"You did a damn good job changing my nappie...you'll make a great nurse"

HIV/AIDS is a devastating disease and it scares me to think of number of young lives who are being infected and affected each day. I understand being young and wanting nothing more then to be in love. At the same time it terrifies me to see that one impulse action can have such a negative reaction. I'm not here to lecture anyone on the importance of making smart sexual decisions, that choice is up to you. I do wish however that people I know would be more realistic about the disease itself. Its not limited to Africa or to blacks or to gays. Thinking like that is ignorant and wrong.

I wish I could fully explain just how much havoc HIV/AIDS does on the body. The opportunistic infections (TB, STI's etc.) that coincide with AIDS are just as debilitating. I know everyone thinks 'it can't happen to me,' but each and every day I hear the echoes of "how could this happen to me?"

Friday at Don McKenzie I had the pleasure of sitting with a feisty young woman named Lauren. Her hair was matted and falling out and her frail body required oxygen numerous times throughout our conversation, but her spirit was spunky. August 20th - It was her 20th birthday; she was upset that she was so sick and in the hospital.

I spent a good hour listening to her talk about how she was lucky enough to make it out of the valley and attend a great local high school, Kloof High. With pride she explained how she was able to go onto University. We talked about the 15% matriculation (passing your high school final exams) rate. An alarming rate which includes both Zulus and white South Africans. Lauren chronicled her first two years of University with a gleam in her eye. She told me how she was a part of the debate team at school and how she was really quite clever. She told me that her and her teammates went to a match where she ended up meeting a guy. The two of them had unprotected sex and a few months later while joking around with friends on her University campus she got tested for HIV. She tested positive.

As she retold the story her eyes filled with tears and her pain filled the room. She quietly admitted that it took her almost six months and becoming very ill to acknowledge the results, tell her mother and start receiving treatment because she thought the test was wrong. "I didn't think it could happen to me" she said over and over and over.

It was heartbreaking to hear her story and to see someone with such a passion for life, wisdom beyond her years and a yearning for education be confined by such an illness. She told me that her goal in life was to graduate school with a degree in public relations and then to go onto Medical school. I told her I was toying with the idea of being a nurse and her sassy reply, "You did a damn good job changing my nappie, if you don't vomit after something like that and you can still talk to me like we friends you'll make a great nurse" made us both laugh.

I went to check on Lauren on Tuesday and was told that she ended up being discharged so she could pass away at home. I thanked the nurses and told them that I had had a great conversation with her the previous Friday. To which one of them replied: "You're Meggie? She kept talking about you and left you a note"

"Dear Meggie" it read...
"You listened to me and made my birthday very special. You are my new special friend and I can't thank you enough for making me smile on my hard day. I love you - love Lauren"

I can have the worst day here and then a second later something so profound happens. Lauren and people like her keep me going, but they also are a clear example of the devastation that one careless act can do to your body and the rest of your life. Her story is profound because she was a profound young woman.