HIV And Aids Chat Line

A Fragile Lifeline: Lessons I Learned Answering The Aids Hotline
By Glenn Plaskin

Dial 1-800/AIDSNYC

Every Monday and Wednesday morning, promptly at 10 a.m., I leave behind my daily life and turn to volunteering as an AIDS Hotline counselor at New York City’s GMHC [Gay Men’s Health Crisis], the nation’s largest social service agency for AIDS.

For the next four hours, my co-volunteers and I sit in front of a bank of constantly-ringing telephones, talking to men, women, and teens who call in from across the nation with urgent questions about AIDS, the ravaging disease that has left 13.9 million people dead worldwide.

After almost 20 years, a whole generation, families are still facing the heartache of tending the sick, while scientists continue to be confounded by this stubborn, ravaging virus.

Although the federal government currently spends$4 billion per year on AIDS research, and $15 billion worldwide, there is no cure in sight for the viral infection and no vaccine available. Small wonder that the GMHC AIDS Hotline, the nation’s first, is flooded with more than 40,000 calls each year.

Listening to callers 8 hours each week, I often think the Hotline is actually a direct link to the soul of callers--an anonymous forum that allows each to reveal secrets and fears that they might otherwise never discuss with anyone. A Morning in May

This is the way it began: “Good morning, GMHC AIDS Hotline, can I help you?”

“Yes...I have a question...[hesitantly] My son...he’s 21...and he just found out...he’s HIV-positive [voice breaking] I’m.....alone, divorced. And I need some help...someone to talk to...”

“Of course....happy to talk to you...it sounds like this has been devastating for you....”

“It’s terrible. He told me two nights ago....he’s...he’s so young....I don’t want him to die. He’s my only child....why did this have to happen?” [crying]

Her son, she explains, had sometimes neglected using condoms, convinced he wouldn’t contract HIV infection from his female partners.

“How could he be so stupid?” she now asks angrily. “Why didn’t he know how to protect himself? I don’t understand. What am I going to do?”

We talk for 35 minutes, and by the end of the conversation, I notice I’m barely breathing. The distraught woman’s anguish is palpable. Her situation is every mother’s worst nightmare.The life of her child is in jeopardy and she feels helpless and afraid. I can’t imagine anything worse.