Ruth Coker Burks was helping a friend undergoing cancer treatment in 1984 when she became intrigued by another patient. The nurses drew straws to see who would have to go into the patient’s room. And no one else did. He had AIDS.
Whether because of curiosity or — as she believes today — some higher power moving her, Burks eventually disregarded the warnings on the red door and snuck into the room. In the bed was a skeletal young man, wasted to less than 100 pounds. He told her he wanted to see his mother before he died.
“I walked out and [the nurses] said, ‘You didn’t go in that room, did you?’ ” Burks recalled. “I said, ‘Well, yeah. He wants his mother.’ They laughed. They said, ‘Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s been here, and nobody’s coming.’ ”
Unwilling to take no for an answer, Burks wrangled a number for the young man’s mother out of one of the nurses, then called. She was only able to speak for a moment before the woman on the line hung up on her.
Burks sat with the patient for 13 hours until he died. Over the next decade, she would care for hundreds of patient dying from AIDS whose families wouldn’t even visit. If their families wouldn’t accept their remains, Burks buried them herself in her family cemetery. And she helped change attitudes about those suffering from the disease. Read the story of Ruth Coker Burks at the Arkansas Times. -via Nag on the Lake
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Source: neatorama