By Dr. Kate Scannell
First Published: March 24, 2011
My 20-year old patient had been suffering a slow, painful death expected to occur within the next few days. Alone in his drab room on a county hospital’s AIDS ward in California in the mid-1980s, he had been praying to see his father and mother one final time. He fantasized about them rushing into the hospital, assembling around his deathbed, holding his hands and easing his transition from this world.
He had last seen his parents several years before at the family homestead in the rural south. Standing on the front porch where he had been exiled moments after admitting his homosexuality, he saw his father’s angry face behind the slamming screen door, his mother’s piercing stare through the front window.
But, in the end, he carried those final imagesof his parents to his grave. Neither of them had responded to his pleas for a bedside visit, accepted offers of airfare to California gifted by an AIDS advocacy group, or taken opportunities to speak with their son by phone.
And yet, days before he died, he had the experience of “being saved” by Elizabeth Taylor. He had seen her on television, witnessed her embrace of a gay man with AIDS, and heard her unflinching support for AIDS research to seek cures for people who suffered with HIV infections.
Without first-hand experience of the early AIDS epidemic, it may be difficult now to appreciate Elizabeth Taylor’s heroism back then. But at a time when vocal segments of society were advocating for the quarantine -- or even “deserved deaths” --of peope with AIDS, she was demanding compassion and respect for them. It was a time when prominent church officials denounced gays with AIDS or claimed their deaths to be rightful retrubution for their sexuality. A time when it was not unusual for doctors and nurses to refuse to care for people with HIV.
Before he died, my patient told me that he’d decided to adopt Elizabeth Taylor as his mother. Of course, she was not aware of this newly assigned role, but that didn’t matter to him one bit. He felt her powerful public support, courage, and empathy on a personal level, and that comforted him before he died. In speaking up for gay persons and people with AIDS, she had also given him hope about a better future for others suffering his disease.
This morning I read several obituaries for Elizabeth Taylor, and each commented upon her successful “philanthropy” which ultimately raised millions of dollars for AIDS research. Still, those acknowledgments sounded somewhat sterile to me. They did not capture the stunning scope of her charitable audacity which helped to generate a sea-change of public attitudes towards AIDS and homosexuality. They did not tell the stories of other patients like mine who were touched, even “saved,” by her gutsy humanity.
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Kate Scannell is a Bay Area physician and author of “Death of the Good Doctor – Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic.”
First Published: March 24, 2011
My 20-year old patient had been suffering a slow, painful death expected to occur within the next few days. Alone in his drab room on a county hospital’s AIDS ward in California in the mid-1980s, he had been praying to see his father and mother one final time. He fantasized about them rushing into the hospital, assembling around his deathbed, holding his hands and easing his transition from this world.
He had last seen his parents several years before at the family homestead in the rural south. Standing on the front porch where he had been exiled moments after admitting his homosexuality, he saw his father’s angry face behind the slamming screen door, his mother’s piercing stare through the front window.
But, in the end, he carried those final imagesof his parents to his grave. Neither of them had responded to his pleas for a bedside visit, accepted offers of airfare to California gifted by an AIDS advocacy group, or taken opportunities to speak with their son by phone.
And yet, days before he died, he had the experience of “being saved” by Elizabeth Taylor. He had seen her on television, witnessed her embrace of a gay man with AIDS, and heard her unflinching support for AIDS research to seek cures for people who suffered with HIV infections.
Without first-hand experience of the early AIDS epidemic, it may be difficult now to appreciate Elizabeth Taylor’s heroism back then. But at a time when vocal segments of society were advocating for the quarantine -- or even “deserved deaths” --of peope with AIDS, she was demanding compassion and respect for them. It was a time when prominent church officials denounced gays with AIDS or claimed their deaths to be rightful retrubution for their sexuality. A time when it was not unusual for doctors and nurses to refuse to care for people with HIV.
Before he died, my patient told me that he’d decided to adopt Elizabeth Taylor as his mother. Of course, she was not aware of this newly assigned role, but that didn’t matter to him one bit. He felt her powerful public support, courage, and empathy on a personal level, and that comforted him before he died. In speaking up for gay persons and people with AIDS, she had also given him hope about a better future for others suffering his disease.
This morning I read several obituaries for Elizabeth Taylor, and each commented upon her successful “philanthropy” which ultimately raised millions of dollars for AIDS research. Still, those acknowledgments sounded somewhat sterile to me. They did not capture the stunning scope of her charitable audacity which helped to generate a sea-change of public attitudes towards AIDS and homosexuality. They did not tell the stories of other patients like mine who were touched, even “saved,” by her gutsy humanity.
====================
Kate Scannell is a Bay Area physician and author of “Death of the Good Doctor – Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic.”