AIDS during the 80s

tulip5 · Apr 2, 2014

Yes. I was an RN then. I did not know any RN's who refused to take care of Gays, even those with what we were recognizing as Gay-related diseases such as Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocistis. But we realized early on that it was body fluid related. So we became much, much, much more compulsive about gloving up.

What concerned me the most was... I was lecturing on Tb and other public health issues. We had beaten tuberculosis back in the 50's and 60's. All the old Tb Sanitariums closed down. Antibiotics seemingly had relegated this disease to the dust-bin of history. As a result, governments in each state and around the world, stopped spending money protecting the public from Tb. When I was lecturing on this topic in the early 80's and doing reading on it, I realized we had disarmed at a time when we had a population of vulnerable patients expanding at a logarithmic rate. I could see (and predicted to my MD husband) that we were going to see tuberculosis roaring back as a public health epidemic and that it would become quickly antibiotic resistant. Sadly, I was right.

twinkerrs · Apr 2, 2014

I was just a teen during the early days of the aids epidemic but I had a personal experience with it during that time. My cousin who passed away in 1989 died of aids and the horrible treatment he received still makes me sick. He went back home to live with his mom from Dallas. She lived in a small town in northwest arkansas and the doctors and hospitals in that area refused him any treatment basically told him hospice care and wait to die. No hospice type agency would take him. When he would get sick he would have to be driven to Tulsa because no ambulance would take him. Heck when he died he also had to be cremated in Tulsa because no one in arkansas would do it. People even complained about him having a headstone in their cemetery.

It was during this time that I developed a passion for equal marriage rights for homosexuals. A good friend of our family had a partner who after 20 years together had an affair, caught HIV, and while dying from aids out friend was denied the ability to see his lifelong partner by his partners family. They had disowned the man when he announced he was gay and yet on his deathbed refused the person who had cared and loved him for his entire adult life the right to be with him.

I must say I am so glad with the way thinking has changed in my lifetime and I am only 42 so I have to think it can only get better from here.

annaotis · Apr 2, 2014

I am so sorry your family member and friend were treated in such a disrespectful manner. Each person in this life matters and should be treated with care and respect. I took care of several young gay men with AIDS. I just made sure to be careful with IVs and needles and the like. I could never have refused them care.

elkpark · Apr 2, 2014

I was working at a VA hospital in a small Southern city in the late '80s, and my unit received the first (as far as anyone knew) AIDS client the hospitals in our city had seen. He was middle-aged, from there originally, had lived in NYC for many years (where he had contracted the illness), and had now come home to die. Several nurses flatly refused to take him as an assignment, and I still don't understand why they were not fired on the spot, and why this behavior was tolerated. I particularly remember one of the days his IV site was due to be changed; we were in AM report, and the charge nurse went around the group and every single one of the other nurses flatly refused to stick him for an IV. I was a relatively new grad at the time, and the time I had spent in nursing had been in psych, so I hadn't started an IV since nursing school until I started this job, but I spoke up and volunteered for the assignment (I ended up volunteering to take him most days he was there, since everyone else was so unpleasant about it). I made a point of commenting to the other nurses about how inappropriate I found their behavior, and that, as they knew, I was least experienced and adept at IV sticks and the most likely of anyone on the unit to stick myself, but I didn't have any problem taking the assignment because it was our job.

I saw dietary staff crack open his room door and slide his tray in on the floor from outside the room rather than step into his room and serve his tray to him like they would anyone else, and, again, I have no idea why this was tolerated and the individuals weren't fired on the spot.

He was a v. gracious and charming gentleman; he had been sick enough long enough that he had a permanent trach with a PMV, and he wore v. elegant pajamas with an ascot over his trach. :) He was on reverse isolation, and even on the days I wasn't assigned to him, I would make a point of finding time once or twice during the day to "suit up" and go in his room just to say hello and chat a little about the weather or whatever, just because everyone else on the unit went out of their way to avoid him as much as possible.

I was in nursing school when the first journal articles were being published about this mysterious new disease in the gay community that no one had seen before. I remember when it was officially known as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) in the literature, before the names HIV and AIDS were invented.

classicdame, MSN, EdD · Apr 2, 2014

Was not a nurse then, but had a cousin who was in the first wave of homosexuals to die in California. I think of him a lot as we were great friends growing up. I remember the Govt. sending an informational brochure to every home in America, trying to stem panic. Condoms were opening discussed (never before that time!) and advertised on TV. I know there was lots of discussion about whether or not it was "morally" right to care for peple who, according to some, got their problems from immoral living. Thankfully, some caregivers were smarter than that.

PacoUSA, BSN, RN · Apr 2, 2014

I was not a nurse back then, but my first job was in a hospital in the mid '80s, the summer before my senior year of high school. I remember all AIDS and HIV+ patients had their own isolation rooms and masks, gowns, and gloves set up at the entrances of each of these rooms with isolation signs taped to the walls next to the door. I remember being terrified once for simply touching a drop of water on the tray table with my bare wrist. And the patients were almost always guys wearing makeup and lots of jewelry ...

Times have certainly changed.

Sent from my iPad using allnurses

allnurses Guide · Apr 2, 2014

I saw dietary staff crack open his room door and slide his tray in on the floor from outside the room rather than step into his room and serve his tray to him like they would anyone else, and, again, I have no idea why this was tolerated and the individuals weren't fired on the spot.

I do not know how you restrained yourself from laying into that dietary aide... or did you?

Just leaving someone's food on the floor like they were a dog...

Somehow, this got me angrier than anything else I've read here.

theantichick · Apr 2, 2014

Wasn't a nurse but was in paramedic school in 1989-90. Universal precautions were being implemented and people were freaking out about AIDS. I never saw anyone refused treatment or transport, and I transported quite a few. I was lucky that an epidemiologist lectured at my paramedic school about how much viral load it takes to transmit different illnesses and how it was actually not that easy to catch HIV. I came away from that class much more worried about hepatitis and TB.

imintrouble, BSN, RN · Apr 2, 2014

I wasn't a nurse in the 80s. Nursing wasn't even on my radar. I remember watching Phil Donahue bring the topic of AIDs into middle America via TV.

elkpark · Apr 2, 2014

I was not a nurse back then, but my first job was in a hospital in the mid '80s, the summer before my senior year of high school. I remember all AIDS and HIV+ patients had their own isolation rooms and masks, gowns, and gloves set up at the entrances of each of these rooms with isolation signs taped to the walls next to the door. I remember being terrified once for simply touching a drop of water on the tray table with my bare wrist. And the patients were almost always guys wearing makeup and lots of jewelry ...
Times have certainly changed.

(All of those individuals were on reverse isolation because of their immunocompromised status -- all the protective equipment was there to protect them from us, not the other way around.)

meanmaryjean, DNP, RN · Apr 2, 2014

I was a nurse in those early, frightening days. And while not condoning anyone's behavior, you cannot comprehend how little information there was. Little information on the disease itself was known, and even less on how WE could protect ourselves.

You've heard us old-timers talk about the 'days before they gave us gloves' to clean up messes? The AIDS epidemic was what got us gloves. AIDS is what got us needle-less devices. AIDS is what got us universal precautions.

I worked NICU at the time at a hospital in Chicago. We had a preemie grower who, we believe, contracted AIDS through a transfusion. It was in the early, early days when the virus was not even identified.