No Medicine
By Pinelands Writers’ Circle
“Good grief, Reg, you look terrible.” I blurted out. “What the hell happened? Where’ve you been?”
He smiled wanly, “I picked up a hitchhiker who stabbed me and took my wallet. Some kind soul found me slumped over the wheel and took me to hospital.”
Totally perplexed I asked, “Why didn’t you let us know?”
He merely shrugged his shoulders.
Having known him for a good fifteen years I’d learned that if he didn’t wish to respond then that was that.
Over the next few months, he was frequently off work for a day or two at a time.
“What’s the matter,” I would ask.
“I just feel so tired, so incapable of moving at times,” he’d say.
“You have got to get medical help. Perhaps you’re down as a result of the stabbing. A lung injury is not a minor thing.”
Eventually he did condescend to see a doctor. What’s more, he actually telephoned me to say that he’d been admitted to Groote Schuur.
During my visits there he claimed that the doctors were trying to find out what the problem could be.
I had a funny feeling that he was hiding something and so I asked a friend who has a gift for figuring out what may be causing a medical problem.
During that visit she merely chatted amiably without asking him any questions.
Later, in the car park I questioned her, “And?”
“There is something wrong with his blood. It’s not right. It feels heavy to me. It’s not working properly.”
After being discharged his health yo-yoed up and down.
Finally one day he confessed, “I have AIDS.”
That was 1992 and the general public had little knowledge about the disease but harboured a great fear.
“Good grief, where could you have got this?”
“The doctor thinks it could have been contaminated blood that I’d been given after the stabbing.”
He was now acquiring a facial rash and it was sad to see him on a downward spiral.
I’d seen him at his best. Highly intelligent and an eclectic thinker, he was knowledgeable on many subjects. He spoke seven different languages, including Urdu. He was born in India to an army officer father and his mother was heavily involved in Indian education. He had completed his schooling there. She’d elected to remain in India and set up various schools. When he went to visit her, he took great delight in peeing off the South African Indians who, with their South African passports, had to go through the whole alien registration in India, while Reg, being a native born Indian, travelled on an Indian passport.
Our circle was quite a huggy bunch and as the knowledge of his condition spread, I could see that the ladies hugged him reluctantly, with fear and trepidation.
Although the question was raised, I must say that I never suspected him of being gay. He seemed quite a ladies’ man in the years that I’d known him.
He continued to visit our home, and my wife later confessed that she used to boil the dishes he’d used after soaking then in bleach. Something she later felt terribly ashamed about. Such was the general level of ignorance about AIDS.
I found out that he was being treated by a doctor at Somerset Hospital. Apparently, this man was the only real “expert” on this relatively new disease.
Totally ignorant of how the virus may be transferred I arranged a meeting with the doctor.
“I hear that, besides intercourse, one could get it from kissing – through the saliva – or even through mosquito bites,” I ventured.
He thought for a long time and seeing that I was genuinely interested, he said,” We think the most likely method is intercourse however there are many unknowns.”
“What about spitting?” I asked,” I hear the virus can live outside the body."
“It appears to be a possibility,” he said, “We have kept it alive in sputum in the laboratory for twelve days. We are not quite sure if this was due to the artificial laboratory environment or not.”
I left him, feeling vaguely unsettled by the medical fraternity’s obvious lack of knowledge on the subject.
In another tragedy, not long after my chat with him, this doctor was killed in a car crash.
Reg now felt totally abandoned. He was distraught.
There was no cure for this disease and no specific medicine to treat it. The few doctors who had any knowledge of AIDS simply appeared to treat the symptoms.
I made some enquiries and found out that a journalist I knew at my local coffee shop was the secretary of GASA – the Gay Association of South Africa – and that they held regular counselling sessions in a warehouse in the Bo-Kaap.
Reg initially flatly refused to go, saying that he was not gay and did not want to be associated with “that crew.”
Eventually, when I promised to go with him, he reluctantly agreed.
When we arrived there, there was only one other person visible in the hall, the chap who was organising the counselling sessions. In a corner there were four cubicles where doctors were counselling patients.
One cubicle become vacant, and the organiser ushered Reg in.
There was a TV with a video on AIDS that was just coming to an end. I was asked if I’d like to see the whole video and I eagerly accepted.
What an education! Thankfully there was no-one to witness the number of occasions I had to push my mouth shut.
The news media had been putting forth some tame do’s and don’ts about AIDS. I realized that they were not even touching the tip of the iceberg.
My sex education went from five per cent to God knows what in an hour.
I thought that, if they showed that video on national TV, they may lose more lives through Mother Grundies dying of heart failure, than they could save though AIDS education.
However, if they were really serious about AIDS, they would show it. Fat chance, I thought. Society loves to hide behind pretence and euphemisms.
By now the place was beginning to fill up with guys and dolls who all seemed to eye this obviously straight bloke with an air of suspicion. Understandably, as the ignorance about the disease had made many people very anti-gay.
Just then the journalist walked in and greeted me warmly before taking up his position behind the refreshment counter.
“James,” he sang out, “ Would you like some coffee?”
There was an immediate, tangible silence as the hall waited to see my response.
Without hesitation I said, ‘Love some. Black, no sugar please.”
Suddenly the atmosphere changed, and they carried on as though I was one of them.
Shortly after this session, Reg reached the stage where he could no longer justify his employment.
He had an insurance policy with an Income Protection Plan. The company initially turned down his claim. Their usual ducking and diving seemed to be exacerbated by their ignorance about AIDS. I took up the cudgels on his behalf and after a few very cutting - and threatening letters– they started paying.
Then he had another setback. A car jumped a stop street and hit his car. This resulted in a broken collar bone. The problem was, that in his weakened state, the bone did not heal properly.
Then he also changed accommodation, moving from one flat to another. I did not know where he was.
One morning I got a call from a neighbour who was concerned that Reg had not left his flat for days. I’ve no idea where this Good Samaritan found my number.
I knocked on the door endlessly with no reply. Eventually I yelled, “Reg, either you open this door now, or I’ll call the police to break it down.”
Mercifully he responded.
It’s difficult to explain what met my eyes.
The doctor had given him tranquillisers and he’d acquired a supply of whiskey.
He’d been living off these for days with predictable results. There was vomit and faeces all over the flat and almost all his clothes were soiled and piled up in the bath.
I called a GASA contact, his doctor and an ambulance.
It was one hell of a job to get him into it.
His state was such that the hospital transferred him to Falkenberg Mental Hospital, for a spell.
While visiting him there I met some of his “other world contacts” and saw how he related to them. I had some difficulty in hiding my astonishment. It was now obvious that he was bi-sexual.
After his release he lived a bitter existence on charity from a church group who tended to him.
It was not too long before he was readmitted to Somerset Hospital.
I last saw him there less than twenty-four hours before he
died.
He was incapable of speech, but his eyes were angry and staring.
Literally skin and bones, his skin was sallow and transparent, you could see his veins and bones.
What a horrible death.
Medical Science had failed him.