Aids Sufferer Offers Support, Love To Others

Lynn hand-carried her letter with no stamp and no envelope.

She chose a busy day to deliver it.

Budgets, staff evaluations, back-to-back meetings meant Lynn Aiken had to sit and wait quietly with her caregiver and her letter.

Her breathing came in short bursts.

Her voice had that raspy, too-tired-to-speak quality that was the result, she said, of the effort she made over the last week to write, rewrite and write again the words she handled with trembling fingers.

The top line of her letter read:

“A Special Letter to the Editor: Woman Living with AIDS.”

Lynn Aiken has AIDS.

Her letter held an urgency that she wanted to express face-to-face.

She isn’t dead yet. Not by a long, long stretch. Rather, she is a local legend of longevity.

With the challenges of getting out of bed, taking pills, and weekly visits to doctors, writing a letter to a newspaper might seem to be a rather low priority.

For Lynn Aiken, 48, it has been the highest.

She wrote her letter in time for World AIDS Day on Friday. She wrote it because women and minorities are the fastest-growing segments of the AIDS epidemic. Just over 23 percent of the new AIDS cases in the United States are women. Internationally, the number is far higher.

Sometimes, people think AIDS is in retreat, gone away, not a problem anymore.They would be so horribly wrong.

“The biggest thing I see today is that people want to just ignore AIDS,” Lynn said as she pressed her letter toward me.

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear you talk about it,” she said. “They don’t want to hug you because they think they will get sick. They just don’t know anything and when they are sleeping with someone, they don’t realize that you could be sleeping with 20 other people.”

So Lynn wrote a letter to women.

“I’m writing this letter because we women (with AIDS) accept each other for the beautiful people we are. These women have taught me to be loving and caring. …”

I thought she was going cry.

She didn’t. Fourteen years and a million tears have come and gone, and Lynn fights on.

She is among the longest-surviving AIDS patients in Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

As of World AIDS Day 2000, more than 500 men and women in the region have been diagnosed as HIV positive or having AIDS. Another 1,000 have the disease but haven’t been checked, so they don’t know it.

Lynn Aiken contracted AIDS as a drug user probably 20 years ago. The man who had the dirty needle is dead. Lynn survives, clean and sober.

She inspires tremendous loyalty among the women whose lives she has touched.

“She is a wonderful human being who needs loving and caring,” explained Ann Lewis, a regular member of Calvary Chapel who first met Lynn at a prayer service a decade ago. Ann didn’t know anyone with AIDS until she met Lynn.

“She came to church one Sunday and there were some people there who were upset that she was there,” Lewis recalled. “But the pastor said to me that we should really go visit her, so I did. That began our friendship. I have to thank God for that.”

“Moma Annie” is the name Lynn has pasted onto her friend, Ann Lewis.

“Moma Annie dragged me out of the gutter and taught me how to love and to pray again,” Lynn wrote in her letter.

Later when we talked, Lynn explained how Moma Annie had intervened and saved her.

“I wanted to run, I wanted to hide, and I didn’t care what I did to cover up the hurt,” Lynn said. “Moma Annie taught me that I didn’t have to hurt myself just because I had been abused as a child. Moma Annie was a Godsend.”

At Hospice of Spokane, where Lynn Aiken is the longest-surviving patient of the HIV/AIDS Counseling Project, the director of the program marvels at the growth and love that Lynn Aiken has experienced even as she slowly dies.

“Lynn was asked by others in her women’s group to write the letter explaining the need to be educated about AIDS,” Kathy Ramsey said, adding that Lynn had given her permission to speak about her case. “That letter is so important. When one woman steps forward like this it really helps other women who don’t feel safe doing this.”

Writing the letter drained Lynn Aiken. She feels exhausted. And she worries about the future.

After paying for medicines, rent and groceries, Lynn saves $50 a month. Christmas is coming and she’s wondering about gifts for her four children and four grandchildren.

Lynn has worked hard to make amends with her children. She worked hard to make amends with God.

And she finds words of thanks for her life.

In her letter, Lynn gives thanks to the other women in church, to the women at Hospice and to those in her women’s group who have restored her sanity, her sobriety and her soul.

“I hope I have reached at least one person with this letter. To that person I give an invitation to join me at our support group where I promise you will be loved and supported,” she wrote.

She meant it.