Quality of Life Retreats: About HIV/AIDS

Malcolm Coley, a retreat leader and board member of Quality of Life Retreats, was featured in a Baltimore Sun article by Andrea K. Walker (Sept. 24, 2011) about the increasing numbers of older persons contracting HIV/AIDS.

When Malcolm Coley was diagnosed with HIV, he began preparing to die. The Baltimore man, a former heroin user who suspects he contracted the virus by sharing needles, packed his bags and moved to Washington to live his last days closer to family. "I figured the end was near," he says. That was 1988. More than two decades later, Coley, 54, is, in his words, "still hanging around. " He traded drugs long ago for a healthful diet, owns his own home, works for a Baltimore nonprofit and volunteers as an AIDS educator, talking to students and adults about living with HIV. As advances in treatment have turned what was once a virtual death sentence into a livable condition, the HIV/AIDS population is aging….