Stories From Viewers
Share Your Experience
Susan Bullard
Care Team Volunteer
Florence Scott
Care Team Volunteer
Rev. Deborah Warren
President & CEO, Regional AIDS Interfaith Network
David Witt
HIV Positive
Fred Wiggins
HIV Positive
Helping African Orphans with AIDS
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Interview:
David Witt
HIV Positive, Partnered with a Care Team from RAIN
When did you find out you have HIV?
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I've lived with HIV since 1986, and I was married, had a family. After my separation I came out accepting who I was as a gay man, and then the first relationship I was in unfortunately the individual was infected and never told me. I found out two years later that he had known he was infected the whole time.
Several years later, your partner Kenneth died from AIDS. How did your RAIN team help?
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When Kenneth began to get ill and I was his primary caregiver, it was very difficult for me to work and take care of him, and just the disease itself is enough to where it's very difficult to manage by yourself with someone.
They stayed with us through his illness and stayed with me six months after he passed away to help me with my grief process. And then later on, when I became ill and knew that my partner might, after Joe came into my life and knew he might have to face the same thing by himself, we went on and got another RAIN team, and I've been with that RAIN team for 8 years.
We do all kinds of different things together. They celebrate my birthday with me. We usually get together around Christmastime and have a Christmas celebration together. But you know we've been together so long that it's almost a family relationship.
They get me to my doctor's appointment, and particularly to my HIV doctor, which is over in a clinic which I really don't care to go to by myself. And so they're always with me when I go to that clinic or anytime I need them. They bring in food occasionally, which we don't necessarily need, but it's a nice gesture and we certainly appreciate it.
How has your RAIN team helped you through difficulties with your family and your faith?
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My family pretty much disowned me for a period of time, and with that being the case - we have a good relationship now - but it's been a good while working back to that, and so during the time, at the time when I got my RAIN team, my family just wasn't speaking to me very much at all.
Initially I don't think that it was all that important in that when I first became infected I needed to go into the wilderness and fuss, and I was angry over my disease, but their presence actually through the years has actually helped me to regain my faith and helped me to move back into a church where I'm comfortable, and at the same time their presence has pretty much represented the presence of God in my life.
My church, it's not something it's talked about on a regular basis, but at the same time we've lost several people with HIV and AIDS through the years, so the community of faith has gathered around them and it's been amazing to see other faiths and other churches begin to open up to people living with HIV disease.
Initially I knew of people who were told not to come back to church because they were infected initially, but I think that's one of the things RAIN has done is to provide education within the community in such a way of educating the community of faith to where there's not the fear and the phobias that used to exist around the disease.
What else do you think is important for people to realize about HIV and AIDS?
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As we've said all along, no one's going to catch this disease by hugging us or shaking our hands. No one's going to catch this disease by eating something we fix in the kitchen. This disease is a blood-borne disease, and there are certain ways you get it. Casual ways in our day-to-day world is not a way one would get the disease or catch the disease. I think it's important for people to realize that people who are living with AIDS are their sons, their daughters, their children, their parents, their grandparents today and not simply someone who lives on the other side of the tracks or downtown.
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