The room filled with ?boos? just seconds after Thunder Kellie finished his first sentence Thursday night in the Business and Aerospace building.
Kellie, an HIV awareness advocate who is also HIV-positive, spoke to students and faculty about his disease as part of National Black AIDS/HIV Awareness Day. He prefaced the hour-long discussion by lightening the mood.
?If somebody walks in late, could you please ?boo? them,? Kellie said jokingly.
Before Kellie was through introducing himself and the pile of condoms and lubricant that covered the desk in front of him, an unfortunate late student is showered with the disapproval of the other attendees, which resulted in laughs all around. But the mood quickly changed as Kellie began to tell his story.
Kellie contracted the disease when he was 21 years old as a student at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. On October 13, 1997, during a meal with his mother, he received a phone call from the Health Department of Columbia, Tenn., informing him that blood he had donated to a Red Cross blood drive had come back positive for HIV. He said the news didn?t hit him until he saw his doctor for the first time.
?When he walked in, it really kind of hurt my feelings because he looked just like me,? he said. ?I felt like I had given my human race a dissatisfaction or that I hurt them.?
It was not the last time he would feel that way. The Thanksgiving after his diagnosis, he discovered his family?s perception of HIV.
?My family was so weird to me that at Thanksgiving, everybody sat at one particular table, and then my immediate family sat at another table,? he said. ?It was because of my HIV status. I didn?t like it, so I left, and that?s how I have to treat my family still today sometimes.?
After five years of taking medication, Kellie?s health improved drastically, and he took a job as a special education teacher in Nashville. He said life was good until he found cocaine.
?That was my thing that helped me numb that HIV was not there anymore,? he says. ?I got so hooked on cocaine I was doing eight balls a day.?
On April 15, 2002, Kellie exchanged his cocaine for Xanax in the bathroom of a club in Nashville. While high on both drugs, he drove to another club, only to wake up from a coma a week-and-a-half later at Vanderbilt Hospital. He said the accident tore his eyelid off, tore his arm off, broke two vertebrates in his neck and shattered his jaw.
?That?s when I realized HIV wasn?t going to kill me,? he said.
Kellie said he found peace with God for his past mistakes and got involved with his church. His life was turned around when a congregation member passed away. The family of the man who died claimed he had died of cancer, but Kellie knew the man personally and said the cancer claim was fabricated to cover up the fact that the man died from HIV.
He wanted to inform the church about HIV and dispel the negative connotation surrounding the disease, so he wrote a play called ?You Shall Live.? The play taught about HIV and AIDS through church and was well received. It has been performed twice at MTSU.
He said he found his true passion of writing and promoting HIV awareness because of the play.
?HIV didn?t hurt me, HIV taught me how to live.?
Kellie said blacks have more AIDS and HIV-related illnesses and deaths than any other race in America. The most devastating statistic, he said, is that although they only make up 12 percent of the total population, 45 percent of all people diagnosed with HIV in America are black.
He ended his speech by pointing back to the condoms.
?Grab the condoms, please get them,? he said. ?Because if you don?t, someone will be talking to you or you will be in my shoes.?
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