'Living with HIV' is subject of Mississippi State lecture

Elena Monica's 7 p.m. public lecture in the Colvard Union ballroom is sponsored by the Campus Activities Board.

Monica discovered she had the disease when she was 26 and hospitalized for meningitis. Doctors made the HIV diagnosis and told her that she had perhaps six years to live.

"To be told that you have a disease like this is the most devastating thing imaginable," she says. "I couldn't conceive that I would die, let alone from something like AIDS."

Now 27, she lectures and educates others, orchestrating what she calls "mass awakenings."

Her lectures focus on the heterosexual community to dispel the notion that the disease only attacks homosexuals.

"If it means one more person becomes enlightened, then I've been successful," she says. "To see the light in people's eyes when I talk to them is what gives me strength. It gives me the conviction of knowing that we can all pull together."

For more information about her lecture, call the Campus Activities Board at 325-2930.