It wasn't that anything anybody was doing to me, I was removing myself.

It's kind of like, I hate to say this, and I felt a lot like this.

I thought about it the other day.

It's like, you know, how animals very often will go off into the wilderness by themselves to die.

When the time comes for them to die, they'll go off by themselves.

And that's kind of what I felt.

I felt like I was waiting to die, and I removed myself from society.

Some people, disappeared out of my life.

Some people that I least expected to disappear out of my life just couldn't handle it.

People that I was very, very close to.

And then there were people in my life that I least expected to rally behind me did.

None of us have any guarantees.

We only have this moment.

That's all we have.

Whether it's AIDS or anything else.

We only have this moment.

You know, it's real possible to be friends with somebody who has AIDS.

Very, very possible.

A lot of times people don't know what to say to somebody who has Aids, or any terminal illness.

They just don't know what to say.

And they feel like they must say something.

And that's not necessary either.

The thing that I need more often than anything is, is, is just for somebody to be able to listen to me.

I was young, and there was a strong feeling, There's time.

There is always time for me to do whatever it is that I want to do in life.

You know, there were a lot of things that I really wanted to do.

And, my mind, there was always going to be time.

Now that doesn't happen.

That's not that's not the case anymore.

So I wanted.

Something.

Oh, I wanted.

Something that.

I had a lot of the same wants and desires that anybody else did.

And of course, all through all of that, you know, through that whole thing, I was just looking for somebody to love me and everything that I did, you know?

I was just looking for somebody to love me.

And I got AIDS.

So once I was diagnosed with AIDS I met that person.

His name was Steve.

And Steve had buried his father a year before to cancer.

And when I met him, he had buried his, He had just buried his mother to cancer.

After taking care of her for six months at home and at his mother's funeral, they saw a purple spot on his forehead and they knew it was Kaposi's sarcoma, which is one of the cancers that you can get with this disease.

Stephen refused to go to the hospital and refused to have nurses, and I was the only caregiver that he had, so I was the caregiver for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And in the meantime, I had to watch out for my own health.

I had to bathe him, to comb his hair.

I had to brush his teeth.

I had to dress him.

We had daily radiation treatments because the cancer was rapidly progressing.

I had to clean up his vomit.

I had to wipe his backside.

He was six foot two.

I would have to carry him to the bathroom because he refused to use a bedpan.

I fed him, I did everything I.

Everything you would do for a small infant.

Only he was six foot two.

I think everybody who has AIDS has a big fear of dying alone.

And I wanted to make doggone straight.

He wasn't going to die alone.

I didn't think it was possible to feel that much pain.

I didn't.

It was like the whole world just emptied out in front of me.

There was a hole inside of me that was so big that could not be filled, and it was a physical pain.

Oh!

You know, a lot of people are very frightened of death.

I'm not frightened of death.

I'm frightened of the process, I believe, with all of my heart that when they get ready to lower me into my grave, I'm not going to be saying, gee, I wish I'd spent more time at work.

What's going to be really important is, you know, who did I love?

Who loved me?

And did I remember to tell them?

Should we be worrying about getting AIDS?

I mean, the two of you.

You got it from your husband, who got it from I.V.

drug use.

And you, I assume, got it from being gay.

what about those people who are not involved in either of those activities?

Is it.

Is it a real threat to teenagers?

It's the the fastest growing group of people catching this disease are women and teenagers.

They're the fastest growing group.

In fact, it's on the decline in the gay community completely.

See, that's one of the toughest jobs that I have.

When I go out and speak is convincing people this is not a gay disease.

It used to be.

But gay people acted responsibly once they were ravaged by this disease.

As juniors in high school, you do need to be worried about it, but you can protect yourself from it.

You can prevent yourself from getting it.

You can't prevent your best friend from getting it.

They have to do that for themselves.

But you can prevent yourself from getting it.

It's a real problem in the teenage community and they don't even know.

And that's the really sad.

And a lot of it has to do with, like I said, because they can't see it, you know, they cannot see the effects of what this disease is doing.

So they don't think it was a problem.

Everybody needs to take care of themselves.

I can't blame my husband that I'm infected because I took chances.

I was promiscuous, I did things that I knew in my heart I should not be doing.

And we're each responsible for our own actions.

This disease is very, very preventable.

And this is for either of you.

I was just wondering if, if you were to die, say, tomorrow, would you be would you feel satisfied with your part in the advancement of AIDS education?

Or is there still more that you feel you need to do?

Want to go first?

Yes.

Okay.

I would know that I've done everything I can do today.

and I will continue to do everything I can.

I would say, you know, I'm not so foolish as to believe that when I go out speaking that it's necessarily going to change people's lives or they're going to alter their behavior.

But maybe once somebody will stop and think or maybe even more important, so they will educate others around them.

When I speak to students, a lot of times I like to tell them that if they get nothing else from our conversation, the most important thing I can give them is either enough knowledge, enough understanding, or the desire to obtain enough knowledge or understanding that if next week they themselves, or the person they care about most in the world tests positive, or any of their friends or family, were to get a positive diagnosis, a positive test result for HIV that they would still love, respect, care for and treat that person the same way they do today.