Miami Herald - Sunday, June 10, 2001
Sara Olkon

"You start living in a state of urgency," said Kaplan, 36. "I went out and maxed out my credit cards."

Yet, 20 years after the first cases of AIDS were officially reported, Kaplan is living proof that being diagnosed with HIV or AIDS is not an automatic death sentence.

Not only is Kaplan still alive, she is full of energy and still enjoys shopping. But survivors -- some of whom cashed in their life insurance policies and quit their jobs because they thought they were going to die -- are left wondering how to live in the future.

"I am trying to create and devise a reason for being here," said Paul Seligmann, a 43-year-old writer living in Little Havana, whose own AIDS nightmare began at the bedside of his dying partner, Peter.

"You have to reinvent what you are living for."

In 1993, a year after his lover died, he developed full-blown AIDS.

By 1995, he weighed 110 pounds, was bedridden and needed blood transfusions twice a week.

"I was bankrupt psychologically, emotionally, spiritually," he recalled. "I didn't have the will to ask for help anymore. I felt beaten. Exhausted."

Then the miracle. In 1996, he went on protease inhibitors.

"All of a sudden I had so much energy," he said. "I started to feel like me. I had that spark. I started to write again."

In 1999, Seligmann co-wrote a screenplay, Divine Intervention, based on the "Lazarus Syndrome," the name coined for the phenomenon of people with AIDS coming back from the brink of death.

In it, the protagonist realizes that he has been stripped of his professional identity and all that defined him.

That struggle is not uncommon, said Dr. Eugenio Rothe, as associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami.

"When you are told you are dying, you start letting go of your connections," he said. "This is a very sad process."

Moreover -- despite new and improving drug regimens -- the threat of AIDS continues to loom large.

"You still have Damocles' sword hanging over your head," Rothe said. "It could turn anytime."

Alvia Palmer-Michel, 41, is constantly reminded of her mortality, with thrice-weekly dialysis visits and insulin shots for her diabetes, problems she said stem from AIDS, something she and her baby Ricarrdia unwittingly contracted from her late husband, Richard.

Ricarrdia died of AIDS a month shy of her fifth birthday. Three days after her funeral, Palmer-Michel came down with pneumonia, developed diabetes and lapsed into a coma.

"I was in the hospital for four months," she said. "I lost my voice. I couldn't walk. I didn't think I could live."

Palmer-Michel still can't work and is on disability.

While she said she battles frequent fatigue, it's the desolation that she finds the most oppressive.

"The sad part is not having AIDS," she said. "I miss being more involved and having someone to come home to."

Finding love and support again is one reason Kaplan founded the Center for Positive Connections, a Miami organization focusing on the needs of HIV-positive heterosexual people.

"I wanted to meet someone,' she said. "It's not like I was going to keep going to bars in South Beach."

Kaplan traces her HIV-status to an instance of unprotected sex at age 23. She was 29, working as a chef at a catering company, when she was diagnosed.

"I went into a state of numbness," she said. "Everything goes black and dark. I thought, `How am I going to tell my boyfriend? My family? Am I going to ever get married? Have children?' "

She took off for Europe and New York.

A year later Kaplan returned to Miami, became an advocate and formed the center. To this day, she has not developed AIDS. She is dating and still hopes to have children.

Jeff Wilkinson, executive director of the South Beach AIDS Project, said many long-term AIDS survivors are still at the "questioning stage," trying to weigh whether to return to their jobs and plans they had before their diagnoses.

"They think, `I feel good now, I've been feeling good for a while now, but what if I get sick again?' " he said. "It's a lot for people to mentally process."

Attorney, artist and AIDS activist Paul Hampton Crockett, 40, said the struggle has left him weary. But the second-generation Miami man said the virus has also forced him to embrace life.

"It gave me a precious gift, the realization that I don't have forever," he said.

Crockett starting "painting like a demon," putting acrylics to canvas to vent his rage. He also threw himself into the AIDS cause.

"When you get the diagnosis, the person who you were is gone forever. In a way you die and have the hope of rebirth."

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