An AIDS sufferer speaks out

The Boston Herald

Nothing seems wrong. Midge Foster, 46, a woman with blond hair and a warm smile, answers the door in sweatpants and a shirt, greets her guest, pours two cups of coffee and the pair sit in the living room and talk in normal voices, as if they are talking about normal things. But what they are discussing is not normal. It's something that wasn't supposed to have happened.

Three years ago, Foster, who lives in North Attleboro and whose only daughter is grown, joined the convent. Two and half years later, before taking her final vows, she decided to leave.

"I wanted to do something for people. I wanted to make a difference in the world and it didn't seem that being in the convent was the right place for me."

So she returned to the profession she'd been in most of her adult life: working in medicine, drawing blood from patients. Then on July 30, 1990, while drawing blood from an AIDS patient, a procedure Foster had done many times, the blood collection tube she was using shattered and she was exposed to AIDS.

She wasn't worried, though.

"All the experts told me that only one out of every 100,000 people would contract AIDS this way. That's what they said. And that's what I believed."

Foster was tested for the HIV virus and the test came back negative, just as she had been assured it would. So she put the incident in the back of her mind and went on living her life as she had been living it: going to Mass, working, singing in the church choir and spending her free time with family and friends. When and if she thought about AIDS, about the possibility of having contracted it, the thought was fleeting because she knew that statistics were on her side.

Even when she began to tire easily, even when her joints started to ache, even when she had flu-like symptoms, she didn't worry. She attributed her exhaustion to working too hard, her pains to stress, her symptoms to a cold. She was working too hard. She was stressed. It was close to Christmas. She was doing too much. Once again she was tested for AIDS, and once again the test came back negative.

In the spring she developed liver trouble; she had never had any kind of illness like this before. Then she came down with a rash, which covered her entire body.

The rash got worse. It grew uglier and it burned. Pain killers didn't stop the burning. Prednisone didn't calm the rash. That's when she suspected. "I asked for another AIDS test and this time it came back positive."

Midge Foster has since filed a lawsuit against Sherwood Medical Co. of St. Louis, Mo., claiming that its blood collection kit was unsafe and, therefore, caused her disease. She hopes the suit will force the makers of medical supplies to put safety before cost and make better equipment because she doesn't want anyone else to endure what she has already been through.

"This disease is so horrible," she says. "One day you're living a normal life with normal plans and then all of a sudden you have something you were never supposed to get. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) insists there are just 40 health-care workers nationwide who've contracted AIDS from patients. And I believed this until I started going to support groups and meeting all these people who all the experts say don't even exist.

"The disease takes everything away from you, not just your health. I've lost my job. I can't do what I was trained for anymore. I'm still at the hospital but I can't work with patients. I've lost all my savings. I've lost the ability to plan. Who knows what's going to happen to me. I can't hug people. I know a hug is safe, but do they know? I see the fear in their eyes. I see the worry. I see them backing away. And that's the worst."

Foster always wanted to help people, to have her life make a difference. If she wins her lawsuit she'll make a big difference: medical supply companies will be forced to make their blood-testing equipment safer. But even if she loses, she's made a difference, because she's had the courage to speak out.