The following are excerpts from an "open letter" written by Teresa Schmitz of Miami, Florida, dated December 8, 1993....

"In January 1992 we found out my husband was HIV+. I will never forget that morning. I will never forget the first three of four days after that test result. It was surely the most devastating experience I ever had in my entire life. Abruptly, it was all gone. No more future. No more nothing. From that moment on, life would be waiting for death.

"The [worst] part was to face my beautiful and adorable one-year-old girl. She was condemned to die.

"Out of my despair I did anything I could to get an answer about the chances of my baby surviving. The 'trained professionals' at the 800 numbers that I called gave me answers like: "Oh my God," after I said that my husband was HIV+ and I had a baby. They even asked me: 'Is her hair falling out?' 'Is she losing weight?'

"I could not allow my beautiful and precious baby to go through all that suffering. I could not imagine her going from hospital to hospital, having needles stuck in her little arm, seeing her getting skinnier and skinnier. I could not take that....

"The only way out of that despair, of that suffering, was to kill ourselves. There was no other solution for us but this one. It would end the pain and the nightmare right at the beginning....

"Two weeks later my test result came out - I was [HIV] NEGATIVE!

"So, it meant that Louise [my baby girl] was negative too....Now Cesar [my husband] was the only one of us condemned to die....

"Our marriage was falling apart: no sex life for two years. [Cesar] did not want to take any chances of contaminating me. The only sure way was abstinence....

"March 1992 (not even two months after the result) Cesar started with the symptoms of AIDS: diarrhea, nausea, weight loss, and so on. The strange thing was that the symptoms began right after he started taking AZT.

"He was feeling so bad, so sick, he decided, against his doctor's will, to stop taking AZT. All of a sudden, like magic, no more symptoms. He was healthy and normal again and remains so since then. He goes regularly to a clinic for lab tests. The doctor thinks he is doing very well, but insists and pressures him to take AZT or its similar [sic] because 'it's the only way.'"(99)