12/06/2026
Tous les témoignages publiés par VIH'Gilance sont puissants et certains encore plus 😥🔥🔥🔥
🇺🇸 In 1992, Jeff Cochran, our friend in South Beach, Miami, tells us he’s known about his positive status for nearly four years. We never knew. He’s only 26 years old. We see him in London and are shocked to learn that this beautiful young man, a successful model, now has a CD4 count of zero. KS has started to appear all over his body. He’s making plans to die in Key West. He says this in a matter-of-fact way. To us such news is increasingly commonplace but always shocking.
Jeff stays with us in London, June 1993. He’s here for radiotherapy to treat a lesion in his mouth. Cancer is attacking his gut, his spleen is enlarged, his liver is failing, his bone marrow no longer produces white blood cells. He’s incredibly thin and he’s covered in KS. That’s what fu***ng AIDS does. It strips away all one’s natural defences and allows every monster that is drifting by entry to feast unhindered. Jeff has no defence against any sort of microscopic attack, nothing. Despite all this, he’s spirited and exhibits no self-pity. I so wish he had a lover with whom he could share this ghastly downward spiral toward death.
September 1993: Jeff stays with us again in London. He has managed to access treatment at St Barts Hospital for the cancer that spreads relentlessly through him. His gut hurts constantly. His will to survive remains undimmed.
Pursuing further treatment, Jeff is an inpatient at St Barts. There I find him Zen-like and accepting, despite the ghastly side effects of the medication, which slowly drips down a permanent line passing through his chest and into his blood. During his “time out” from hospital, he stays with us at Moreton Yard. His health gets worse, if that’s possible. Now, in addition to all else, lymphoma is in his lungs. When I hug him, it’s like holding a living skeleton. He’s fighting hard to hang onto his diminishing life force.
Jeff is having ever stronger chemo to hold the advancing cancer at bay. It’s sapping what little remains of his strength and he’s sick all the time. How much pain is he prepared to accept in order to prolong his life? It’s a personal decision which, in varying ways, many of us may find ourselves having to make.
Jeff is back in hospital in London. CMV has turned him blind. He has no defences to slow its attack. He still makes jokes and is never sorry for himself. I will never forget his courage. When he was getting near to the end of his life, when he had so much pain and so little energy, I remember him telling me: “I need visitors who make me laugh.”
Jeff lies, curled up, on his hospital bed. He can no longer support his head on his wasted neck. All his energy and strength are gone. Humour and irony still hang amongst the few frail words which come from him. The doctors have upped the amount of morphine to dull the constant pain. He is fading but remains in control. I bid him farewell. His parents sit tearful and resigned beside him. I remind him of all the joyous sun-filled times we’ve spent together. He tries to respond but I tell him no. I hold his hand and stroke his hair. His breath is shallow and gurgling; his body now only bone, covered by the thinnest tissue of skin. He is yellow and grey amongst white sheets. Calm, not frightened, accepting, going. I kiss his living face one final time. Jeff dies at 3am the following morning.
At Jeff’s cremation, Michelle Paradise, his actress friend, reduces us to tears: “I was the older sister he never had. He was the younger brother I never had.”. A tear finds its way to the end of her nose. There it hangs, a perfect glistening droplet, reflecting light. His parents, so brave, give each of us a packet of tulip bulbs: ‘In memory of Jeff – may new growth and beauty bring fond memories.’ 📖 by Derek Frost
