Pandemic: AIDS

So - the next episode came out. I watched it. I should've known better.

(remember: 33 weeks pregnant = slightly hormonal)

This one is the story of LEK, a Thai woman that has contracted AIDS.

When she was 12, she was raped. This caused everyone (friends and family) to think that she was dirty and bad and not want her around.

When she was 16 she married and had a son.
When she was 17, her husband abandoned them. In order to support her son, she sent him to her mother's and promised to send money. How is an uneducated young woman going to earn money? She tried as a bartender. Found the money to be good in the sex industry (apparently boom in Thailand - where the people are poor, but have a huge sex industry? I do not understand).

She liked her customers to use condoms, but sometimes the men refused (she said this was mostly when they and she were drunk). Now she has AIDS.

She is one of the lucky ones - she got a bed at the AIDS Hospice run by monks, as it would bring shame onto her family for her to be seen there. They do not know how AIDS is transmitted and are very afraid of it.

There are 200 beds. The waiting list is 10,000 people long. They bury 2 people a day.

LEK goes to visit her family in the middle of the night. They are upset, but make her leave before morning. It is an 8 hour van ride each way.

LEK has gotten very ill. Her family decides to take her in. She moves in with them and is so miserable. There is one scene where she's crying because she's just so angry and doesn't know what to do with herself. It is all so amazingly unfair (this is my thought, I imagine hers as well).

LEK dies. You see her family in an immense amount of pain and all I can think of his her beautiful little boy. He is beautiful and smart. I hope he does well with his life, he is going to be a monk.

One of the saddest things I've ever seen.