Francine Sullivan contracted HIV in 1991 while using IV drugs in Manchester.Photo by JIM KORPI / Monitor staff

article tools

• Email
• Comments (0)
• Share
• Print

Francine Sullivan contracted HIV in 1991 while using IV drugs in Manchester.Photo by JIM KORPI / Monitor staff

Francine Sullivan contracted HIV in 1991 while using IV drugs in Manchester.Photo by JIM KORPI / Monitor staff

A few hours before one recent dawn, Annie Ball awoke to a ringing phone. She was alone, except for her cats, and the country road outside was expectedly deserted. Through the receiver, a strange man told her all people with AIDS should be corralled on an island and blown up.

Calls like this aren't unusual for Ball. Once, a caller told her she's a danger to others; another just belched and hung up. Last month, someone left a message on her answering machine, calling her an "AIDS whore."

It's been five years since Ball moved to the bucolic farmhouse in Bradford and 15 since she tested positive for HIV. Anti-viral drugs have kept the illness at bay, but they've done little to rebuff fear and ignorance. Her career as a cardiac nurse ended shortly after she contracted the disease from a boyfriend. She's been shunned by home health aides and found it nearly impossible to date. A few years ago, she was barred from a rehab pool because the physical therapist feared Ball would infect other swimmers.

Two decades into the epidemic, AIDS is no longer a death sentence. But, as Ball's struggles illustrate, the disease still comes with complications - medical, financial, social and political. In New Hampshire, all are compounded. Doctors, caseworkers and support groups are scattered miles apart, small towns cling to the illness's worst stigmas and lawmakers have yet to spend any state money to help the nearly 1,600 residents living with HIV or AIDS.

"In this state, HIV is still looked at as a moral issue," Ball said, elbows propped on her kitchen table. "It's not a health care problem for them."

AIDS is a notoriously expensive disease. Drugs and medical care can cost thousands of dollars a month, but fatigue and other complications make it hard for many of those afflicted to work full-time jobs with health benefits. So, usually, it's the government that pays.

Unlike most states, New Hampshire relies solely on federal money and private donations to provide drugs, emotional support and other services to people with AIDS. The result is a tenuous web of volunteers, social workers and doctors trying to prevent the disease's spread and provide care to those infected, a task that gets harder as the federal money diminishes.

Ball has already given up one effective but expensive medication because the state can no longer afford the $700 a month cost. The cheaper substitute blunts her pain but renders her too groggy to work. Instead, she relies on a disability check and the kindness of friends for inexpensive rent and loans.

"A lot of it," she said, "is living with the constant fear that, at some point, I'm not going to be able to get what I need."

Some of Ball's neighbors know about her illness, but, outside of medical circles and high school health classes, AIDS in New Hampshire is largely ignored. Occasionally though, the disease creates social and political tangles reminiscent of the early years of the epidemic.

A housing battle

Take, for example, what's happening in Gilsum, a tiny town near Keene that's recently become an epicenter for AIDS activism. A local organization, AIDS Services of the Monadnock Region, wants to turn a defunct reform school behind the village store into a group home for people with AIDS and other chronic illnesses. The rambling farmhouse has enough room for five to seven residents and the organization's administrative offices, which are currently in Keene.

Moving to Gilsum would solve two of the most pressing problems faced by any of New Hampshire's half-dozen AIDS service organizations, says executive director Susan MacNeil: finding affordable housing for clients and replenishing depleted finances. The cost of providing care is increasing, private donations are dwindling and, lately, MacNeil has refused most federal grants because they come with requirements like teaching only sexual abstinence. (next page »)