The patient next door is an AIDS victim. Mum told me that, and she in turn heard it from her carer. For the last two days, she's been telling me that, as if to say something, but I'm not quite sure what. I guess the stigma is that gays have AIDS, and that the patient may be gay. And I'm gay, so she's telling me perhaps the patient next door is gay too. Perhaps she's trying to "warn" me.
I've never seen the man next door, and I don't think mum has either. But mum is curious and asks me why the man, in his late forties, is even staying at the colo-rectal surgery ward. There could be any number of reasons why, and the fact that he has AIDS (if the hear-say is true...) may just be one reason he is here, and not the reason.
"There is no cure, is there?"
I explained (assuming that the hear-say is true...) there isn't, but there are drugs that can inhibit the progress of the illness and that nowadays people can live even for a long time. "It's a bit like cancer perhaps," I said, and perhaps insultingly, back in the early eighties, it was nicknamed the "Gay cancer". But HIV/AIDS is not just an illness of gays or spread by gays alone, as we now know.
There is no cure, just like in the case of advanced cancer, and as the illness progresses, the body's immune system is attacked and progressively weakened, and the organs fail one by one. Both cancer patients and AIDS patients have this "iconic" thin and bony look. In the end, it gets very painful, so I read. Both for cancer and AIDS, there are drugs that can slow the symptoms or even significantly delay death. Unlike cancer, AIDS can be prevented.
"if you don't fool around, and don't do do drugs using used needles..." I told mum, to inform her, but in a way also to placate her fears.
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