THE COMPASSION PROTOCOL

An extraordinary affirmation of life as the late French journalist Guibert, writing in the final stages of AIDS, records with moving frankness the reprieve granted him by the experimental drug DDL. In his previous book, To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (1991), Guibert candidly chronicled the passage of AIDS through his body, and now, if not reconciled to dying, he at least relishes the temporary lease the new drug affords him. Given only to those in the final days of the disease, it is drug of compassion rather than aggression, and, taken together with the occasional Prozac, enables Guibert to start writing again, even to travel to his beloved island of Elba. Still, there is a problem, since supplies are limited; even Guibert's first batch was illegally acquired from a doctor tending a near-death ballet dancer. Guibert admits to being troubled by this, but his scruples are overcome by his improved health. Once unable to eat, leave his apartment, or write, he can now live more fully: ``I wasn't euphoric, but the threat of absolute black despair had dissipated a little, it was there underneath but was no longer vibrating in that intolerable way.'' Obliged still to undergo endless medical procedures, many excruciatingly painful, he categorizes his various doctors as brutal ``pig-stickers'' or—as in the case of the beautiful Claudette—as kind, gentle friends. He notes ironically that his earlier book brought him luck—``it had a success that comforted me at an intermediate stage of my illness.'' And he observes now that ``everything in life is negotiable''; DDL has been yet another instrument for negotiating more time and strength. Guibert's great passion for life and literature illuminates this exemplary—and deceptively cool—piece of clinical reportage with a fierce and incandescent light.