Chicago Tribune (CT) - SUNDAY November 14, 1993 Edition: FINAL EDITION Section: WOMANEWS Page: 3 Word Count: 1,528
Margaret Carroll, Tribune Staff Writer

Over a year's time, Hostetler photographed 12 such women, all of them mothers, who have the human immunodeficiency virus. The photographs were exhibited last spring at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and one was included in a summer exhibit titled "AIDS in Society" at a gallery in Easton, Pa.

Her hope, she said, is "that people will consider these images for a minute, re-examine why they think the way they do and why they have the prejudices they have-especially regarding how our society treats women.

"I also want people to see, through my work, that families and homes are being paralyzed by this disease, because of its dramatic movement into the female community. Women are the primary caregivers in this society; they keep the homes and care for the children."

After hearing the stories of these individuals infected with HIV, Hostetler says: "AIDS has become politicized, when what should happen is that (HIV patients) should be dealt with on a human level. I'm trying to change perceptions. What we need is to help in getting better treatments and to find a cure."

Ida Greathouse

For Ida Greathouse, frustration is a major side effect of AIDS. Her remedy for it is confrontation.

"I've become an AIDS activist as a result of the abuse I've encountered," says Greathouse, who has joined numerous demonstrations seeking improved care, services and disability benefits for people with HIV.

Her latest challenge is her quest for housing for herself and her son, Silvano, 10.

Greathouse, 40, was diagnosed as HIV-positive in June 1984, and then with AIDS in 1989. She suffers now at times from severe leg pain.

When her husband died of AIDS in July, Greathouse says, she had the choice of fulfilling his wish to have his ashes sent back to Mexico, where he was born, or paying rent on her apartment. She sent her husband's remains to Mexico. Now, she says, if not for the hospitality of friends, she and Silvano would be homeless.

She has applied for Section 8 housing, a federal rent subsidy program, which she has found a frustrating process. And now her name is among prospective applicants for rental apartments in a low-income building being rehabbed by Travelers and Immigrants Aid, a non-profit organization. The building is expected to be ready for occupancy next February.

Greathouse wants people with HIV to be considered as worthy of compassion as people who suffer other incurable illnesses. And what also matters to her is that children affected by the virus, those infected themselves or living with a parent who has the virus, feel secure. Looking to her son's future, Greathouse has started the process for a friend to become his guardian.

It was Silvano's questions about the future, she says, that got her out among the demonstrators.

"He would ask, 'Are there going to be any girls for me to marry? Is there going to be a world?' " she says. This, she says, "made me want to live. It made me want to not leave him with all those questions unanswered. I wanted to do something for my son to remember me by. I haven't shut my mouth since."

Betty Jean Pejko

When Betty Jean Pejko, 34, talks at high schools-or grade schools-about her experience with HIV, the students often ask her whether she thinks a cure is imminent.

" 'No, I don't,' " she tells them. " 'It may take a very long time.'" Then she talks about Al Capone, a powerful man they undoubtedly have heard of. But Capone had no power over the syphilis that "basically destroyed his mind and his life," Pejko tells them. Penicillin, the antibiotic eventually used to treat syphilis, came along just a little too late to cure him.

"The situation is the same with HIV," Pejko says to her young audiences. "Many will die before we come up with a cure."

"A lot of children think they're invincible," Pejko says. "They think to themselves, 'Who knows? By the time I get sick . . .' I try to bring them back to reality. I want to make them absolutely aware of the danger."

Teenagers take the word of someone who acknowledges that many of them are sexually active, she says. "At a certain point in life, children will take control of their behavior whether we like it or not," she says. "The transition is difficult for the adult and the child. But if they are not equipped correctly, they will make the wrong decisions."

Pejko was diagnosed with HIV in 1988. Her lung function has been impaired by pneumonia and she has difficulty walking. A former waitress, Pejko is the mothr of five children. Three o her children live with their father. One son lives with a relative. Her youngest, Maggie, 6, lives with her. None of her children has been infected, but all, she says, "are affected." Maggie's aunt has been designated her guardian, but Maggie will remain with her mother as long as Pejko is able to care for her.

Taking a day at a time is Pejko's plan. "I'm not like I was before HIV. I'm more sensitive to what people have to say. I don't blow them off. I listen more. I'm happier with myself.

"I'm not saying I won't die. They say a person with full-blown AIDS usually dies. But as long as I'm alive, I'm going to live.

She has felt the sting of HIV's stigma; she has seen friends experience it. "I just have to deal with it," she says. "I tell people I have it. I'm not going to fall into the secret lie, because generally people find out anyway and then rumors start to circulate that make you feel bad about yourself. And then I say to myself, 'These are people I need to get away from . . . after I educate them a little.' "

Waverlynn Franklin

Waverlynn Franklin, 38, is planning a party for her birthday March 15. She's calling it a pre-memorial celebration.

"I think it should go like a roast," she says. "I've been through enough with other people's illnesses to know that you should do as much as you can while you're living."

Franklin learned she was HIV positive in 1989 through a blood donation program at the insurance company where she worked in customer service. (Now she can't get life insurance.) Franklin, who has been on her own since she was 14, says what HIV did to her was knock her down: "This was the first time ever I wasn't able to do for myself."

She experiences what she describes as a "thunderous fatigue" now and then, plus thrush (a yeast infection), and shingles. But when she's feeling well, she works as a peer counselor, using training she has received through the Chicago Women's AIDS Project. She's resolutely cheerful-it keeps her alive, she says. And even when she's feeling down, she keeps on talking-counseling women who have just learned they are HIV positive and visiting public health clinics, hoping to persuade women with sexually transmitted diseases to change their lifestyles.

To those who believe that HIV is divine punishment for sexual promiscuity and drug use, she says: "God is the father of all his children and he loves us all just the same." She believes that God is somehow using people with HIV to bring people to a greater understanding of the human condition and members o families to a deeper love for one another.

Franklin tells everyone who will listen that HIV is not exclusively an illness that strikes gay men and IV-drug users, that HIV is more readily transmitted from men to women than from women to men, and that women should think about HIV's adverse effects-physical and psychological-on their children.

And she tells them to seize the day.

At times friends she has made through her growing HIV network become very ill. It's not always easy to maintain a positive attitude. After a friend died of AIDS recently, Franklin thought, " 'Oh, my God, I have the same thing he did.' " But that passes, she says. "My next reaction is, 'I'd better get my act together.'

"I wish I could make everyone-not just people with HIV-feel that you should live your life as if tomorrow is not promised to you. If I wake up in the morning, I'm going to do whatever I can with that day. So should you."

CAPTION: Photo: Ida Greathouse has become an AIDS activist as a result of the frustrations she's encountered in getting treatment. Photo: Waverlynn Franklin (left), with daughter Holly, works as a peer counselor. Photo: Betty Jean Pejko (center), with husband George Diaz and daughter Maggie, takes one day at a time. Photos by Sue Hostetler.

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