Seems familiar …

I totally understand the hysteria and fear that Ebola patients are going through and I feel bad for all the people, doctors and health care workers that have had their lives affected from the Ebola outbreak. I am happy to see that public media and politics are not as they were 33 years ago…

That was when the first published article to print about ‘the AIDS outbreak’. I can remember being in a hospital in NYC, and because I showed the early symptoms, thrush on my tongue, and night sweats I was immediately taken to an isolation ward. In their hurry to isolate me, I was told I had TB, later that day I was told it was not the infectious strand and released. Upon getting back to my apartment with instructions to order TB medicine from some government agency, the hospital called. I was told to come back over; I did not have TB, but an intestinal virus.

Over the years, being a volunteer for a few ASO’s (AIDS Service Organizations’), I visited many who were hospitalized. Seeing all the gowns and masks on news reports brings back those memories. I still see the fear in the staff’s eyes, whenever we volunteers would visit the patients so alone.

I was one of the lucky ones to escape much of the discrimination that so many PWA’s (People with Aids) experienced. By being a volunteer and donating blood each month for research was my way of coping with my own fears and lack of information. I like many of us long term survivors (LTS) have a special bond, like others who have been through life threatening events. I was luckily not called for the draft, even though I was registered, the war had ended just as I finished High school. I can identify with their contempt of being labeled unjustly. I hold many groups over the years with the highest respect. Some being (VFW’s) veterans of foreign war, the Gay community (who I owe a great amount of gratitude) .

Hopefully in this new era, I will not see headlines or hear those sly remarks of years ago. Headlines such as Aids are to punish the wicked, how is a small child with Hemophilia and given a transfusion that was never screened wicked?

How does having any medical illness automatically make a person wicked?

Are Ebola victims wicked?