‘‘Coming Out’’ as Patients 175
reason, I told the hospital chief of staff. He told me I was crazy. I
said, ‘‘I don’t care, I’m going to do it anyway.’’ He said, ‘‘We can
keep this hush-hush.’’ I said, ‘‘I’m going to do this, and would
like your support.’’ He said, ‘‘We will support you. We’re just re-
commending you not do it.’’ Then he said, ‘‘You need to tell the
public relations people.’’ I said, ‘‘Oh, please!’’ But as I was leaving
the hospital, I walked by the PR department, and went in and
told this woman. She was horrified: ‘‘You can’t do that!’’ I said,
‘‘It’s what I’m going to do.’’ So she panicked and sent out a press
release, and said, ‘‘You don’t know what this is going to do to the
community.’’ I thought she was nuts. I just couldn’t see how
anybody was going to care. Lots of people are very public with this.
But I wasn’t thinking that not a lot of doctors are public about it.
To Jennifer’s surprise, her announcement generated national news
and a furor. Many physicians in her community, particularly those who
didn’t know her well, shunned her. At the local medical society, a rumor
spread that she had been infected not through a needle stick, but through
sex.
There was this huge element of denial: this couldn’t possibly
happen. There were a lot of rumors about how I really got
infected—that I actually had an affair with a patients’ lover. A lot
of physicians just didn’t want to be around me. They thought there
must be something crazy about me to want to work with HIV
anyway. In the grocery store, I’d say hello, and they’d literally turn
around and walk away.
In the end, Jennifer did receive a degree of affirmation. ‘‘Some of the
people who thought I was crazy before the fact, later came up and said
they thought it was right to do.’’ In fact, she actually gained advantages
from going public, but only after switching jobs. ‘‘I then worked for a
company full-time, lecturing on women and HIV. It was great.’’
Still, on balance, Jennifer felt she would not recommend that physi-
cians go public, as she had done. ‘‘They’ve really got to think long and
hard about it, and decide what kind of career they want.’’ Altruistic
motives of promoting openness could benefit patients and other health
care workers, but had to be weighed against self-preservation.
In response to the reactions she encountered, Jennifer advised patients
to be more circumspect in disclosing to others. ‘‘Before, I pushed patients