We Have Nothing to Offer but Ourselves: Reflections on the Early U.S. AIDS Pandemic (12-2-12)

It’s no wonder Ella Curry focused her doctoral thesis on the role of nurses during the early U.S. AIDS pandemic. “We were at the patient’s bedside 24-7,” said Curry, a nurse specialist in the Infectious Diseases Division of Georgetown University Medical Center. In the Dec. 9 Children's Fellowship and Dec. 2 Adult Education, Dumbartonians were privileged to hear portions of Curry’s archival collection of nurses’ oral histories and samples of the language and imagery reflecting public perceptions in the pre-treatment years of 1981 to 1987.

A good example is the  headline “Is your dentist dangerous?” and a cartoon depicting a boy, alone, with an “A” stamped on his chest. Fear and stigma led to actions like the torching of the house of a hemophiliac family.

Periodic voices of wisdom reminded society “AIDS is a human problem, not an individual one,” and raised questions about liberty and access to care. One AIDS patient told his nurse he kept awake because he feared if he went to sleep he would die. The lover of another patient wept in gratitude for the nurse’s gloveless hand on his sick partner’s arm.The frightened mother of a dying man was able to hug her son thanks to the assurance of his nurse it was safe to do so.

“Every nurse I interviewed remembered his or her first AIDS patient,” Curry said. “Each felt proud honored to be there.”
 

--By Ginny Finch