"It" A wife's journey through...: A Wife's Journey Through...AIDS [Mass Market Paperback]

 

 

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After finishing this unputdownable book, I had tears in my eyes. Set in her home county of Cornwall, I loved Jill's evocative description of the holy wells and of the spiritual atmosphere of the lonely stone chapels which abound in that area, where she and her husband, and later herself on her own, visited to seek peace of mind. The post-script in which Jill describes the presence her husand, 'RT' after his death in one of these lovely places is authentic and moving. The highly personal account of RT's progression into full-blown AIDS - at one point his blood count is 20, well below the critical level of 200 - is not a scientific or medical textbook, but instead is written, as Jill explains, for those, carers and sufferers alike, who are going through this experience but can find no literature on what to expect. She writes the book for RT because he wanted people to know about him. Within days of my asking Jill what her husband was like, I had this book in my hands telling me, which adds to the poignancy of the post -script. Both tragedy and comedy, the book is hilariously funny in parts; the descriptions of speeding wheelchairs and drunken falling-overs - always amusing in retrospect - must have been anxiety-provoking at the time. The tragic elements derive from the astonishing sang-froid and callousness of, not only some of the lowly auxilliary staff at the hospitals and clinics, but also that of doctors and consultants, whom one would have hoped would have known better than to be judgemental towards sick and dying patients. Jill's fine writing left me feeling 100% convinced of her belief in RT's claim that he did not acquire the HI-Virus from gay sex or promiscuity, and speculates that he may have been infected by a mass blood transfusion after a car accident in 1969, a claim which makes some medics sceptical, but it is now known that HIV has been around since the mid-50's, and until it started becoming epidemic amongst gay men in the West, it is believed there were isolated cases elsewhere outside the African sub-continent, that just weren't identified owing to the rarity of the disease then. The first British man to die of AIDS in 1963 denied having had gay sex, either. RT, further, contracted full-blown AIDS twenty years after the blood transfusion, another reason for medical scepticism that this could be the cause, but it is now known, too, that it can take this long between aquiring the virus and contracting the disease, especially if RT had AIDS before he actually became aware of it. He certainly continued going long after the doctors' predictions. One of the biggest tragedies the book conveys is the defensive attitude RT had to adopt in respect of his illness, continuously having to deny he was gay, or must have had gay sex, or behaved in an 'immoral' way in some way, especially towards those whom one might have expected were the well-educated. Sadly, RT was probably right to imagine people were assuming things about him that *he* knew to be not so. The overriding impression of the book is Jill's steadfastness and devotion towards RT. Although her anguish and suffering must have been unbearable - at one point it is almost a black comedy with flood water regularly seeping through their carpets on top of all the other stress - Jill manages to keep the tone light and this adds to the epiphany when it comes. Jill emerges from this book as the real heroine, and RT must have been proud to have had her as a life companion when the end came. Indeed, Jill tells me that RT not only inspired her to write this, her first book, but is now on her fifth. At £6.99 this book represents very good value for money. ~ Kris G-Smith, London NW5, UK, 8th July 2000

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