2005 New Cases: 1,806*

Black: 63%
White: 28%
Latino: 7%

Children
College Students
Women

Adolfo Aguilar
Outreach Worker, Chatham Social Health Council
Coleen Cunningham
Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Duke University Medical Center
Milford Evans
Benefits Advocate
Gerrod Henderson
HIV Positive teenager
Peter Leone, M.D
Medical Director, HIV/STD Prevention & Care Branch
Jonathan Perry
HIV Positive
Fred Wiggins
HIV Positive
Del Williams, Ph.D
Manager, Epidemiology & Special Studies HIV/STD Prevention & Care Branch

HIV/AIDS on Campus
HIV/AIDS & Kids
HIV/AIDS & Latinos
HIV/AIDS & Women

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*NC Department of Health and Human Services

Fred Wiggins describes being diagnosed with and living with AIDS.
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I was born here in North Carolina, in Franklin County in Lewisburg, pretty much left here at the age of 5 and moved to New York. Grew up in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, whathaveyou, went to college in upstate New York.

I left New York in 1980 to go to California. I lived in Hollywood for 13, 14 years.

About 9 years ago, I kept on going to the hospital week after week coming down with these flu-like symptoms, and I really didn't know what it was.

I felt like it was more than the flu, and I told the doctors I wasn't leaving the hospital until they ran some tests and found out what was going on with me. Thus they did, and it's quite odd because they'd moved me to an isolation room, and I'm wondering, I'm back here by myself wondering what's going on and finally the doctors came back. One of the doctors came out and said we're waiting on one of the doctors from the CDC to come over and look at you and examine you, and I pretty much got the wind of what they were getting to, and I simply asked the doctor if I had AIDS, and she said well, the symptoms are there, you're showing positive for HIV. I asked to be left alone for a moment, and of course a tear or two came out, and then I picked myself up and said I slept in this bed, I made it, you know this is some of the consequences.

I gave up a couple of times. At this time I was living in Fayetteville, back when I was diagnosed, and I accepted the fact that I was HIV positive, and I went to go on with my life as a regular person, a normal human being. But I had lived with an Aunt of mine, she was in the health care business, and she had very negative attitudes toward the HIV virus and whathaveyou, and to me that was a slap in the face. If anyone should be giving you support, it's your family.

I stopped taking my medicine, well not stopped, but I was taking it haphazardly. I'd take one dose in the morning and one dose at night, whatever, and my numbers dropped from 177 down to 13. At that point I felt that it was almost time to check out, and then I started going to UNC Chapel Hill and now my numbers are back up. They're up to about 665, 700.

In this world, they call it a cocktail of course. I take Viracept, Epivir, Zerit. Those are my regular regimens. And I take them twice a day. Actually I take five pills in the morning, five pills in the evening. At one point I was taking about 20 pills a day to combat the illness and suppress the pneumocystis pneumonia.

It's an illness that you have to accept. It's one you can't dog yourself about and remain a hermit to yourself. If no one knew me personally and I were to walk out the door everyday, no one would ever know of my medical status.

I try to think of positive things. I have a friend who has a daughter, and she calls me daddy, and that's my dose of medicine. That's my dose of happiness every day. She means a lot. Being positive, it's just being thankful that you're still here regardless of circumstances, you know. It's not the circumstances that take you out. It's yourself that brings you under. Because you sit there not doing anything, dwelling on the circumstance and allowing that to play a major part of your life, and I tend not to do that.

I never wake up in the morning thinking I have AIDS, I have HIV or whatever, because that's only allowing a negative notion to come in my head, and I'm going to sit there and dwell on it. So rather than do that I'm going to think positive. I've got to get up and do this and do that, keep myself focused on what I have to do.

I at one time thought I was the cleanest person in the world as far as my needles were concerned. I cleaned them very well. But there were occasional times that I was haphazard with that. To put a finger on how I contracted this, I couldn't tell you because I was doing a lot of things at that time. I lived in Hollywood, that's the life of the rich and famous, and I tried to live that lifestyle.

I always thought I wouldn't catch it because like I said I was the cleanest person in terms of my needles and whathaveyou and most of my sex partners. It's just, you get lazy, you get lackadaisical, you're so caught up in the moment that you forget to take those precautions, and this is what happens, this is the end result.

Don't be a fool. Don't be a fool. I like to give it to you straight, no chaser, don't be fooled. Don't be dispelled. Don't think because you meet someone and you talk to them for three or four months and try to develop a good communicative relationship, don't think that it's okay to have sex.