It was sad that he died, but I sensed that before he did he had managed to do something he wanted. The narratives in this book allow us to see life from these patients' own perspectives, not simply from our own. The stories proved more powerful than I had anticipated, enabling us to enter these individuals' worlds. As I look back, I realize how much I learned from these men and women. I had expected far more persistent distress and depression caused by the illness, as I found in the clinic.
Suicidal thoughts do continue to surface.
And HIV-infected men and women face a tenuous balance between life and death in themselves and others. In addition, they face rejection, stigma, and pain from multiple sources around them. Individuals come to terms with these stresses by finding meaning in the illness and in their lives. Victor Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning , drawing on his experiences surviving Auschwitz, wrote that human beings need purpose. Faced with widespread annihilations of themselves and others around them, the men and women interviewed here seek a larger significance to their lives.