Miami Herald - Sunday, May 9, 1999
Andrea Robinson, Herald Staff Writer

"He gave up, said he'd rather be dead than live like that," said Fannie Jordan, Hodge's aunt. He wouldn't take his medicines. After he died, we found medicines that he had hid."

Hodge, 42, also wanted to hide after she found out a year after her cousin's death that her she, too, had contracted AIDS from unprotected sex. That was the year, 1993, that she had finally worked up the will to go into a rehabilitation center after 17 years of abusing drugs.

"When they told me, my whole world shattered," Hodge recalled.

She was afraid to do so, but she confided her HIV status to another woman in the drug treatment program. Turned out that woman was positive as well -- and the woman was full of optimism about leading a full life with HIV. Hodge, too, tried to be optimistic: "My world picked right back up." But it was easier for Hodge to tell a stranger that she had AIDS. There was still the shame of telling the people she loved, her family.

`The issue is rejection'

She started to call a family member, but put down the phone before anyone answered.

"I had to get all right with me, and that took a while. Then, I told a few friends. I had to first see where their heads were. . . . The main issue is rejection."

It took six months before she confided to her great aunt, and later to her sister. It would take two years before she worked up the nerve to tell her mother.

The burden of telling her family lifted, she worked hard to remain healthy.

For the first two years, she regularly took her medication -- 10 pills a day -- and learned how the virus had infiltrated her body. Side effects from the drug AZT left her with darkened finger- and toenails and a lot of fatigue.

"When I saw this list of things they said were dos and don'ts, I thought, `I have to give up all that?' "

She couldn't give up cigarettes or coffee, and wouldn't quit fried foods and junk food.

Starting anew

Meanwhile, she got more involved with her church. In 1995, Hodge felt she was emotionally strong enough to become a "productive member of society." She met a man -- also a recovering addict who is HIV-positive -- and moved with him into a North Miami apartment. She found a job as a waitress.

But work proved to be too hard. Weekdays weren't so bad because she could work an afternoon shift and return home to take her medicines. But weekend shifts were longer. Her drug regimen suffered for it. Some days, she'd miss a dose; other days, she'd take them late. And her romance was souring.

Her energy withered, and the level of infection-fighting T-cells in her blood dropped below 200. Full-blown AIDS put her more at risk for other infections.

By the time she met Dr. Vincent Jarvis of Miami Beach, her T-cell count was down to an alarming 39.

That was October 1996. Hodge was working 16 hours a day. She became irritable and sometimes snapped at co-workers and bosses.

"Running out of time" is how Jarvis now describes Hodge's condition back then.

Hodge says that was all she needed to make a few more changes in her life.

She went on disability, broke off with her boyfriend and started to teach herself about living with HIV. She went to conferences around the United States and to the World AIDS conference in 1998. She increased her medications, stuck to her schedule, quit smoking.

Incredible turnaround

Her turnaround, says Jarvis, was "absolutely incredible," a testament to her will.

Today, Tamonlyn Hodge talks about AIDS to whoever will listen. Some of her friends wonder why she risks being open about her health. She says: "I took risks with unhealthy relationships. Why not take a risk at being reborn?"
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