Rae Lewis-Thorton doesn’t look like she has AIDS.

But ever since she was diagnosed at 23, Lewis has had to struggle constantly with the disease, she told a crowd of about 100 Tuesday night in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium.

“AIDS is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” Lewis-Thorton said. “It takes everything I got.”

Despite the weight and severity of the topic, the night bounced between funny, light-hearted moments to the challenges she faces while living with AIDS. In one particular instance, Lewis-Thorton recounted how a private humiliation associated with AIDS became a public one.

She said she was walking her dogs near her Chicago home when she began to have diarrhea uncontrollably. Lewis-Thorton admitted it was sort of funny at first.

“But the stakes keep getting higher, and AIDS takes prisoners,” Lewis-Thorton said.

She told of how another diarrhea incident occurred while she was sitting in class and another while she was having dinner at an upscale restaurant. She excused herself to the bathroom to clean up. She even washed out the underwear she was wearing and returned to dinner.

Lewis-Thorton remarked that most of the women present would have either thrown out the underwear, or just left the restaurant. Lewis-Thorton said she didn’t because she was concerned about others even though she was miserable.

“At the end of the day, it’s about how one maintains dignity in the face of odds,” Lewis-Thorton said.

Lewis-Thorton shared many other intimate details about her life. She said she kept her infection a secret for seven years and that the last person she told was her mother.

Lewis said she did not tell her mother until two weeks before Essence magazine put her on the cover of their December 1994 issue for her struggle with AIDS. Her mother was not very accepting, even when Lewis-Thorton drove her to her cancer treatments.

“She could never reconcile the woman she needed me to be with the woman that I was,” Lewis-Thorton said. “It didn’t mean my momma didn’t love me. It’s just who momma was. But the best part of me accepted her.”

As she shared her challenges, Lewis-Thorton challenged the audience, too. She encouraged everyone and their partners to take an HIV test and have serious conversations about condom usage.

“If the man is offended by it, then he isn’t worth it,” Lewis-Thorton said, recounting how a girlfriend of hers was infected by her on-again, off-again boyfriend of five years.

Graduate economics student Darlett Stevens said she will take Lewis-Thorton’s advice to heart.

“You have to care about yourself; protect yourself,” Stevens said after the speech.

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