While filling in on weekend rounds for a local physician group, I entered a room and was immediately stopped dead in my tracks, stunned by the breathtaking beauty of the young lady in the hospital bed. She was so lovely that she almost literally took one's breath away, as the theme from "Top Gun" said. An oval face, beautiful eyes, an elegant slim nose, and a mouth that was neither too full nor too thin. I cannot name a movie star who would not be jealous of that hauntingly lovely face. Describing it is impossible, but one could imagine a cross between Jaclyn Smith and Jane Seymour in their prime and it would still pale beside the reality of the young lady in the bed.

Sadly, she is quite ill from a recurrent pneumonia, one which recurs mainly because she refuses to take her medications as prescribed. She has AIDS, moderately severe now, but she was never faithful in taking her anti-viral medications, medicines that are very effective in the main at stopping the HIV in its tracks, slowing the progression dramatically. There is still no cure for the virus, unfortunately. The hope of those infected with HIV, a quite reasonable hope, is that the medicines we have now slow the virus so well that they may live long enough that some bright or lucky researcher will find the cure. Eventually, we can be certain, there will be a cure. Technology progresses. Knowledge grows. We just don't know when that cure will be found. For now, it makes sense to take the medications faithfully and hang on, remaining as well as possible for as long as possible.

But for now, all I can think about is that exceedingly lovely face, so beautiful that even the HIV and the pneumonia and the tiredness and the resignation could not dim its impact.

What a waste.