Surviving HIV: Growing Up a Secret and Being Positive

Surviving HIV: Growing Up a Secret and Being Positive is the true story of Jamie Gentille, a girl in her 30s who defies the odds by living a healthy and productive life after contracting HIV during a blood transfusion at age 3 during open heart surgery. This book follows Jamie’s life as a child, to whom the medical world was a second home, through adolescence and adulthood. Along the way she encounters pain, joy, adversity, despair, ignorance, and above all, hope. Her journey takes the reader through a time when HIV and AIDS was a highly stigmatized terminal disease, to groundbreaking hope in the form of medical advances, to an age of full life expectancy and near normalcy. The book’s style is a playful balance between dry, self-deprecating humor, and raw emotion. She describes heartbreaking experiences as a child enduring painful medical procedures, and the terrifying reality of a terminal illness. The book poignantly describes Jamie’s process of coming to terms with her own mortality at the age of 10. While the reader is moved by these sobering stories, they will also laugh at loud at Jamie’s irreverent humor and light-hearted style. Interwoven throughout Surviving HIV is a theme of stark reality, and enduring optimism that can offer the reader a new perspective on their own lives.

Jamie Gentille is a proud survivor and advocate, and has been living with HIV for over 30 years. She acquired HIV through a blood transfusion during open heart surgery at age three. Years later, at the age of eight, her family learned that she was infected and was told that she would have two years to live. Today, she proudly shares her story of beating the odds and living a full and happy life with HIV. Jamie is experienced in public speaking on the topic of living with HIV. She appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1997 for a World AIDS Day special. Jamie has spoken at the annual Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation “A Time for Heroes” event in Los Angeles. She has also addressed post-doctoral students at the National Institutes of Health and Georgetown Medical School students. As an Ambassador for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, she has also spoken at a Town Hall meeting for President Obama’s National HIV/AIDS agenda planning. She was a featured speaker at an event provided by the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Maternal and Child Health Integrated Programs (MCHIP). Jamie was also a keynote speaker and group facilitator at the 19th Annual International AIDS Conference in Washington DC. In addition to being an experienced public speaker, Jamie has experience singing and acting with prestigious casts. She has had leading roles in charity fundraising gala shows alongside Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Melanie Griffith, Eartha Kitt, Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, James Naughton, Tony Randall, Michael Bolton, Alec Baldwin, Anne Reinking, Frank Langella, Harry Belafonte, and others, for Paul Newman’s The Hole in the Wall Gang Camps. Jamie lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, and works as Director of Child Life Services at a children’s hospital. She earned a BS in Biobehavioral Health from Penn State University, and a Masters in Public Health from Walden University. In her professional work and personal drives, Jamie is passionate about health education, and advocating for the rights of children and families undergoing medical experiences, and continuing the fight to eliminate AIDS.