Naive and uninformed
Jane Fowler laughs as she tells the story of the young anesthesiologist who, prior to minor surgery, questioned her about how she responded to blood transfusions. When she said she didn’t know because she’d never had one, the doctor looked puzzled. “But you have HIV.” She had to break it to him: “Well, this old lady got HIV through sex,” she replied. “So there.”
Now 73, Fowler, a retired Kansas City-based journalist who once wrote features for Bon Appétit, contracted HIV at age 50. In 1985, two years after the breakup of her monogamous, 23-year marriage — Fowler calls herself the quintessential “good girl,” a virgin on her 1950s wedding night — she began dating a man who’d been a friend all her adult life. Naively, says Fowler in hindsight. It didn’t occur to her to question the man’s sexual history, consider condoms as anything other than birth control, or think of HIV/AIDS as anything other than a “gay disease.”
A surprise discovery
So it was devastating news when, five years later, she learned that she was HIV positive (the man she dated has since died). She discovered her condition only because she was denied health insurance after tests revealed a “serious blood abnormality.”
Even Fowler’s GP was shocked to confirm the diagnosis. The smart, successful woman in her fifties just didn’t fit anyone’s idea of who typically contracts HIV (gay men, young people, injection-drug users). As Fowler quips, “Grandma and Grandpa aren’t supposed to be out there screwing or shooting up.”
Fortunately, Fowler responded well to treatment. In 1996, she attended the now historic Vancouver conference on HIV/AIDS, where thousands from around the world gathered and heard the good news about the success of revolutionary anti-retroviral drugs, which she had just begun taking. Many lives, including Jane Fowler’s, have been saved by these daily medications. Today, she says, with the exception of some nuisance side effects (diarrhea, weight gain and muscle atrophy around the middle) and the annoyances of normal aging, “my health is excellent.”
