Student, born with HIV, gives talk

By THERESA HOGUE
Gazette-Times reporter

When Kalee Garland was 7 years old, her teacher called Child Protective Services because she saw Garland covered in bruises and feared the worst.

But the worst was not exactly what her teacher had expected. Garland was not being hurt by her mother. She was battling AIDS.

The diagnosis was unexpected to everyone, especially Garland’s mother, who until that moment hadn’t realized that she had been infected with HIV by a boyfriend long before Garland was born.

Garland was born with the virus, and by age 7 she had full-blown AIDS — and a very bleak prognosis. Doctors didn’t expect her to live longer than six months.

But now, at age 21, Garland is a university student in San Diego with a fiancé and exciting plans for her future. For the past week, she’s been traveling around Oregon with her friend, Bob Bowers of HIVictorious, talking about her life with AIDS to school kids, community groups and whoever else will listen.

Bowers is the nephew of Corvallis resident David Williams. The Corvallis Elks, of which Williams is a member, has hosted Bowers and Garland’s appearances. They will speak at area high schools, Community Outreach Inc. and other locations, including a keynote address at Linn Benton Community College. It is scheduled for Thursday as part of International World AIDS Day.

Garland first met Bowers when she was attending Camp Heartland, a camp for children and teens affected by HIV.

“I saw Bob and totally connected with him ... He had tattoos, and he reminded me of Henry Rollins,” she said, referring to the famed — and heavily inked — author and former lead singer of the punk group Black Flag.

When Bowers started talking about his own experiences as an HIV-positive adult, he also shared his mission through HIVictorious, which is to educate and demystify the world of AIDS/HIV. He asked Garland if she might be interested in traveling to Oregon in the fall to help him share that message.

“I jumped at the chance,” Garland said. She’s already done multiple presentations on AIDS through the University of California at San Diego, and feels it’s important to help people understand the truth about HIV.

“People with HIV and AIDS are just human,” she said. “We’re not running around infecting people. You have to engage in a behavior that’s high risk to contract it.”

Garland survived her early years with AIDS by taking a combination of highly toxic AIDS medications, but by the age of 10, she began refusing treatment because the side effects were too great. For a time, she participated in an experimental treatment where she was infused with a donor’s white blood cells, but the experiment was discontinued, so throughout her teen years, Garland went untreated.

That turned out to be a mistake. Garland contracted meningitis four times between the ages of 16 and 18, and the final time, it was so severe that doctors had to implant a shunt through her head that drained into her stomach. She decided it was time to get back on her medications.

Today, her viral load is now undetectable, and her T-cell count is at 80, where it used to be in the teens. T-cells are a kind of white blood cell that help fight off illness. A healthy human usually has a count of 600 to 1,200.

She doesn’t know what the future holds, but says any prognosis she receives will be taken with a dash of skepticism. After all, doctors didn’t expect her to survive past age 8 anyway.

And while she wants to make sure other young people know that people with AIDS and HIV shouldn’t be feared, she wants to impress upon them that the disease itself is nothing to take casually.

“You’re not invincible,” she said.
 

Speaker uses his story to fight AIDS: Bob Bowers got it from a needle 23 years ago

By THERESA HOGUE
Gazette-Times reporter

When heavily tattooed Bob Bowers shows up at a high school and announces that his nickname is Pirate, he definitely gets attention from the teens he’s talking to. He knows that his tough-guy appearance wins him respect that a middle-aged guy in a suit with a Powerpoint presentation won’t earn.

But the 44-year-old Bowers needs every ounce of attention he can get, because he’s got a tough message to get out. Bowers has been HIV-positive for 23 years, and has been trying to educate Americans about HIV/AIDS ever since his own diagnosis in the early 1980s.

On Saturday, he’ll come back to his home state to speak in Corvallis at an HIV/AIDS awareness fund-raiser dinner.

Bowers, who graduated from North Bend High School, was 21 years old and living a hard-partying life in Los Angeles when he started feeling sick. His lymph nodes were swollen and he was fighting off fatigue.

“I was doing drugs at the time, so it was hard to tell the difference between being high or being sick,” he said.

Bowers, who had used intravenous drugs, had heard of AIDS but never considered that he was at risk. A doctor’s diagnosis told him differently.

“I was clueless,” Bowers said. His doctor told him to prepare for the worst. At the time, the diagnosis was a death sentence. But fate, and medication, kept him alive while more than 40 of his friends died.

In 1999, when a close friend died from AIDS-related illness, it was “the last straw,” Bowers said. He began dedicating himself to public speaking.

“My biggest gift is not eloquence and big words,” he said. “I’m extremely passionate. I live it, I breathe it.”

Bowers has formed a non-profit organization called HIVictorious, and spends most of his time traveling. His presentation at the Corvallis HIV/AIDS Awareness dinner is the first time he’s had a chance to speak in his home state.

Bowers has been invited to speak by the Corvallis Elks Lodge, where his uncle, David Williams, is a member. Williams said he’s been inspired by the work his nephew has done. He’s also found himself learning through Bowers’ experiences.

“I’ve had my eyes closed (to HIV/AIDS) for years,” Williams said. But now he’s eager to help his nephew with his message.

As for Bowers, he feels that he has helped change lives.

“When you speak the truth you get people to a safe place.”

if you go

WHAT: HIV/AIDS Awareness fund-raiser dinner

WHERE: Corvallis Elks Lodge No. 1413
 

“To people living with, not dying from disease”

Taken from "The real world of AIDS: A snapshot of HIV in Madison today"
By Kelly Schlicht, May 8, 2007
 

HIVictorious’ leader Bowers looks the part of a champion; his well-toned, muscular frame does not bear the characteristically gaunt, emaciated look of someone undergoing AIDS treatment. His outlook on life mirrors his outward appearance. Through highs and lows, Bowers has battled HIV/AIDS since 1983. He educates others on the still-present danger of the disease, stressing that “the H in HIV stands for human.”

He describes the shock of many audiences when they realize the scheduled AIDS speaker is a reasonably healthy-looking straight man as evidence that stigmas still exist in society. This stigma, he explains, makes many other people living with HIV/AIDS in smaller cities reluctant to speak out, in fear of being called gay or treated like a leper. However, Bowers quickly points out that the gay community was the first group to fully accept him, “like a family,” despite his HIV status.

Bowers fears that youth apathy toward AIDS not only proliferates the shameful stigmas surrounding the disease but also increases the spread of infection.
“They’re hearing it more from textbooks not from the media, not from the horse’s mouth,” Bowers says in regards to current HIV/AIDS education. “They have no clue the true reality of the course of the disease and what it’s capable of.”
 

AIDS speaker: Students 'have a place'

Bowers will touch on living with and battling HIV

By Lindsay Fiori of the Marquette Tribune

Twenty-three years is longer than most of us have been alive, but that is how long Bob Bowers has been living with HIV. In that time, he has gained much knowledge and experience on the disease and will be sharing then with the Marquette community tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Weasler Auditorium as the keynote speaker for AIDS Awareness Week.

"We hope he can educate more people and get them involved in the fight against AIDS because it affects us all," said Aarti Bhatt, chair of Watumishi and a junior in the College of Health Sciences. "It's a big deal. It's not just a medical issue, but a social issue too."

Watumishi, the student organization dedicated to promoting AIDS education and advocacy, heard about Bowers from the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin, according to Bhatt.

Watumishi contacted Bowers, 43, of Madison, who said he was more than willing to be a part of AIDS Awareness Week.

"It's really important, especially on the college level, for people to understand where they have a place in this fight whether it's in their jobs or in student groups," Bowers said. "There is work you can do right now to have a direct impact."

In his talk, Bowers will address issues such as politics, funding and involvement to show how the face of AIDS has changed over time.

"I want to address the political climate in the fight against AIDS, which has to do with everything from funding to issues addressing law makers and how important that is in the overall fight," he said.

Bowers will also speak about his personal experiences in battling HIV. At age 21, Bowers said he was living on the streets of Los Angeles addicted to speed. He shared a needle only once, but that was enough. A doctor diagnosed him with AIDS-related complex in 1985. AIDS-related complex is today called HIV symptomatic, which means the patient has HIV and certain symptoms, Bowers said.

"The first case of AIDS reported in the United States was in 1981, so there was little knowledge at the time I got infected," he said. "It was very frightening. I had seen people I knew drop dead from it because they had no medications whatsoever."

Bowers said he began speaking in 1986 at a high school near Hollywood. He spoke off and on until 1999 when he dove into speaking fulltime after the AIDS-related death of one of his closest friends.

"He was one of my best friends in the world," Bowers said. "He supported me all along. His death was the last straw."

In April 2005, Bowers founded a small non-profit organization, HIVictorious, Inc. He also works closely with other organizations like the AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition, the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin, the AIDS Network-Madison and Camp Heartland, a camp for HIV-infected children with locations in Willow River, Minn. and Malibu, Calif.

Julie Pintar, a senior in the College of Nursing, met Bowers while working at Camp Heartland last summer.

"I feel lucky that I got to work with him and become friends with him," she said. "He is an amazing person who has dedicated his life to the cause."

Pintar said she believes Marquette will benefit from having Bowers speak because many people don't think it could ever happen to them. Hopefully, he will inspire more people to take steps to remain negative and to get tested, she said.

"My main goal is to empower people with truth and some of the realities of sexuality and STDs in general," Bowers said. "I try to present that in a very real manner so people can understand, empower themselves and decide what they want to do."

Instead of letting HIV bring him down, Bowers has used it to positively change his life, according to Pintar.

"I am not defined by HIV any longer," he said. "I have as much a chance for life as you do."

STORY 'Bob Bowers'
By Ben Cohen

Bob Bowers stands at the front of a room full of college students. Every eye is fixed on his enormous arms, trying to read them. His body is covered in dozens of tattoos. Flaming skulls and spider webs twist around his wrists, up to his shoulders and across his chest. There are too many to count. His friends call him "Pirate."

The ink on his body was injected with a small needle that moves up and down at a rate of several hundred vibrations per minute. It penetrates the skin only by one millimeter but can leave grown men in tears.

It only takes one look to know Bob has felt some pain in his life. His tattoos tell a story. Somewhere in the living mural is a beginning and an end. Bob goes back to the parlor year after year adding to his body new cryptic images.

"I shared a needle with my girlfriend one time," Bob said. In 1983 Bob and his girlfriend wanted to get high and so they shot up some crystal meth. It changed Bob's life forever. Two years later he was diagnosed with the AIDS virus.

One more tattoo means one more year of survival. He celebrated 20 years with a tattoo of a blue bird. AIDS is trying to kill him but Bob is fighting back. I don't want sympathy and I don't want people to perceive me as a victim, he said.

Bob will do anything to survive the disease. He lives one day, one dose at a time. Drugs have turned his automatic death sentence into a painful but manageable disease. He estimates that his prescriptions cost about $3,000 per month.


"I'm a walking testament to modern medicine," Bob said. He opened a medicine bottle and poured a heap of pills into his hand-the "morning dose." He tried to pop the handful into his mouth all at once but couldn't do it, there were too many.

He passed around a hypodermic needle for everyone in the classroom to see. The needle is more than an inch long. His body stopped producing testosterone a long time ago so he will inject some of the hormone into his thigh. "That's a lot of meat to go through!" he jokes.

He has a big smile on his face. To him, this all feels like a miracle. The drugs keep him alive.

Years ago he was being injected with mice cells just to experiment for potential treatments. Some of the drugs he was once prescribed made him so sick he couldn't eat a house salad without vomiting.

In 1989 he started what was known as "monotherapy," or AZT. It was the first drug approved for the treatment of HIV. The drug stops the virus from spreading to new cells but does nothing for cells already infected. To Bob the medication is like a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. "There is a multitude of ways they attack it but they're just slowing it down," he said.

Bob used monotherapy for seven years until the FDA approved new drugs called protease inhibitors in 1995. Bob started taking the combination therapy, also known as the "cocktail." According to the Center for AIDS Information and Advocacy, combination therapy "radically altered the course of HIV disease."

But the cocktail made Bob feel sicker than ever. He began to wonder what chemotherapy must feel like. "They wear on your body and your mind. Then try going to work, shitting yourself, vomiting yourself."  The side effects of the medications got worse. He stood in his shower for hours vomiting everyday.

"We kept hope for a new drug." One pill made him numb from his mouth to his belly, like a shot of Novocain from the dentist's office. One pill put him in a wheelchair. He didn't care about the side effects; Bob was surviving to see tomorrow.

He kept score as the "cocktail" had a great impact on the AIDS community. Deaths attributed to the disease dropped drastically wherever combination treatment was available. In 1997, for the first time since 1990, AIDS dropped from 8th to 14th place as a leading cause for death in the United States, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1999 the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced they had finally traced the origin of AIDS to a group of subspecies of chimpanzees in Africa. Bob had been living with the disease for 16 years already.

Bob can look back and remember everything that has happened. He can remember his friends dying. He can remember all his girlfriends and his 11-year marriage. While living with AIDS, Bob owned a gym in Los Angeles and he can remember that, too. He looks back and thinks about his mother dying of breast cancer when she was 35 years old.

"I never thought I would see 35, no way," he said. Bob is now 43. "It's a miracle." Most of all, his dreams have kept Bob going. "Every dream I ever had even before I had AIDS has come true," he said.

When Bob was 21 years old he went to the doctor. He thought he had simply been partying too much. Swollen glands, fever and fatigue called for a blood test and the results came soon after.

That was how it all started: the treatments, medications, blood tests and injections. The insults, anger and confusion, they all started, too. In 1985, the only thing spreading faster than AIDS were the misconceptions about the virus.

HIV and AIDS were called "gay diseases" and people believed they could be spread from sharing water fountains or kissing. Bob was afraid to share a soda with anyone. Some of the doctors refused to enter the room because they were afraid. Other doctors wore protective gloves and masks just to talk to Bob.

"People have no clue as to the passion, the anger I have that today we know exactly how AIDS is spread," he said. Bob is on an endless pursuit to spread awareness about the disease.

He started fighting AIDS in his body. Now he is fighting it from spreading to other people. He is fighting at home, at elementary schools, rehab centers, prisons and even in the nation's capitol. He flew to Washington D.C. to lobby for cheaper drug prices because people with AIDS are dying on waiting lists in the United States. Bob is fighting to live and he is fighting for everyone.

"People really get it when you tell it real," he said. "I try to put into context what it is like to live with HIV and AIDS." To Bob, spreading the truth about HIV and AIDS is as important as finding a cure. "If you think about the homophobia, the job discrimination, the ignorance involved. Throw in compassion and everything changes," he said.

Bob is living proof that the human spirit can survive against all odds. "I don't have to tell you that we all have our own shit to deal with, mine just happens to be AIDS," he said.

People ask Bob how he got here and he tells them it is a combination of everything. Its more than just the drugs, they are far from a cure; more than his friends, many of them have died; more than just his tough childhood, he is a grown man now. "None of those things slowed me down and I'm not about to let HIV/AIDS slow me down," he said.

You can read more about Bob A.ka. Da Pirate and view more news and stories here: "IN DA NEWS"