Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Thursday, November 05, 1998
Brigitte Greenberg, Associated Press Writer
"It was just hard to believe after having gone through everything and everything I had been told," Charlene Riling said. "Is all this false hope? There was definitely some question in my mind about it."
Riling, 40, said Dr. Karen S. Dufour treated her from November 1989 through May 1992 for a variety of problems that Dufour wrongly thought were related to HIV.
Riling, from Hartford, said she told Dufour she was HIV positive. She said a counselor at the New Haven Health Department told her so after performing a blood test and Dufour never confirmed the diagnosis.
She acknowledged that a colleague of Dufour's offered to administer an HIV test but she demurred.
When Riling went to an AIDS specialist in May 1992 for further treatment, she was flabbergasted by his determination that she did not have AIDS.
The lawsuit accuses Dufour and her practice of negligence. Riling also claims the doctor prescribed drugs that would otherwise be dangerous to a person not suffering from AIDS-related illness.
During the time that Dufour was her primary care physician, Riling was treated on several occasions for problems related to dementia, said she lost much of her muscle function and suffered mouth sores, severe headaches and other maladies wrongly attributed to AIDS.
Under cross examination, Riling acknowledged that before she went to see Dufour, she had lied to several other physicians about her HIV status. While believing she was HIV positive, Riling said, she told those doctors she did not have the disease because she had not yet accepted the diagnosis herself.
It was later determined that she had a severe case of colitis and a sinus infection. She also contends in the lawsuit that some of her symptoms were cause by the drugs used to treat AIDS.
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