AARP Magazine - AIDS at 30

Couple months back I got a call from AARP magazine with a dream job. Not only did they want me to photograph for the magazine but they wanted me to shoot in this lomography style of photography that they saw on my website! Better yet they wanted double exposures. Did I mention 40,000,000 copies? exciting!!

The entire premise of the article was about AIDS/HIV at 30. So I went to various places all over the country including LA, Kansas City, Mississippi, Baton Rouge, and Baltimore to photograph different men and women living with the disease.

He was the perfect specimen, an Adonis whose ability to twist his chiseled physique into breathtaking shapes made him a springboard-diving star. Greg Louganis was the face of diving during the 1980s, winning five Olympic gold medals.

But through every dive and television interview of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Louganis kept a secret: Six months before, he had tested positive for HIV — yet another gay man who came of age as AIDS was ravaging the gay community.

He retired soon after that Olympics to pursue other goals — acting and dog training — that seemed urgent; he thought he would soon die. A youth marked by depression fueled his fatalism. “As a teenager I had half expected to be gone by the time I was 30 anyway,” Louganis, now 51, says with a laugh.

He came close. His weight plummeted from 180 to 135, the result of a fungal infection. Louganis was admitted to a hospital in Florida, where he paid his bill — tens of thousands of dollars — in cash, for fear that his insurer, and then the tabloids, would learn of his disease. But, little by little, his optimism grew. He came out as HIV-positive in a 1995 memoir and switched from training Great Danes, which usually live about eight years, to Jack Russell terriers and other, longer-lived breeds that he enters into agility contests.

Louganis does yoga daily and teaches diving in Los Angeles; his life partner, Daniel McSwiney, cooks him healthy meals. Louganis says aging has changed him: “Now that I’m in my 50s, I have a lot less fear and anxiety. I may have thought I’d be dead by 30, but I feel very much alive now.”

“Doctors had spent years telling me I had Epstein-Barr virus or leukemia or chronic fatigue syndrome,” recalls Pamela Yelsky, 51, of Redondo Beach, California. “They didn’t even think about AIDS until much later.” That was ironic, since Yelsky’s own stepson had the disease, contracted from tainted blood during surgery. Yelsky cared for that boy, Beau, even as years of shingles and yeast infections wore her down.

In 1992, when diagnosed with AIDS, Yelsky realized she had contracted the virus at 21, through unprotected sex with a man she thought she’d marry. Yelsky got on the merry-go-round of harsh drugs then available, which would eat away at her bones, give her a humped back, and add 30 pounds of fat to her torso. Two years after her diagnosis, she was so sick that she had to stop working at her job as a loan auditor. Stepson Beau endured many of the same difficult treatments, and five years ago, at age 24, he succumbed to lymphoma brought on by HIV, a devastating blow for her and her husband, Jerry.

Three years ago Yelsky began a next-generation treatment called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), a combination of drugs that target different parts of the virus. It does not work for every patient, but many enjoy renewed vigor and few side effects. For Yelsky, “it’s a miracle,” she says.

But she worries that improved treatments feed a sense of complacency about the disease, particularly among women. “Most women today don’t feel they’re at risk,” says Yelsky, who speaks about HIV at high schools and colleges. “Seeing all that denial 30 years into the disease is just shocking.”

The feeling was unshakable. For two weeks Lee Fischer, then 60, suffered chills and weakness, and watched his rangy frame whittle itself down from 185 pounds to 165. He visited his doctor in Wilmington, Delaware, where he worked as a chemist, and confirmed his suspicion: He was HIV-positive.

Fischer knew all about AIDS — he had delivered meals to people with HIV in the 1990s. Back then he was in a committed gay relationship, and he and his partner got tested regularly, though they used protection. But shortly before his diagnosis in 1997, the now-single Fischer had indulged in a fling while on vacation in Seattle. That one time was enough.

Epidemiologists have long known that sharing needles can transmit HIV. But they have also found that people who use any sort of drug — even, like Fischer, a few too many drinks on vacation — are more likely to take risks that could lead to infection. And infected people don’t always protect others. In a study of older HIV-positive people in New York City, one in three sexually active subjects had recently had risky sex.

Gay men remain the highest risk group for HIV overall, says Ronald Johnson of AIDS Action, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Men over 50 who were cautious when younger have reported “condom fatigue” — they tire of the decrease in sensation that condoms cause, Johnson adds.

Now 74 and living in Baltimore, Fischer is in good health, thanks to HAART and a regimen that includes yoga, meditation, gym visits, and dog walks. He drinks no alcohol. Micromanaging health can keep people with HIV alive longer. “Taking care of yourself is a 24-hour job,” Fischer says.

Twenty years ago, when Sergio Farfán got a form of pneumonia so debilitating he could barely breathe, emergency room personnel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, discovered that his immune system was effectively dead because of AIDS. “They gave me a 2 percent chance to live,” Farfán says.

“They gave me a 2 percent chance to live. I began to prepare myself for death.” — Sergio Farfán, 60

One doctor even told him he should go home and die, so people who could benefit from drugs wouldn’t be shortchanged. “I went home and was incredibly depressed,” Farfán, now 60, recalls. “Then I got really angry and went back to the hospital and told them I needed a new doctor.” With medication, the architect — a native of Mexico City — regained his strength. Then, he became an activist, starting the Louisiana Latino Health Coalition for HIV/AIDS Awareness.

Latinos get HIV at 2.5 times the rate of whites. Most cases are the result of men having sex with men, as was the case with Farfán and a man he had met in Dallas. Once infected, many Latinos face barriers that others do not. Some immigrants don’t speak English or are afraid of shaming their families by admitting their condition, Farfán says.

Then there are the limitations on HIV services in some southern states; for political reasons, funding them has not been a priority. “Ninety-five percent of people on the waiting list for HIV treatment are in the South,” says Charles King of Housing Works, a New York City – based agency that finds housing, treatment, and job training for people with HIV.

Medication for HIV/AIDS is expensive: It can cost $1,000 or more per month. But allowing people to go without medication costs far more, if they become ill with one of the many complications of AIDS that can necessitate a hospital stay.

James Bender was a Navy sailor. One night in Florida in the 1980s he met two female prostitutes, one of whom left him with a lifelong reminder of their encounter. Believing AIDS was a disease for gay white men, he hadn’t worn a condom. A weeks-long fever in 1987 led to an AIDS diagnosis.

“AIDS made me quit taking life for granted. It forced me to make the best use of my time.” — James Bender, 51

Now a longtime AIDS survivor, Bender, 51, has endured his share of struggles. The harsh early drugs that saved his life also contributed to a heart attack, osteoporosis, and neuropathy, a nerve-deadening condition of the hands and feet.

Since he began HAART, Bender has come down with the age-linked maladies diabetes, glaucoma, and an enlarged heart. That’s because even when HIV is controlled with drugs, it still accelerates the body’s aging process. The average 55-year-old with HIV has three chronic conditions — the same number as a 75-year-old who is HIV-negative. Within three years of infection, certain cells vital to the immune system age by as much as 20 to 30 years, a recent UCLA study found. Three U.S. research groups are collaborating to devise guidelines for treating older HIV/AIDS patients.

Bender wonders whether health systems will be able to care for aging people with the disease. He’s not alone. Stephen Karpiak of ACRIA sees the coming wave of older AIDS patients as a potential catastrophe. “It’s a tsunami that will flood our budgets and worsen the caregiving crisis that’s starting to make itself known,” he says. “We really need to get a handle on this.”

words by Michael Anft

Check out the article AARP Magazine - AIDS at 30 (AIDS AT 30 Articole).

written by fotoglove on 2011-06-29