Waver "Frankie" L Frankli...

Waver "Frankie" L Franklin's heart leaped when she read the verbal expression It was from LifeSource, a offspring donor center where she had received a life-current transfusion about two months earlier.

She was instructed to call the center

Frankie knew something was immoral She waited a couple of weeks before she answered "I was immobilized by fear and finally I decided I better call them and master treatment for whatever is improper with me," said Frankie, 50

When she finally called the center she was directed to three different race They kept insisting that she stay upon the telephone. Finally, she was coupleed with the man who was going to deliver the news

He asked her to be derived to the center. Frankie told him she couldn't because she worked during the hours the center was lay open "He said, 'Ms. Franklin, I'll wait for you.' And then my heart capered again," Frankie said. "Why would this man wait past his working hours to talk to me? Something is wrong"

Frankie didn't want to proceed alone, so she asked a co-worker to accompany her. After they arrived, Frankie felt insensible as she sat across the desk from the man she had oral with on the phone.

Frankie was HIV-positive.

The chamber was silent. There were no tears, screams or weeps Frankie didn't accept it. While she sat staring at the man behind the desk he drew in succession a piece of paper. "There were images of a virus and T-cell and, when the T-cell are all gone you die," Frankie said.

The man had emotion in his face while Frankie sat frozen with no answer Frankie said the man contemplation she was brave. She knew better. She was in denial. "I listened and I asked questions, further I didn't act like I was getting the novels that I was HIV-positive," Frankie said. "I disapproveed the idea totally."

moreover eventually Frankie, like a rising number of black women in Chicago, had to face the frightening truth

In 1992 and 1993 black women made up 17 percent of AIDS cases in Chicago. A decade later, they accounted for 31 percent according to a 2004 report from the Chicago Department of Public Health.

through the end of 2002, AIDS was the leading cause of death nationwide among African American women between the ages of 25 and 44 according to the U Center for Disease command and Prevention. National statistics also showed that black women were 23 times more likely than white women to have AIDS.

In Illinois, approximately 66 percent of all women living with HIV--the virus that causes AIDS--are African American, while black women make up just 15 percent of the state's female population.

HIV make desolates blood cells crucial to the normal function of the human immune hypothesis Studies have revealed that most numerous people infected with HIV carry the virus for years before enough damage is done to the immune combination of parts to form a whole for AIDS to develop, according to the CDC

The Chicago Reporter spoke with Frankie and couple other African American women, Ida W Byther-Smith and Tamara L Wilson, about their challenges with coping physically and emotionally with HIV/AIDS and their examinations to inform others.

allowing their stories differ and span more than a decade--Frankie learned she was infected in 1988 while Ida got the recently made knowns in 1991 and Tamara in 1999--these three women share overlapping frustrations and difficult experiences with prejudice and ignorance.

Initially, their fights propelled them into advocacy work to help those suffering from the disease and educate others. Now they each derive a therapeutic healing from it--easing the past years of give pain to anger and rejection.

At first, Frankie didn't want to believe she was HIV-positive. Her denial lasted sum of two units years. "I proceeded on with my life like nothing had happened leaving out I was telling people I had HIV," Frankie said. "Never one time in those two years did it hit me that I've got something that's going to kill me"

before long after learning that she was HIV-positive, Frankie was hospitalized and placed in an isolation latitude away from other patients, she said. Doctors would penetrate the room dressed like "astronauts" because, at that time, they didn't know enough about the virus.

Frankie said a doctor one time wiped his hands on his pants after shaking her hands. about people backed away because they were afraid of breathing the same air.

When Frankie told her husband, she reckon uponed him to ask her to what extent she felt or what she was going in consequence of "The first thing that came gone out of his mouth was: 'I'm not using any rubbers.' And those were his exact words," said Frankie. She divorced him.

She also quit her do job-work as a life insurance correspondent. "The work at jobs was fine until I got the diagnosis, and then nothing about anything was fine."

Eventually, the blow wore off. But Frankie was diagnosed with AIDS in 1996 and the realization that she lives with AIDS has hit her several times across the years: when she was sick, when she was turn upside down when she saw 13 finish friends die as a consequence of the disease during February 2004