Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune - February 28, 2002
Ted Gregory, Tribune staff reporter
"My name is Helen Watkins, and I've had HIV for 9 years," said one of the woman at the table. "I'm 50 years old."
A few minutes later, Dawn Cribari, 45, said she has been living with HIV for 19 years, the first 10 with her first husband, who died of complications from AIDS nine years ago. Shortly before dying in the hospital, he bit Cribari. Later, HIV was diagnosed in her.
The manner by which she contracted the disease was `"a little odder than most people," Cribari said. "But it didn't matter. I got it, and that's all that matters. Now that I've got it, what am I going to do about it?"
Cribari of Forest Park decided to devote time to others. On Wednesday she was leading off a two-day AIDS education program at the university.
In the afternoons, Cribari looks after her three grandchildren and her 5-year-old son. She volunteers at Community Response, an Oak Park non-profit organization for people with HIV and AIDS. She is a chaplain at her church two Sundays a month.
"I'm one of those random-acts-of-kindness types of people," Cribari said. "I go out and look because you know what? That's the only way I can feel good about myself."
The program was the first time Watkins of Oak Park had spoken in public about the disease. She stopped several times to focus her thoughts. She laughed nervously, tapped her foot and wrung her hands.
"I want to live," said Watkins, who said that she contracted HIV during the depths of drug addiction, when her weight dropped to 60 pounds. "I keep pushing myself to want to live. I just have a lot of faith in God, a lot of faith."
Her 13-year-old son, who, like Cribari's son, does not have HIV, keeps her going, Watkins said.
"I don't look at myself as having HIV," she said to the audience of about 40. "I feel like I'm just like one of you guys."
But Watkins told of fighting fatigue constantly, of having to be in bed by 8 p.m. Cribari said her second marriage is "sexless," but "very tight." She said she wakes up every morning feeling nauseated, then takes medications that make her feel worse and that concentrate weight gain around her waist.
"I don't like feeling tired," she said. "I don't like feeling nauseous, but, you know, there's a lot of things in life that I don't like."
Aurora University's Director of Diversity Gerald Butters coordinated the two-day forum with Erin McArdle of Community Response.
"I still believe that there is the stereotype that AIDS is a white, gay male disease when most of the new cases are disproportionately higher among women and in minority communities," Butters said.
McArdle started the program by offering a few telling statistics. About 36.1 million people have AIDS and nearly half of them are women; of the 17 million adults who have died of complications from AIDS since the epidemic began, 9 million were women.
Students said hearing the two women's words was even more sobering.
"What I liked about it was that it wasn't really like a lecture," said Kwesi Leslie, a junior finance major from Bayshore, N.Y. "It was more like a testimonial. It brings this disease back to reality."
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