SPECIAL EXAMINES WOMEN WITH AIDS 10/14/1987

​Thursday on Lifetime
 
Special Examines Women With AIDS
 
By Kathryn Baker
AP Television Writer
 
NEW YORK (AP) – Women are a minority among AIDS suffers, but the Lifetime Cablevision Network special about them, “Dying for Love,” is a story of human emotions that know no limitation of sex and age.
 
Eight-year-old Chris’ mother has AIDS. “Ma,” he says sitting on the side of her bed. I wish I was in your stomach again.”
 
“Why?” she asks.
 
“So I can knock all those virus out of your stomach.  Bang! Bang!” Chris says, punching the air with his little fist.
 
The one-hour special premiers Thursday on Lifetime, available on many cable systems.  There are addition playdates through mid-November.
 
“Dying for Love” is further evidence that in the midst of the tragedy of AIDS, the disease is at least inspiring filmmakers to find new ways of portraying the human capacity for love, depth and understanding.
 
The executive producer of “Dying for Love” is Dave Bell whose credits include the acclaimed CBS movie about Alzheimer’s disease, “Do You Remember Love.”  Shari Cookson produced and directed the documentary.  Melissa Jo Peltier co-produced and wrote it.
 
The documentary is composed of four vignettes about three women with AIDS and another exposed to the disease.  It doesn’t dwell on social injustices against the women.  These are simply mentioned alongside the tales of courage and compassion. The subtlety makes for an especially pointed statement.
 
Laurie is a bright, pretty, spunky woman who lives in a small western Pennsylvania town.  Family members moved back from their new home in Maryland to help after her husband, a hemophiliac, contracted AIDS in a blood transfusion.
 
Laurie has been diagnosed the ARC, or AIDS-related complex, an illness that sometimes progresses to full-blown AIDS.  At the time of the filming, she showed no symptoms.
 
The most plaintive moments in the documentary are when children talk about the disease.  Nicole, Laurie’s 6-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, explains to her stepfather: “How my daddy got the AIDS virus, he needed some blood and they didn’t know it was the AIDS virus blood, and they gave it to him.”
 
Laurie lost both Patrick and their infant son, Dwight, to the disease. Her family was shunned by the community.  Her mother recalls moving back just in time for Halloween trick-or-treaters: “I had all the lights on and I was standing by the front door, and I had tons of candy. And no one stopped.  Not one person. They just walked on by.”
 
Terah, a poor, young black mother of three who lives in Maryland, had no family to turn to. She found a home with Carlene through Project Home, and AIDS outreach organization.  Terah has AIDS, and her 2 1/2 –year-old son has ARC.
 
Carlene, a middle-class white woman, says she and Terah talk often about their peculiar circumstances, how different they are, yet how close they have become.
 
Carlene gets tearful when she talks about facing Terah’s death and perhaps that of Terah’s young son.  Nevertheless, she says they are a gift.  “I am receiving back a much great capacity to love in the human experience, and that’s very important to me.”
 
Kathleen, an Arizona woman whose bisexual husband died of AIDS, was aware back in 1983 that they were at risk.  She says doctors dismissed her fears because she was female and her husband seemed healthy.
 
Her husband left to die alone, overcome by guilt because he had given her AIDS. Kathleen’s church refused to hold a memorial service for him. She found solace in another congregation with a large homosexual membership.
 
The disease, Kathleen says, “makes me appreciate that I loved him, though, because I loved him with my very life.”
 
Now she’s worried that her 15-year-old daughter will be left all alone.  The daughter has been forced to grow up fast.  She had to sign for her stepfather’s ashes, and she received death threats after her mother appeared on a local telephone show.
 
Elizabeth Ramos, the Boston woman whose son wants to punch out the virus, contracted AIDS from a boyfriend who was an intravenous drug abuser. Though she suffers from bouts of pneumonia that AIDS has allowed into her system, she speaks to civic groups and counsels teen-agers on abstinence and the use of condoms.
 
Latrobe Bulletin
(Latrobe, Pennsylvania)
14 Oct 1987
Page 2
 
Transcribed by: S Cookson