AIDS

I once read a book called, "It Happened to Nancy."  It was actually her diary that was published.  The diary started a few weeks before she started seeing this guy.  He was an older guy, one she considered her friend.  It's been awhile since I've read the book, but I believe she was fourteen and he was about seventeen or eighteen.

If my memory serves me right, she invited him over one night when her mom wasn't there.  He date raped her, then left her crying on her mom's bed.  Nancy didn't tell anyone what happened, until she started getting really sick.  Her mom took her to the hospital, where she found out she had contracted HIV.

From there her diary tells the reader one horror story after another about the infections and diseases her weakened immune system can't fight off.  She tells about not being able to ever marry the guy she loves at about sixteen (that's Lugh).  She tells about how some days she goes into a depression so deep she doesn't even want to see any of the friends she's grown up with her entire life.

Finally, when the HIV turns into full blown AIDS, Nancy goes out to her father's house in the west, something like New Mexico or Arizona or some state like that.  I'm pretty sure it's Santa Fe, New Mexico, but don't quote me.  One of the friends in her circle comes out to see her, then has to go back for the next school year.  Anyway, the story goes on that she moves somewhere else to live with . . . either a distant aunt and uncle or a friend of the family.  Whatever the case, she likes the ranch an awful lot, and she gets to be good friends with the ranch dog.  I forgot his name.

Anyway, I think the second to last entry in the book talks about a woman who comes to tell Nancy she wants to publish her diary (which is the book).  Then there's one more entry, and you can tell the thought of telling other people her story makes Nancy really happy.  A few days after her last entry she dies.  I'm pretty sure she was about eighteen.

The story made me cry almost all the way through.  Just thinking about it makes me sad.  There's an epilogue after the story that's written by the woman who came to tell Nancy she wanted to publish her diary.  I forgot her name.  It says they buried her next to the dog she grew to love so much under a tree she liked to escape to when she was upset.  The whole story is very touching, very sad.

Anyway, after the story the book has about ten pages devoted to telling about AIDS, how you can get it, and how it kills the immune system.  I think everyone pretty much knows that after your T-cells wrap around it in order to kill it, it kills the T-cell.  Your T-cells are in your blood system, so I was thinking . . .

I know you could never actually cure AIDS this way, but wouldn't it make a person live longer to have blood transfusions every six months or so?  I mean, if you could take out blood about two pints at a time, then replace it with donated blood, then repeat the process a couple more times, wouldn't that give you mostly good T-cells?  And wouldn't that help a person have a relatively normal life for a long period of time?

I'm sure if it could be done, someone would have thought of this already, so I'm wondering why it wouldn't work.  I think the biggest problem is that blood supplies are already very low as it is, so doing this for the many people in the country with AIDS would further deplete the supply.

Well, it was just a thought.  I actually came up with the idea a couple of summers ago, after I finished reading the book.  I don't know what made me think of it tonight.

-Ave