Teens and AIDS / HIV
What is In Our Own Words: Teens & AIDS?
Hi. I’m Jeanne Blake. As a television medical reporter, I have covered the AIDS epidemic for 15 years. I have told the stories of many young people, men and women living with the disease.
To help you understand what it is like to have AIDS, and to help you stay healthy, we produced a program called In Our Own Words: Teens and AIDS. In this program, you will meet five young people living with HIV. We hope that you heed their powerful words and, as a result, make healthy decisions about your own lives.
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We hope you’ll listen to what we have to say!
Hi. I’m Kerry. At this web site you will meet five young people, including me, who contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, from unprotected sex as teens. What happened to us, doesn’t have to happen to you.
We hope you’ll listen to what we have to say. I think you’ll see we’re a lot like you. And you may realize that you, too, could be at risk for AIDS. Come meet us: Antigone, David, Kerry, Pedro, Veronica.
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Teens and AIDS
Kerry:
| I had dreams…until I tested positive! As a child, growing up in Maine, I had dreams of my own–getting married, having kids, and a career, too. Then, when I was 15, I found out that the guy who was my second sex partner had HIV, so I got tested. When the doctor told me I tested positive, my life — as I knew it— ended. |
| I just sat there like a zombie… It was like someone had taken a key and literally turned me off. All of my senses, all of my functions were gone. I just sat there like a zombie, totally shocked and in total disbelief. All of my hopes, all of my dreams, all of my expectations were just gone with that. |
| I thought I’m never going to be normal again from the minute I get up in the morning to the minute I go to bed a night. You know, I’m never going to have children. I’m never going to get married. I’m never going to grow old. |
| I wonder if the doctor made a mistake. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if the doctor made a mistake. Maybe I really don’t have HIV. But I know that’s just denial. If I can think like that, when I live with this disease 24 hours a day, I can understand why you can deny that AIDS could happen to you. |
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Teens and AIDS
Antigone:
| In high school..I just wanted to be happy! When I was in high school you know, I didn’t know what I wanted to do exactly. But I knew that I just wanted to be happy, and I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do that. I was in a lot of pain and the way I dealt with it, was, I started drinking. I drank, you know, I drank alcohol. |
| …when she drank, she had uprotected sex.. At 20, she stopped drinking. She got sober. When a friend asked her to go with him to be tested for HIV, she was sure she would test negative. Antigone will never forget the moment she was told she had tested positive. |
| Shocked and overwhelmed with fear. I was just completely shocked and completely overwhelmed with fear. And I just thought, Oh my God I’m gonna die. I mean that was the first thought that came into my mind, was that I’m gonna die in 6 months. |
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| She just told me, that you know, she just gave me a death sentence of 6 months and um, and I started crying. All I could do is ask her to go get my mother. My mom came in and she just looked at me and I just looked in her eyes and it was really horrible. I mean, it was just so sad cause the look in her eyes was just that she had just been told that her daughter was going to die. And I just felt so bad in that moment. |
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Teens and AIDS
Pedro:
| Growing up, I was a popular kid. My name is Pedro Zamora. You might recognize me because I was a regular on MTV’s THE REAL WORLD. I was born in Cuba and raised in Miami, Florida. In high school, I was an honor student, I was captain of my cross country team. |
| I used to run 6 to 10 miles a day, I used to be the president of a Science club, and I think most, people around me, looked at me and said, “it couldn’t happen to him, he’s, you know a good kid.” |
| I was infected through unprotected sex. Like many young people, I was infected through unprotected sex. When I was diagnosed, I didn’t know what to think. I had all those questions that came into my mind. Am I going to die? When? How? How am I going to tell my family? |
| How are they going to react? What about school? Can they throw me out? Do I have to tell them? Medications? Should I be on any medications? How long do I have to live? What about sex? What about my partners? |
| I didn’t believe it could happen to me.. I used to really, in my mind, believe it wasn’t about me, that AIDS was a disease of older people, about another generation about bad people, dirty people, about prostitutes, hemophiliacs and gay people and you know, people who were on the outside of my world. I didn’t believe it could ever, really happen to me. |
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Teens and AIDS
Veronica:
| I know its hard to be young today… I know its hard to be young today because this is not “Leave it to Beaver “ time or “The Brady Bunch”or “The Cosby Show” or any of that, this is reality. When I found out I was HIV positive, I didn’t have any dreams. All of them dissipated. |
| Everything left. It was just me against the world, now. Me against this virus. |
| My life as a teenager My life as a teenager, growing up in Philly, it was average, it was the average girls teenage years. I had my junior prom, my boyfriends, babysitting. When I was a teenager, I always fantasized about being a hair dresser to the stars. |
| Diana Ross was my favorite. I always wanted to get her hair and straighten it out, and flip it up and do everything I could do to it, because I think she needed it bad, she really did. But that was my dream. |
| When I found out I was HIV positive… When I came back to Philadelphia and I started using drugs, you know, to cope with it, cause I couldn’t tell my mother, or my father, or my brother or any one like that cause they didn’t understand. |
| See, they thought the same way I did, that it was a gay, white male thing, and that no black woman should get it, you know. |
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