A week before she died on June 4, 1994, I was told she suffered from cancer, but it was all a lie.
While she lied in her white hospital bed in her cold room over looking Kendall Drive at Baptist Hospital, I remember thinking, she didn’t look sick. At 11-years-old I never dreamed that a perfectly good looking 39-year-old could die of cancer in a matter of a week.
A few days later, after the funeral, as I was on my way to ballet class I asked my mom how it was possible that my aunt died of cancer. A month before I witnessed a woman, who I called Nana, die of cancer as a skinny, bald-headed woman. When I compared the two, my aunt's case became unclear. It was then that my mom admitted to me, in secrecy, that she died of AIDS. At that time I didn’t care about how bad I felt. I only thought of my cousin, the son she left behind.
I later discovered before she was admitted into the hospital there was one family member who knew that she had AIDS. However, she or he was supposedly sworn to secrecy and therefore never told anyone until she was hospitalized.
Recently, I discovered that she never took her medicine. I was told that she always wanted to look beautiful and didn’t want to suffer from the side effects of the drugs, which explains why she died so suddenly.
On Jan. 9, I attempted to ask my grandmother questions about her death. She refused to talk to me about it and said that if I write about it then everyone would know I was around someone who had AIDS. My mother, unfortunately, remains completely clueless on the details of how my aunt contracted the virus or how long she lived with it. Some believe she contracted it from her husband who no longer speaks to the family.
My story is only one compared to millions. I was told, at one point, that my aunt never wanted to make it known that she had AIDS, because she didn’t want the family shunning her. Back in the nineties, the understanding on AIDS was very limited. If you had AIDS, people were afraid to touch and socialize with you. It was as if you suffered from leprosy.
Today, South Florida is one of the largest areas in the nation that has the most HIV/AIDS cases and the numbers continue to grow. Other than AIDS month, the media rarely covers the epedemic, how it’s affecting South Florida, how many health care practitioners accidentally contract it and how our youth are being affected by the constant rise of it possibly due to unprotected sex.
In 2004 Florida had the second highest HIV/AIDS cases among the youth ranged from 13 to 19 years of age in the U.S. From fifth to seventh grade I attended a private school in Miami. During my two years there, no teachers or counselors spoke to us about HIV/AIDS.
As a public high school student in Broward County I was forced, along with everyone else, to take a sex education class during my sophomore or junior year. That class is the only memory I have as far as my school trying to educate the youth on sexual transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. Lucky for me, my dad spoke to me about boys, sex, diseases, protection and drugs from a very early age, sometime before the seventh or sixth grade, and he never stopped talking to me about it.
I remember leaving my private school in Miami where none of my friends and acquaintances were having sexual encounters to transferring into a public school in Weston in the eighth grade where the majority of kids were. At that time, people were already having sex and engaging in oral sex.
As I entered high school, the numbers only continued to climb and rapidly. If I recall correctly, my school ranked as one of the highest schools with HIV students. If it wasn’t for my education at home, I most likely would have done what everyone else was doing. Due to my life experiences, I believe education on the virus, sex and drugs all start at home.
This affects South Florida and all of us wholive here. People need to become more aware of the constant increase and that their is a good possibility that a loved one could have it and just be keeping it a secret. This desease effects our friends, family members and in the end YOU!
In 2007 Maxim Magazine voted Miami as the nation’s number one party city. They judged based on condom sales, bars and clubs, strip clubs, the ratio of women per a man, casinos and other statistics. My only conclusion, as of right now, is that as Miami and South Florida continues to grow so does HIV/AIDS and STDs. The only thing that can help the next generation is awareness but most importantly, like everything else, it has to start at home.
5 comments:
This is an amazing story. You have been in contact with someone who has suffered the disease, and it gives you a different perspective on it. I also like the art, and I have to admit I like black as a background.
Your and your family's experience in dealing with the disease makes your story remarkable not only for a blog, but in general. How you start your article from the perspective of a 11 year-old places almost every reader in the same position of blissful ignorance you once were, and once there, your writing makes your astonishment ours. Your experience at school also manages to transport us to an era where AIDS seemed more like a distant boogeyman instead of the harsh reality the world faces today, and in that any sensible reader cannot help but care for the issue. You have made the disease's impact not only about your own life but ours as well.
I hesitate to suggest that you add facts and your own research, considering that the personal aspect is what makes your post so powerful. But I do suggest you change the background and font - they do get tiring on the eyes. And since it's not a long entry, I don't believe that embedding a video or image would have made a big difference. But do consider adding those if your future posts go beyond three paragraphs.
I truly enjoyed reading your blog from top to bottom. I like the humanistic and narrative style that you used at the beginning and how you later supported your story with statistical facts. I also noticed that you made some modifications to the font, bolding the letters really made it easier for me to follow the story, especially towards the end of your blog which lack graphics. Furthermore, I agree with your conclusion, that awareness begins in the home. My mother never spoke to me about AIDS, but in part I think it was becuase she was not educated on the subject herself.However, she made it her upmost priority to teach me everything she did know. So it was I who taught my mother about AIDS. So, for families such as mine, in which English is not their first language,is the children who at times educate their parents about what they learn in school and in society.
This post hooked me from the beginning, regardless of the grammar (which wasn't enough to deter you from reading). Very touching story that shows you how the mentality was regarding HIV/ AIDS at the time. The fact that they tried to tell you it was cancer instead was interesting. It's obvious your family didn't want a young child asking questions about AIDS at that time. But, now-a-days, it's probably a good time to begin informing.
This blog really caught my attention from the start. It was very humanistic and the story catches my emotions. Rather than tell the story of your Aunt having AIDS, you showed us the emotional side of it and how it affected you. I like the background of your blog. I think it fits. I also like your first graphic. The blog is easy on the eyes and easy to read. The way you transitioned from the personal story to the Miami information was great. You really caught my attention. I think this blog definately has elements of a feature story.
Post a Comment