George's story:
Sirico, Robert A
George's story It was one of those blustery Washington days poised between the last damp gasps of fall and the frigidity of winter. As I waited at the Catholic University Metro stop I remember...
...He told me about how he had come to learn the value of patience and the need to take each moment as it comes...
...1 apologized for the interruption...
...I mean the AIDS is bad enough, but now this drug reaction....And yet, the best thing that has happened in all of this is what my father said...
...SIRICO Robert A. Sirico, C.S.P., serves on the staff of the Catholic Information Center, Grand Rapids, Michigan...
...I can't talk on the phone very easily either...
...As I entered the room I introduced myself and asked if it was a good time for a visit...
...Other than his head and parts of his shoulders, his whole body was under the sheets...
...Everyone who comes in has to wear them...
...It is very difficult to move though...
...But he stood in that doorway one night just before leaving, and he turned around and looked at me (tears were building in his eyes) and he said, 'George, I love you.' Just as simple as that...
...He kept very still...
...He continued, "I was my mother's favorite...
...I rode to Medical Center and made my way to Building 10 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda where I worked with the Catholic chaplain's office in ministry to people with AIDS...
...When I first knocked on the door the nurse invited me in and explained the patient I was looking for had been discharged...
...On that particular day I had a lighter patient load than usual and decided to follow up on a patient with whom I had visited in the past but who was transferred to another floor...
...Then he was quiet for awhile...
...In holding George's fragile hand I was aware that I was also touching the scarred hand of another young man in his thirties, and together all three of us wept...
...I knocked on the door and heard a quiet voice invite me into the sparsely lit room...
...I have to be very slow about it or I end up leaving some skin in the sheets...
...George quietly died three weeks after our meeting...
...When I caught my first glimpse of George, I remember feeling as though I was in a slow-motion movie...
...I came to find out that part of George's immediate situation was due to a bad reaction to an experimental drug...
...Finally I realized that this young man's face was barely visible beneath blisters and lesions...
...I just try to stay as still as possible and watch TV or something...
...George didn't receive many visitors...
...Yes, now that I have had a bath...
...I asked...
...In the midst of the silence which followed I could sense the emotion building...
...I'm getting used to it...
...He was not comfortable telling his friends that he had AIDS, and his disfigurement was especially difficult...
...That's okay...
...From under the cloth the young man, who heard the nurse say something about my being a chaplain, asked if I would return later to talk...
...There was another man in the bed who had a washcloth over his face, and I realized that the attendants were giving him a bath...
...It was hard at first to make out what it was I was seeing...
...He has worked in the area of AIDS ministry for four years...
...What did he say, George...
...My mother comes up, and my father has been here too," he told me...
...That day George told me some very strange and beautiful things...
...I soon came to realize that this was for the patient's protection, not mine...
...Are you comfortable...
...I asked...
...You have to know my father...
...I felt frightened, yet I managed to say, "I am sorry to have to wear these gloves and this gown, but I wouldn't want to risk your getting an infection from me...
...We have never been the type that goes around saying affectionate things to one another...
...He reached out and I tenderly took his hand...
...ROBERTA...
...My greatest concern is for her and how difficult it is for her to see me looking like this...
...He reflected on how he had always been afraid of pain and that prior to his diagnosis with AIDS, about eight months previous, he had never even been in a hospital in all his thirty-five years...
...The sign on the door indicated that visitors should wear a gown and gloves, an unusual procedure in visiting AIDS patients at NIH...
...As I waited at the Catholic University Metro stop I remember thinking that winter would win out this time...
...I returned about a half hour later...
...From the top of his head to the soles of his feet, his lips, his eyelids, his ears, almost every part of his body appeared as though it had passed through an open flame...
...This reaction was in addition to the Kaposi's sarcoma lesions which had previously spread throughout his body, the direct result of the breakdown of his immune system from the AIDS infection...
...George said that it was, so I approached the bed...
Vol. 116 • September 1989 • No. 15
