Surviving AIDS means more than taking the right drugs at the right times.
Sometimes it means realizing you don?t have to die.
“When I first found out I had AIDS, I stayed in my room a year?s time, waiting to die, because the only information I had about it was AIDS equals death,” said Kathy Bennett, treatment coach with the Institute for Human Virology?s Jacques Initiative.
Having come back from the brink, Bennett now spends her time coaching other Baltimore residents to stick with their treatment regimen so that it can succeed, no matter how bleak their chances may seem.
Bennett had one of many common co-infections, hepatitis C, and her liver could not handle the AIDS drugs she was first prescribed. “The doctor said, ?Go home and prepare yourself. There?s nothing we can do for you,? ” she said. “But I believe in a higher power.”
She went home to pray and rest, and her condition began to improve.
Then a new drug came out that wouldn?t be so hard on her liver, and Bennett went back into treatment. That was almost 12 years ago.
Early successful treatment is crucial for the success in keeping AIDS in check, said Dr. Robert R. Redfield, associate director for the institute and one of the foremost aids researchers in the nation.
“If patients miss treatments, or are unlucky, a lot of the patients start developing resistance to the medicine,” Redfield said. Once the first line of treatment fails, patients move to more potent treatments, which also carry more side effects and can be dangerous.
The last resort, drugs referred to as “salvage” and “deep salvage” lines, can be downright hard to take.
Such a downhill slide is not only bad for the patient, it leads to more prevalent, drug-resistant strains of HIV; as many as 50 percent of new cases are drug-resistant strains, Redfield said.
Once the initial regimen gets the virus under control, patients who stick with the program are in much less danger of regression, he said.
“The truth is, I think people with HIV should be able to expect to live a natural lifetime,” he said.
The difference the group makes is better than any drug. Chances of successful long-term treatment increase from around 50 percent without support to as high as 85 percent to 95 percent for patients in the program, Redfield said.
Gregory Calloway, 60, found out he had HIV in 1992, but didn?t seek treatment until two years ago. He said his doctor, family and friends gave him the pushhe needed to start, but the support group and Bennett helped him make sure his treatment succeeded.
“She?s a strong influence. She?s somebody you look up to and say, ?If she can do it, anybody can do it,? ” Calloway said. “If you do what you?re supposed to do, eat right, live right, it will work for you.”
