HIV-infected in early '80s, she's one of the ancient few

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HIV-infected in early '80s, she's one of the ancient few

Burien woman remains pragmatic

Wednesday, March 15, 2000

By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Pat Migliore adjusts her reading glasses and peers at the back of a Mayan stone carving in her hands. The inscription reads: "Moon goddess, the patron of sickness, is carrying like a prisoner the symbol of fire."

It's one of her favorite pieces of art, picked up during her travels in Belize a few years ago.

Pat Migliore, 47, one of the few people left from her generation of those infected with HIV, has been taking a drug cocktail for three years, which is keeping her viral counts under control. She takes 25 pills a day. Paul Joseph Brown/P-I

She savors the irony since she never expected to achieve this particular rite of aging.

"Living long enough with HIV means you end up needing reading glasses," she said. Her laugh is warm and quick. Petite and rosy-cheeked with a mop of dark curly hair, she looks like she could be a kindergarten teacher.

Which in fact she was.

Migliore, 47, is also one of the few survivors of her generation of people infected with HIV.

She has been HIV-infected since the early 1980s, the advent of the epidemic, and has been diagnosed with AIDS since the early 1990s.

So far, the drugs that have begun to fail for some patients are still working for her.

She has outlived all the members of her original support group.

Her husband, Bob, who was diagnosed just before she was, died in 1989.

It makes her a historian of sorts. She remembers what it was like before there were drug cocktails to treat AIDS and people could come back from near death to lead normal, active lives. She remembers when there was nothing.

In 1984, Migliore began having unexplained symptoms -- strange fevers, and unexpected fatigue. No one thought to look for HIV.

"I live in Burien. My husband worked at Boeing," she said. "You weren't supposed to get HIV."

She tested positive shortly after discovering Bob was positive. He discovered his status when he tried to donate blood.

They were both in shock.

"At the time, Rock Hudson had just come out about his status," she said. "There were stories about Ryan White."

There was a certain hysteria building about the disease.

"People were afraid of it," she said. "People believed things like you could get it from doorknobs, or mosquitoes." There were stories about people getting burned out of their houses for having AIDS.

The only person they told was their doctor.

"He wouldn't treat us after that," she said. "He said he'd pray for us."

Terrified, Migliore and her husband didn't tell anyone else.

At the time, there were no support groups for heterosexual patients, let alone women. Eventually, they did find a network of friends and supporters. She founded Babes, a support group for women with HIV. They found a doctor. She nursed Bob until the end, when he died at home with her and their beloved dogs by his side.

She figured it wouldn't be long before she went, too.

"Everything I'd seen about AIDS led down to the person dying," she said.

At the time, AZT was the only drug even on the horizon, and it was still considered experimental.

At first, she waited to die.

Then slowly, as she grieved her husband's death, she began embracing her own life.

She went on "adventures," trips like those that she and Bob had shared in their 14 years together. Her travels since his death have taken her to Baja California, the Grand Canyon, Hawaii and New Mexico. In 1991, she traveled to Mexico to watch and photograph the total eclipse of the sun.

"An eclipse is a real metaphor for grief," she said.

In six minutes, the moon completely blocked the sun. The sky went dark. Thinking it was night, birds began to roost and fish to surface.

Life is like that when a disease like AIDS upends your expectations.

"Life is very brief, and sometimes you get to catch moments of it where things are not as they seem," she said.

In addition to her photographs, she collects art in her travels. There are graceful wood "turnings," too, made into urns and vessels.

One holds Bob's ashes. One is for hers.

She doesn't delude herself about her future, but it doesn't consume her.

Now on a combination of drugs, some of them the new protease inhibitors, she takes an average of 25 pills a day on a strict schedule every eight hours.

Although she left her job teaching elementary school in 1994, the drug regimen gives her enough energy to volunteer three or four days a week. She speaks to students in schools, trains day care workers about AIDS, and counsels other patients about adhering to their medication schedules.

The schedules aren't easy to stick to. Patients can't eat for two hours before and one hour after taking some of the drugs.

Others have to be taken with food. Most have to be taken at strict intervals. The side effects can be brutal.

But she can't afford to miss even one dose for fear the virus could become resistant. She's one of the lucky ones. So far, the drug cocktail she's been taking for three years is keeping her viral counts under control. She knows there are a finite number of drugs available. "These aren't magic pills," she said. "Some people run out of options."

That's a perspective she tries to share with the patients she counsels.

"I feel like the grandmother talking about back in the old days, about people who knew what it was like back then, who knew what a fine thread we're hanging by."

P-I reporter Carol Smith can be reached at 206-448-8070 or carolsmith@seattle-pi.com

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