Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 12, 1993 TAG: 9307120075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DENISE WATSON LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Perhaps they expected the aroma of a Sunday dinner. Or the delicate scent of baby powder. But Karen and Tom Hamilton never expected to walk into this foster care home and have their noses sting with the smell of chlorine bleach.
"It's nice to meet you," the Virginia Beach woman says as she and her husband usher the Hamiltons inside.
Karen and Tom look at each other.
They hadn't expected this.
The Hamiltons had been trying to adopt for months. At first, it was only an idea - until they saw the faces, faces of abandoned children with HIV, in an article about the virus that causes AIDS.
The Hamiltons spent weeks doing research, convincing their families they weren't crazy, asking themselves all the questions: "Will we be able to handle it? Do we have the ability?
"Will we be able to let go when the time comes?"
Now, Oct. 22, 1989, Karen and Tom find all the answers they need.
They look at Andrew, who is 9 days old, HIV-positive and in need of a new home. They stare at the foster parents so afraid of his illness that they wash everything, including their hands, in chlorine bleach.
No, they hadn't expected this.
"It's nice to meet you, too," the Hamiltons say automatically and sit down.
Karen reaches for Andrew and cradles the tiny body in her arms. Soft brown hair curling about his ears, pink-stained cheeks, deep, deep brown eyes. How can anyone be afraid of this precious thing, she thinks.
She doesn't know how many times she'll ask that question in the months to come. How she'll admire the little boy who would be too sick to eat but would muster a song to make them smile. They don't know about the long nights in the chapel praying for another day or the family and friends who would stop calling for fear of catching "it."
All they know is that what started out as Christian duty is now much deeper.
Karen and Tom say their good-byes and pick up diapers on the way home to Newport News.
It's a gorgeous spring day in May 1991, but Karen doesn't feel the warm breeze ruffling the lace curtains on the window. She's feeling Andrew's warm forehead.
"Something's wrong with Andrew," Karen quietly says into the phone, trying not to startle the 19-month-old lying on the couch beside her.
Andrew is usually the healthiest of her kids. Greg, 11, Michael, 9, and Rob, 7, her sons from a previous marriage, caught colds, got their scrapes, but Andrew was never sick.
Until now.
He won't eat, won't drink. The little he ate he threw up an hour before. His plump cheeks are pale.
Minutes before, he dropped his toys and crawled onto the couch. The toddler never rested until his afternoon nap.
It's 10 a.m.
Karen knows as she talks to the doctor that she'll have to rush him to the hospital. The doctor confirms it.
Karen and Tom hurry into the emergency room and walk up to the nearest nurse.
"Any pre-existing conditions?" the nurse asks, taking notes.
"Yes, my child is HIV-positive," Karen says, laying Andrew on the table.
The nurse's pen stops. She flags down another nurse in the corridor and whispers in her ear.
Karen and Tom rub Andrew's back as the nurses begin to argue.
"I'm not going to touch him!" one nurse says.
When Andrew's pediatrician arrives 10 minutes later, she gives him a brief checkup. It's the flu. As she smooths his hair back from his damp forehead, she tells the nurse to give him fluids intravenously.
The nurse glares as the doctor walks out of the examining room. She walks slowly to a box and pulls out some latex gloves. Carefully, she stretches the rubbery sleeve as close to her elbows as possible.
Karen notices the nurse is sweating. She doesn't like the look of fear in her eyes. Not her, not a nurse. She's supposed to know better, Karen says to herself.
Karen takes Andrew's hand as the nurse slides the needle into the fleshy part of his forearm. She finds a vein. The liquid begins to drip.
The nurse is moving quickly, too quickly, and the IV tubing snaps away from the needle in Andrew's arm. The nurse jumps back, avoiding the spray of blood. It covers Karen's face, her arms, her body.
"Wash!" the nurse screams to Karen while Andrew lies on the table, blood streaming out of the broken tube.
Karen can't take a step. She's quivering with anger.
"I will wash when you take care of my son. Stop his bleeding!"
The nurse pinches the tubing, pulls out the needle and begins again. Karen walks over to a basin and begins to rinse, watching her son's blood course down the drain.
"I can't believe this. Is this going to happen every time he's sick, every time we need help?" Karen wonders.
Andrew drifts off to sleep and Karen and Tom sit down. They look over the list of things they will have to do: Get his medicine, administer IVs at home until he starts to eat well, look out for air bubbles in the tube . . .
But it's hard to focus on the list. They can't block out the fear. Not fear for their son, but the fear people have of him.
Is this real? It this what it's going to be like?
Is this only the beginning?
By January 1992, Karen and Tom knew it was.
They had just received the results from their annual AIDS tests.
Negative. Again.
They went through the trouble each year to please their families. But despite the results, family members still found reasons not to visit. Some would stop by but would never go near Andrew. Some stopped calling. Karen hadn't seen or heard from a couple of siblings in months.
Karen and Tom had become used to the ignorance, the fear. But the boys hadn't.
"It makes me mad," says Rob, the second youngest, at the dinner table one night.
"You would think maybe an outsider would feel this way. But not your family."
Tom thinks of a conversation he heard that morning at work. A group lounging by the snack machines said that all the people with AIDS should be sent to a deserted island and left to die. None knew Tom's son could one day be one of those people.
"I don't know, Robbie. It's so much easier for people to listen and believe in things that aren't true. You know those things aren't true, don't you?" Tom asks.
Rob perks up, "Of course."
Tom picks up his fork again and glances at Andrew. The 2-year-old who usually clamors for chicken nuggets and french fries won't touch a golden brown morsel.
Karen notices, too. Earlier that day, he got sick but was still active. Now he won't eat and wants to get down. Karen is getting that feeling again.
Every month, Andrew tested positive for the HIV-antibodies but there was still a slim chance that he could convert to negative. If so, he could have a normal life, catch a cold and no one would have to worry.
The next day, Karen drives the 40 minutes from their home to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters for a series of tests. Andrew hadn't touched his breakfast and she knew something was wrong. She hates putting him through the long haul but she shudders when she thinks of their emergency room experience at the other hospital.
Andrew pulls a wan smile for his doctor. He tweaks the nurse's nose. He's such a trouper, Karen thinks, smiling at her son.
Andrew tries a quick Alvin and the Chipmunks song for his mom but his voice dies out. He rubs his throat. It hurts.
After several hours, Karen takes him home. Nothing more to do but wait and try to get him to eat.
The next day, they return to the hospital. More needles, blood, tubes, tests. Nothing. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong.
The little boy who usually bounds through the sliding doors and into the arms of his doctor could barely raise his head off of his mom's shoulder.
No, "Hey, Sweetie" or hugs and kisses for the nurses.
Karen takes him home and only has time to sit down. The phone rings.
"We've found out what's wrong with Andrew," the doctor says. "Bring him back now."
The doctor is waiting by an examining table when Karen and Tom rush into the unit. Tom lays Andrew on the table and the doctor pulls the couple closer, drawing the curtain around them.
"Andrew has CMV, a viral infection," the doctor says. "It's a serious opportunistic infection."
The doctor pauses but Karen and Tom already know what he's about to say.
"This means that Andrew has full-blown AIDS."
They begin antibiotics. They wait. Andrew won't respond. Hour after hour, he gets worse. He won't eat.
The tiny scope inserted into Andrew's throat shows ulcers lining the back of his throat and extending throughout his digestive tract.
They begin ganciclovir, an anti-viral medication, through an IV. The medicine is so caustic that within hours it pops the vein. Nurses find another vein, again it pops. Another vein, and another. Two weeks into Andrew's hospital stay, they've poked his arms, legs, feet, hands. They've run out of veins.
Andrew's CD-4 counts, the number of immunity cells, begin to drop, falling toward the danger zone of less than 1,000.
Then 800.
740.
710.
The doctors are worried. Karen calls their priest. Karen and Tom knew the priest had been reserved ever since he found out Andrew was HIV-positive. But they had faith that they could count on him.
They could not. The priest says he's too busy to come.
Karen and Tom walk into the chapel.
Their son's only hope is another surgery to insert a Port-a-Cath, a tiny box next to his heart that would administer his medicine at small intervals. There is always a risk of infection.
How much can his small body take?
Andrew goes into the operating room the next morning and is wheeled into recovery several hours later. The doctor says the procedure went smoothly but all they can do is wait.
Andrew's CD-4 counts hover around 700. He's still unconscious from the anesthetic. The next day, his counts climb to 720.
724.
745.
Day by day, Andrew gets better. By the fifth day, he's smiling. By the sixth, he says, "I love you, Mommy. I love you, Daddy." But he still isn't eating.
Karen and Tom take turns staying at the hospital. One day Karen stays with Andrew, running him through the hospital corridors trying to build his appetite. The next, Tom wheels him through the hallways in his bright red car. Karen and Tom haven't had dinner together in almost three weeks.
A week later, Andrew is well enough to go home. He will be on the ganciclovir, perhaps, for the rest of his life. He has lost weight. And the Hamiltons' worst fears have become a reality.
Andrew has AIDS.
But he is alive.
"This is great!," Karen says as she hangs up the phone. The call from the Make-A-Wish foundation couldn't have come at a better time.
It's April 1992 and Andrew has been home almost three months and he still isn't quite himself. He isn't sick, yet he isn't quite well.
A trip to Disney World might be what he needs.
The family flies to Florida and climbs into a limo at the airport. They're whisked away to Kids Village, a place catering to kids in the Make-a-Wish program that fulfills requests for terminally ill children.
Andrew gets in the pool with Mike, Greg and Rob. It's the first time he's been in a pool, and he likes to feel the water swirling around him. He starts to giggle. He giggles for the next two hours.
Karen and Tom lounge by the pool and start talking to a West Virginia family whose son has cystic fibrosis. They drive five to seven hours each time their child is sick because the closest hospital won't treat him. Another Wish Kid has cancer. No one wants to play with a kid who has the "Big C."
Karen and Tom look at each other and smile. Finally they can talk about the family secret and people will listen. Someone will understand. Someone else has to give medication every six hours, on the hour. Someone else knows what it's like, sitting up late night in a plastic hospital chair. Someone else has seen the fear.
Ten days later, the Hamiltons land at Norfolk International Airport. Andrew runs down the corridor, pointing at the big planes as they begin to take off. Andrew, in so many ways, is back.
He runs into King's Daughters the next morning, sporting his Mickey ears and T-shirt.
"HI, SWEETIE!" he says, running up to one of his nurses.
The doctor strolls in and stops when he sees the tanned little boy. This isn't the same one who left two weeks ago. The one they were afraid might not come back.
Andrew's doing so well he's taken off the ganciclovir. It's one of the few times his doctor has taken a child off the medication.
Karen almost jumps for joy when she hears that.
Is this a miracle in the making?
It will be a miracle, the Hamiltons pray, if someone, just one person learns something from this article.
They decided months before to break the silence. There was too much misinformation about AIDS. Too many myths about what kind of people get AIDS. Too much fear.
Now, they wait, hoping they made the right decision.
"We worry about Tom's job. Are we going to be burned out? Are our tires going to be slashed? The boys worry that their friends might walk away and that they'll be shunned from the Scouts," Karen says.
The Hamiltons have made it through three tough years, and they know they have more to come. What will happen when Andrew starts school in two years? How will he ward off the colds and germs of the classroom? Will the family's privacy be protected?
"It's possible that he magically beats it. It's possible that a cure is discovered tomorrow. It's also possible he'll have a short life," Karen says, looking at Andrew sitting in Tom's lap.
"But he doesn't have to have had a long life for him to give us our miracles. And we've seen wonderful miracles with Andrew."
Andrew vaults out of his dad's lap and starts a serenade:
"I love you. You love me. We're a happy family, with a nick-nack fatty-whack give the dog a bone. This poor Andrew comes rolling home."
He falls into his mother's arms and Karen looks into his eyes.
This is all that matters.
"When Andrew dies," Karen says slowly, "there will be a light that dies. But there will be a light that burns in all of us."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB