Ryan White Day
/by JEFF MOUALIM
(Original Source: Santa Barbara Independent)
Sitting in front of my television set one night, I saw my reality on screen: A young man named Ryan White taking clotting factor for a bleed. Having never seen a movie showing someone with hemophilia having factor injected into his arm, just as I had done so many times, the images were surreal.
But the 1980s was an era of the devastation of HIV/AIDS in our communities. And finding out that the medication those of us with hemophelia took could transmit an incurable, life-threatening disease shadowed each of us.
The AIDS story is forever interwoven in the story of our bleeding disorder. No amount of time that passes will change that reality. For those lost, for the families robbed of their loved ones, and for the survivors who must continue to battle HIV/AIDS, there is no rest from this tragedy...