Phrasing the question

I’ve had a woman yell at me over the phone when I told her I was writing a story about people with AIDS.

Perhaps I should watch what I said.

“That’s offensive!” she said.

“What is?” I said.

“When you said that,” she said.

The woman, a nurse who counseled patients living with the disease, said that I shouldn’t refer to it as “people living with AIDS.” I should say HIV/AIDS or people with a chronic disease. She hung up on me. I called her back again to apologize. She said that’s okay but I don’t want to speak with you. She hung up on me again.

This whole project, in which students had to report on HIV/AIDS in South Florida, taught me something about language. Perhaps she was wrong for hanging up on me (I’m still resentful at that) but I learned how to approach the subject to people. Political correctness is now a way of life unfortunately and if you want to deal with people, you’re just going to have to learn how to phrase questions.

But this isn’t something I’ve learned about HIV/AIDS. I haven’t really picked up anything new from this course on the disease. As stated in my earlier blog, teachers in middle school showed me countless documentaries about HIV. So I'm still surprised that there is little coverage in South Florida on the issue.

I’m now looking to see a perspective from someone with the disease. I haven’t completed the course and there are still other stories to write.

AIDS awareness in South Florida

Jesse Sanchez is trying to get on the MTV reality show “The Real World.” He has already gone through two auditions and is waiting to go through one more. Unlike other people who want to be one the show for fame, he said he wants to make viewers aware of HIV in South Florida.

Sanchez, a 19-year-old student at Miami-Dade Community College, has been HIV positive since last March. He said he wants to appear on the show because it will remind viewers that South Florida has a problem with HIV/AIDS.

But he doesn’t want people to know him as just a young man with a disease.

“A disease cannot define me,” Sanchez said.

His main dream is to be a news correspondent. His interest in journalism began when he was in third grade when he saw Jim Berry, a sportscaster, at his school. He has pursued that dream. He now works for Channel 4 as an associate producer.

For Sanchez, there isn’t enough media coverage and people are still getting sick. There are a lot of misconceptions out there, Sanchez said, which makes people not careful in their sex lives.

“People think it’s like you take one pill and you’re okay,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez is not on any medication. His T-cell count has not reached dangerously low just yet. He said a number of factors can bring it down, including stress. But Sanchez isn’t worried about going a career where stress is high when it comes to deadlines and competition to find good stories.

“In a weird way, I’m not stressed because I’m doing what I love,” Sanchez said.

When Sanchez found out he was positive for HIV, he said a tear ran down his face and wondered what he did to deserve it.

“There is not a day that goes by that you don’t say ‘why did this happen to me’,” Sanchez said.

He said he received support from family and friends but dating can be difficult. He likes dating older men who are accepting of the disease. However, he remembers meeting a man online and when Sanchez told him he was HIV positive, the man said he just wanted to be friends.

Ever since he contracted the disease, Sanchez said the experience has been him more driven to succeed as a journalist.

“I feel like I have to work faster,” he said.

Sanchez said he hopes that if he gets on “The Real World,” people will not only become aware of HIV/AIDS in South Florida but also realize that the disease cannot restrict someone of accomplishing things.

And while Sanchez hopes to get his message across on MTV, Michael Rajner is reaching out to people living with HIV/AIDS through activism.

Rajner, who has been HIV positive for 12 years, is a member of the National Association of People with AIDS, a non-profit organization that is out to help people with the disease. Rajner is planning on participating in the 2008 National Conference on African-Americans and AIDS, which will inform patients on how to get heath care and encourage them to become more active on public policy.

Rajner said he feels there isn’t enough courage on AIDS in South Florida.

“We can do much better,” Rajner said.

He has also spoken out against Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle for his remarks against the gay community. Last August, when Naugle and other conservative members held a press conference saying that gay men were fueling the spread of HIV/AIDS in the city because they were having sex in public restrooms, Rajner yelled, “You are demonizing people and it is wrong.”
Rajner said what the mayor was doing had nothing to do with public health issues but was an attack on the gay community.

“It was like propaganda,” he said.

Rajner, 37, has gone through several medications that did not sit well with his body. He said some medicine made him feel nauseous. Doctors had to remove his gall bladder at one point because it became inflamed.

For Rajner, it was about finding the medicine that was right for him.

“It’s very individual,” Rajner said. “My experience is not the same as everyone else’s.

Rajner said he has been on the same medicine now for three years. He has developed asthma. He used to ride his bicycle and rollerblade. But now he finds himself out of breath easily.

“You start to wonder if its age or AIDS,” Rajner said.

Rajner, who was born in New York City and moved to South Florida in 2000, had a Catholic upbringing where homosexuality was looked down upon.

“I come from a family that’s religious and it’s not accepted,” Rajner said.

When he told his family he was gay, his father accepted it but his stepmother reacted with hurtful remarks, Rajner said.

And when Rajner found out he contracted HIV, he said he accepted it. He had lost friends to the disease and his grandmother, mother and aunt to cancer when he was 13 years old. Ever since then, he said he has been activist for social cause.

AIDS in the Media and Miami

Miami has one of the highest numbers of AIDS cases in the United States. New cases have been popping up in the thousands and it’s been this way for quite awhile. There’s even an article I found in The Miami Herald dating back to 2002 that ranks Miami at number one.

And few people are saying anything.

Turn on your TV or log on the internet. You’ll find stories on celebrity meltdowns or the War in Iraq. But people in general act as if there is a cure for AIDS and there is nothing to worry about.

Aside from a few reports that address the issue, the media rarely addresses the issue the way it did back in the 1980s and 1990s. I remember watching documentaries, news reports and made-for-TV movies when I was ten years old. Even at that age, I knew who Rock Hudson was and that Anthony Perkins, or Norman Bates as I knew him back then, was dying from the disease. In middle school, teachers showed us films on how to put a condom on and so forth.

So the threat of AIDS was very much real to me, even though I wasn’t having sex in my preteen years or sharing random needles in the streets. But because the threat was shoved down my throat so I understood the basics. And my friends knew about the disease, more or less. They knew you couldn’t get it by shaking hands or sitting on public toilets. From what I understood, when the disease first broke out in the United States, on of the common misconceptions was that AIDS is airborne and all you need to get infected is some infected person coughing in your direction.

But the talk of AIDS has subsided. I hear people talking about Avian flu than HIV, even though it is still present in Miami. I’m not sure why the media has kept quiet on the subject. Whenever reporters talk about it, they usually point towards Africa, which is facing a crisis. Maybe because compared to Africa, Miami appears to be doing fine with AIDS. Or maybe stories of HIV have grown weary with the public; people are just looking for the next disease to worry about.

That’s not to say that AIDS is completely ignored in Miami. The Miami Herald reported last month that UM and FIU received millions in grants to figure out solutions for infected people in the Hispanic community. But this bit of news was swiped under the rug in favor of other stories. If nothing is done, the numbers will continue to grow.