Some PBS channels carry We Were Here on occasion. (check your sub channels)
I've watched We Were Here and consider it excellent. It ran, as I recall 90 minutes, they could have done 900 minutes and not told 1% of what happened.
My first friend, that I knew of at the time, died of AIDS 6/86. (as it happened, there were several before that one, but that was before the internet era and keeping up with people as they moved away after college was difficult)
The second was 2/87, and the doctors were shocked with that case. We were in the midwest, and while D's doctors had seen other cases before him, D was the first to never have traveled out of state, implying he had contracted it locally, and hadn't got it elsewhere and come home to die.
In those days, we were already aware of potentially years long incubation, but back then, if you got sick, death came quickly and it was inevitable. The first died a few hours after hospital admit, D lasted a few days. Slowly, ever so slowly, when someone went to the hospital, they would last longer.
I had a boyfriend some time later who was in an early beta interferon (betaseron) clinical trial. At the time, of all the drug trials (we had books we could buy to research them!!!) we both thought the betaseron was the BEST chance. It was indescribable to hold a vial of it in my hand and watch him inject himself. Was it THE cure? We could tell in his case the progression of symptoms stopped and receded. It was heady stuff.
Some time later he called me VERY upset. The trial was canceled!! As it turns out, for reasons unknown, betaseron seemed only to help a tiny fraction of those in the study group. We had a very tough time for a while, no more betaseron was available.
It wasn't too much later, betaseron was made available for a form of leukemia. His doctor immediately diagnosed him with that, and he was back in business.
I'd say for my peer group, 1995 was when it turned around. I've lost a few friends since then, but '95 was when it turned the corner.
So far, I've lost 40 friends, acquaintances, and men I've dated. I was a hospice volunteer for a few years, but I found I am not cut out for that. I fell in love with one of the men in the network, and that was it for me being able to volunteer. Brian never knew or suspected I had fallen in love with him, his mom noticed but we didn't talk about till after he passed.
Other friends of mine who survived had worse passages through the crisis than many who died. I envied family members, they only had to go through it once and only lose one person, for me it seemed endless.
I have pictures of my friends and myself at parties long before it started; in some of those pictures, half the people eventually died.
I made a quilt panel for the NAMES project, I've read the names of some of my friends that died at the Ellipse in front of the White House. I've seen parents/families at their absolute worst behavior and I've seen others rise to exceptional levels too.
There are 4 moms, not too far from here, they have a little support group of their own, they've each lost a son to AIDS. It's tough, so very tough, for me to be around them, I've had survivors guilt off and on since '87, I'd think I'd get acclimatized to it someday, but it never happens.
I've watched We Were Here and consider it excellent. It ran, as I recall 90 minutes, they could have done 900 minutes and not told 1% of what happened.
My first friend, that I knew of at the time, died of AIDS 6/86. (as it happened, there were several before that one, but that was before the internet era and keeping up with people as they moved away after college was difficult)
The second was 2/87, and the doctors were shocked with that case. We were in the midwest, and while D's doctors had seen other cases before him, D was the first to never have traveled out of state, implying he had contracted it locally, and hadn't got it elsewhere and come home to die.
In those days, we were already aware of potentially years long incubation, but back then, if you got sick, death came quickly and it was inevitable. The first died a few hours after hospital admit, D lasted a few days. Slowly, ever so slowly, when someone went to the hospital, they would last longer.
I had a boyfriend some time later who was in an early beta interferon (betaseron) clinical trial. At the time, of all the drug trials (we had books we could buy to research them!!!) we both thought the betaseron was the BEST chance. It was indescribable to hold a vial of it in my hand and watch him inject himself. Was it THE cure? We could tell in his case the progression of symptoms stopped and receded. It was heady stuff.
Some time later he called me VERY upset. The trial was canceled!! As it turns out, for reasons unknown, betaseron seemed only to help a tiny fraction of those in the study group. We had a very tough time for a while, no more betaseron was available.
It wasn't too much later, betaseron was made available for a form of leukemia. His doctor immediately diagnosed him with that, and he was back in business.
I'd say for my peer group, 1995 was when it turned around. I've lost a few friends since then, but '95 was when it turned the corner.
So far, I've lost 40 friends, acquaintances, and men I've dated. I was a hospice volunteer for a few years, but I found I am not cut out for that. I fell in love with one of the men in the network, and that was it for me being able to volunteer. Brian never knew or suspected I had fallen in love with him, his mom noticed but we didn't talk about till after he passed.
Other friends of mine who survived had worse passages through the crisis than many who died. I envied family members, they only had to go through it once and only lose one person, for me it seemed endless.
I have pictures of my friends and myself at parties long before it started; in some of those pictures, half the people eventually died.
I made a quilt panel for the NAMES project, I've read the names of some of my friends that died at the Ellipse in front of the White House. I've seen parents/families at their absolute worst behavior and I've seen others rise to exceptional levels too.
There are 4 moms, not too far from here, they have a little support group of their own, they've each lost a son to AIDS. It's tough, so very tough, for me to be around them, I've had survivors guilt off and on since '87, I'd think I'd get acclimatized to it someday, but it never happens.
