claire howard @ the peoria journal star: 4-parter on HIV/AIDS in our heartland

from the kaiser family network hiv/aids report April 26, 2007

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=44512

Across The Nation | Peoria Journal Star Publishes Series of Articles on HIV/AIDS

<>[Apr 26, 2007]

The Peoria Journal Star recently published a four-part series on HIV/AIDS. Headlines appear below.

• "Avoiding Infection" (Howard, Peoria Journal Star, 4/23).

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/042307/TRI_BD10FCHA.025.php

The Client Advisory Board at Heart of Illinois HIV/AIDS Center is a club no one should want to join.

"When you join this club, you don't ever get out for the rest of your life," said a CAB member in his early 50s. "Some people want to feel part of a group. I'd say to them 'choose another group.' If I had the chance, I would."

Members of CAB are the HIV-positive patients treated at the center.

Another CAB member, Christina Henry, has devised a six-point checklist to keep people out of the club. Her points address all prospective inductees.

No. 1 on the list: Condoms.

No. 2 on the list: Education

No. 3 on the list: Needles

No. 4 on the list: Testing

No. 5 on the list: Know your partner's status

No. 6 on the list: Vaccine

• "Devastated Families" (Howard, Peoria Journal Star, 4/24).

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/042407/TRI_BCVCRL1D.027.php

For more than 300 days, Michael Fleming was a regular visitor at Knox County Nursing Home, seeing his mother who was in the final stages of Alzheimer's and his "baby girl" who was battling HIV/AIDS and related brain cancer.

His mother died, and his daughter, Nicole Fleming, 30, came home after 11 months. She's lost her hair, which once fell to the center of her back. She still fingers the scar on the right side of her head where surgeons sawed into her skull to remove cancerous brain lesions.

Michael Fleming's younger brother died of HIV/AIDS . . . alone, without family with him.

Fleming recognizes his family's luck and vulnerability in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The Flemings trace their lineage to the first black family settling in Galesburg in the mid-1850s. There was a Fleming living on Mulberry Street for 150 years. Only tangentially did HIV/AIDS first insinuate itself into their lives. Then, over the past decade, the grip tightened on this and other African-American families nationwide.

• "Silent Treatment" (Howard, Peoria Journal Star, 4/25).

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/042507/TRI_BD1JDPAD.025.php

Lisa Roeder's office bulges with documentation and looks like the work environment of any busy professional . . . except for one tell-tale indicator.

There is a handmade ceramic bowl filled with condoms on her desk, a practical and symbolic reminder of her fierce conviction that people have the right to truth and complete information regarding the spread of HIV/AIDS.

"We get 18- and 19-year-olds who learn they are HIV positive. That means they were HIV positive in high school," said Roeder, social services coordinator at the Heart of Illinois HIV/AIDS Center. "It's devastating for them. We hear them say time and again, 'I just didn't know.' It's heartbreaking. We have counselors and grief therapists to help them."

• "'Those Other People'" (Howard, Peoria Journal Star, 4/22).

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/042207/TRI_BD08IABN.027.php

[Christina] Henry, 51, has her own mission. She received her HIV diagnosis at the Peoria City/County Health Department on her birthday in 2003. She prepared to die. She worried about who would care for her grandson. But as the people and resources dedicated to HIV/AIDS in central Illinois found her, she developed resolve. She decided to look at her diagnosis as a gift.

"To try to eliminate TOPS ... 'Those Other People' syndrome," she said.