RISKING IT ALL

Marie has track marks that run down both of her arms from when she used to
shoot up. She's stopped that now and some of the more surface marks will
fade as years pass - some already have - but the deeper scars will stay.
HIV will be with her for life.

Marie went from being an IV junkie and sex trade worker on the streets of
downtown Prince George for 12 years to finding out through a toothache that
took her to the hospital from the needle exchange where she was shooting
up, that she is HIV positive and has Hepatitis B and C. The chronic
bronchitis and diabetes would come later as a result of the HIV.

She would twice have full-blown AIDS that would recede to the point that
the disease was undetectable, but the HIV would always be there.

She was put on Methadone to get her cleaned up, and has now been clean for
four and a half years. Living one day at a time, anonymously when she feels
she has to, Marie still sleeps less than four hours straight at night
because she's afraid if she falls into a deep sleep she won't wake up.
Death has been on her mind a lot lately, but life has new meaning. Marie
got her kids back, she has a partner, a dog and every day she thanks the
creator for one more day. She says HIV taught her to respect the gift of life.

Now Marie is giving back to the community as an educator and volunteer.
Just four and a half years ago she was walked through the doors of AIDS
Prince George by a close friend who had HIV then full-blown AIDS and has
since passed away. Today Marie is not only a client, but a peer counsellor
who is there forwhom ever walks through those doors. She lives in fear
herself, but wants to do what she can to help those who live with HIV, AIDS
and Hepatitis - and the community at large who she says needs to come a
long way in understanding the diseases - not to be afraid. Knowledge is
power and that is the first step.

"I was afraid at first to tell my friends because I feared that I would be
shunned, but now that I'm clean I can honestly say they weren't my friends,
just acquaintances living on the streets like me. Once I tell my kids about
my HIV I will be more open in the community but I don't want them to be
shunned by their friends or have a hard life because of my mistakes. I'm
being punished enough. Now I am trying to give back what I can," says
Marie, who has agreed to tell her story if her identity will be protected.

Marie is not only an AIDS Prince George volunteer. She travels to
aboriginal reserves to disseminate HIV/AIDS information and provide peer
counselling. She is an HIV delegate for the needle exchange at the Pacific
AIDS Network conference in Vancouver, a member of Red Road and is the only
aboriginal on the National Community Advisory Committee for the Canadian
Drug Trials Network.

Facing North, an HIV/AID/Hepatitis conference that brings together
community workers, clinicians and people living with HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis
from across B.C., took place at the Coast Inn of the North in Prince George
April 25 to 27. It was hosted by AIDS Prince George and the Northern Health
Authority and focused on developing partnerships and creating action plans
to address HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis education, prevention and treatment in
Northern, rural and remote B.C.

Marie attended the conference and helped to put on one of the workshops in
which she presented one of her two documentary videos called Women, HIV &
Addictions: Before, During and After. She made it with four other
aboriginal women, one of whom took her to AIDS Prince George for the first
time. Her other video Hospital Curtains Aren't Walls addresses the fear,
lack of knowledge and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS and
Hepatitis by health care professionals that, she says, has the effect of
ostracizing those people and perpetuating ignorance.

HIV and AIDS can only be transmitted through the blood through sexual
contact with someone who is infected and by sharing of needles. It can not
be transmitted by hugging someone with HIV or air-born saliva. You would
have to drink two gallons of the infected person's saliva to contract HIV/AIDS.

"You can't tell when someone has HIV or Hepatitis, so when health care
professionals talk like the curtains around our hospital cubicles are walls
and we can't hear them it makes it harder on all of us living with HIV.
They see I'm an aboriginal woman with tattoos and they judge me. Hospital
clipboards for HIV/AIDS patients have red or yellow caution strips and it
centers us out. The first question people ask is do I have AIDS, and how
did I get it, and that is offensive. If the clinicians would listen to the
person while they're taking their blood it would make it easier for both of
us. I hope that health care professionals attend this conference because
there is definitely a need for more training and less prejudice," said Marie.

She has other concerns about government cutbacks. If HIV/Hepatitis C
disability is eliminated she says she and many others will fall under the
old guidelines for social assistance and won't have enough money to afford
the bottled water and fresh fruit and vegetables they need to stay healthy,
and there will be more full blown AIDS and death. Marie's three-month
supply of diabetes medication costs her $284 and if disability is cut she
won't be able to afford it, and not taking it is not an option.

"I take on average 30 to 45 pills a day to stay alive and many of them have
awful side effects. This medication has to come from St. Paul's Hospital in
Vancouver because we don't have a local treatment centre and that's a
problem as well because many people don't go for treatment as a result,"
she said.

"Conferences are usually in Vancouver but now that we have this one in the
north I want people to go, soak it up and pass it on. If one person gets
something out of this conference it will be worth it.

"I'm really outing myself at this conference and I'm really nervous and
scared about how people I know who don't know I am positive will react and
treat me when they know. If they can't accept me, they weren't my friends
in the first place but I'm still scared," says Marie.

"HIV isn't a death sentence anymore. Life isn't over if you have HIV. You
can live a normal life. I want to help others not be afraid."