Health and medical news blog

One just cause for anger is the unfairness of the situation. In the first place, being singled out by the virus at all is unfair. No one, regardless of how he or she became infected, asked for or deserved this infection. Steven Charles, who became infected through sexual intercourse, said: “Why me? I didn’t do anything wrong, I never hurt anyone, I was doing what seemed right to me. I know people who are more promiscuous and they seem to be getting out without a scar.” Helen Parks had found a good job in the post office of the small town in which she lives; she had stopped using drugs intravenously before she found out she was infected: “I hadn’t been getting high any more. I was earning good money,” she said. “Why bother to work hard and do good now?”     In the second place, being sick when you are young is unfair. “I won’t get to fulfill my dreams,” said Dean Lombard, who had always wanted to develop his singing talent. “The world owed me better than that. I didn’t deserve that.” Alan Madison became infected with HIV just as he was beginning to reach success and stability in his accounting business, and now he feels he should change his long-range goals. June’s son, at age thirty-four, had just begun to practice medicine after long years of training and has had to discontinue his practice.     And finally, the social stigma, rejection, and even abandonment this particular virus seems to provoke are unfair. When Lisa Pratt’s friends and priest could not respond to her request for help, she said she was hurt and angry. Dean says he feels like a leper: “And I’m not. I’m not unclean. I didn’t ask for this virus.”     Besides unfairness, another reason for anger is frustration at losing control over your life. “As my husband got sicker,” said Lisa, “the more I did, the more he felt he was losing control. Sometimes he was grateful for help, sometimes he just screamed. He was so independent, and so full of life—he had no frame of reference for sickness and death.” Dean had spells of being sick during which he had to be cared for by his long-time partner: “Once I messed the bed like a baby. I got so frustrated and angry at not being able to do what I want to do, I cried.”
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