She Counsels Prisoners Awaiting AIDS Sentence

AIDS may be the loneliest disease in the world, and Donalyn Gross said there is probably no lonelier place than prison to die of it, away from family and friends and shunned by other inmates.

Since Gross began work at Somers State Prison two years ago as a thanatologist counseling inmates with AIDS, she has watched 18 of her patients succumb to the disease.

“Dying of AIDS on the outside is one thing, but dying in prison, it’s tough. It’s really tough,” Gross said.

Gross, who believes she is the only death counselor in a U.S. correctional facility, spends her days in the prison’s chronic ward, otherwise known as the AIDS ward, with rapists, murderers and drug dealers. She laughs, cries and shares secrets with them, trying to make death a little less frightening.

State prison officials estimate that about 15% of the state’s inmates carry the AIDS virus, according to Corrections Department spokesman Bill Flower.

Gross, a resident of Springfield, Mass., got her first exposure working with the dying when she volunteered at a nursing home at age 15.

“I remember a lot of people dying alone with no families,” she said, recalling one woman who would sit alone in her wheelchair day after day with no visitors.

When the woman died, Gross went to her funeral and was stunned to find a church full of mourners. The woman did, in fact, have family and friends--they just weren’t with her at the end.

Gross has discovered that it’s even more true of inmates at Somers, Connecticut’s only maximum-security prison. Many of them were abandoned by their families before they became sick, but when the symptoms of AIDS became pronounced, even fewer people wanted to visit them.

Although the fear of contracting AIDS has made others shy away from AIDS patients, Gross said it was acquired immune deficiency syndrome that drew her to Somers in the first place.

“I’d worked with cancer patients for 12 years, and when AIDS came along I knew I wanted to get involved,” she said. “I looked all over the place, and then someone suggested the prisons.”

Massachusetts prison officials weren’t responsive to the idea, but Connecticut officials were willing to give her a try at Somers, just over the state line.

She started as a volunteer at Somers, then was given a contract. She now spends five days a week at the prison and is on call at all times.

As devastating as cancer is, Gross said AIDS is worse: “Cancer seems so much gentler than AIDS.”

Gross said an inmate enters the chronic ward on the brink of death. When he gets really bad, he is taken to St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford. After intense treatment he returns, thinner and weaker but still alive, waiting for the next onslaught.

“The hard thing with something like AIDS is that it can go on for so long,” Gross said.

Some inmates are so afraid of the AIDS stigma that they deny they are sick, even at the risk of not getting the new medical treatments known to help AIDS patients.

On her way to and through the ward, guards and inmates alike smile and wave.

Upstairs, five inmates were living in the nine-bed ward. Three were watching a sitcom on television. Two lay in bed on the other end of the room, uninterested.

One, not unlike others Gross has worked with, collects news articles on AIDS and devours all the literature he can find on the disease. Gross helps, bringing in articles and videotapes.

Recently she brought in a tape about the giant AIDS quilt, for which people from all over the country have sewn panels in memory of someone they loved and lost to the disease. The video depressed some of the inmates, but they discussed it and felt better in the end.

Gross tries to help the inmates come to terms with impending death without overwhelming them with gloom. “We’ll discuss funerals, but I won’t push it.”

Prison policy prevents inmates from being interviewed, but a note Gross received from an inmate after he had been rushed to St. Francis Hospital provided a glimpse into what her friendship means to them.

“Stay here with me,” he wrote. “I’m scared and lonely.”

The 39-year-old Gross said she is not frightened by working with criminals.

“People always say, ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ ” she said. “Some of the guys, I don’t even know what they’re in here for. I’m not here to judge. I’m here to give them some compassion.”

Nor is she worried about getting AIDS herself.

“I sit on the bed and I give them back rubs,” Gross said. “I never wear a mask. I don’t like to do that. It’s like having the plague.

“If I have a cut on my hand and I’m going to give someone a back rub, I’ll put a Band-Aid on it. If I’m going to get it, I’m going to get it.”

Gross credits Somers for being progressive enough to allow her to work with its dying inmates, and Somers credits Gross for taking on the task.

“It is an extremely good program and one that is beneficial to the clients that she serves in ways that I can’t even begin to imagine,” said corrections spokesman Flower. “It’s a humanitarian program, a compassionate program and worthwhile.”

Although new inmates at Somers get a lecture about AIDS and how it is spread, Gross said many are too macho to listen. She thinks the number of dying inmates will only increase, particularly as prisons become more overcrowded.

Gross thinks more death counselors could make the situation easier. With that in mind, she has written prison officials across the country to urge them to come up with money for such positions.

In the meantime, she’ll continue offering solace to the dying.

“When somebody’s dying, I spend as much time with them as I can,” she said. “When someone dies, I feel sad because I got close to that person, but I feel good because I know I did what I could. And then I’ve got to get up and go on to the next person.

“I love my guys.”