Memories of a Cachique

The story is to be (still) called "Lullaby" because what Margaret always remembers is a lullaby that her grandmother used to sing to her. She is constantly living under the shadow of her grandmother, who raised her and who poisoned her growth as a woman. I plan to weave in this influence throughout Margaret's part of the story, which I have started to do. I also plan for Margaret to talk about her past (to present scenes with dialogue), not necessarily all about the part involving her grandmother, but about her addiction to drugs and about how she meets her husband, which actually was a very low point in her life. Here, I plan to switch it up and then give her husband, Stephen's, perspective about how he fell in love with her, how they piece their life back together after she goes through the trauma that he finds her in (she's raped almost to death) and how he hopes to live with his wife and child, even with HIV looming over their heads. The third party perspective will come in at the end to show Margaret and Stephen awaiting the results together.

Since I want Margaret to seem like she has ADC (AIDS dementia complex), I plan to refer to a few sources. Some of these will be full-blown scientific reports on the cognition of drug users and those afflicted with HIV. Others will be educational sites that give some general symptoms of ADC and some detailed examples of how these symptoms would manifest in each stage (there are around 5 stages: 0.5, 1 are the mildest, 3-4 are the most severe). I want to focus on the beginning stages of the disorder, and reflect those stages in Margaret's perspective.

Here are some of the sources I plan to refer to:

"AIDS Dementia Complex: HIV InSite Knowledge Base Chapter." HIV InSite. June 1998. (Author: Richard W. Price, MD, University of California San Francisco.) .

"Dementia Due to HIV Infection." EMedicineHealth. October 2005.
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Parsons, J.T., Halkitis, P.N., Borkowski, T., & Bimbi, D. (2000). Perceptions of the benefits and costs associated with condom use and unprotected sex among late adolescent college students. Journal of Adolescence, 23, 377-391.

Prochaska, J.O., Velicer, W.F., Rossi, J.S., Goldstein, M.G., Marcus, B.H., Rakowski, W., Fiore, C., Harlow, L.L., Redding, C.A., Rosenbloom, D., & Rossi, S.R. (1994) Stages of Change and Decisional Balance for 12 Problem Behaviors. Health Psychology, 13, 39-46.

Petry, N. M., Bickel, W. K., & Arnett, M. (1998). Shortened time horizons and insensitivity to future consequences in heroin addicts. Addiction, 93(5), 729–738

Odum, A.L., Madden, G.J., Badger. G.J., & Bickel, W.K. (2000). Needle sharing in opioid-dependent outpatients: psychological processes underlying risk. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 60, 259-266.

Kalichman, S.C., Heckman, T., & Kelly, J.A. (1996). Sensation seeking as an explanation for the association between substance use and HIV-related risky sexual behavior. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 25, 141-154.

Martin, E.M., Pitrak, D.L., Rains, N.A., Grbesic, S., Pursell, K., Nunnally, G., & Bechara, A. (2003). Delayed nonmatch-to-sample performance in HIV-seropositive and HIV-seronegative polydrug abusers. Neuropsychology, 17, 283–288.

Farinpour, R., Martin, E.M., Seidenberg, M., Pitrak, D.L., Pursell, K.J., Mullane, K.M., Novak, R.M., & Harrow, M. (2000). Verbal working memory in HIV-seropositive drug users. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 6, 548–555.

Grant, S., Contoreggi, C., & London, E. D. (1997). Drug abusers show impaired performance on a test of orbitofrontal function. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, 23, 1943.

Grant, S., Contoreggi, C., & London, E. D. (2000). Drug abusers show impaired performance in a laboratory test of decision-making. Neuropsychologia, 38(8), 1180–1187.

Bechara, A., & Damasio, H. (2002). Decision-Making And Addiction (Part I): Impaired Activation of Somatic States in Substance Dependent Individuals when Pondering Decisions with Negative Future Consequences. Neuropsychologia, 40(10), 1675–1689.

Bechara, A., Dolan, S., & Hindes, A. (2002). Decision-Making and Addiction (Part II): Myopia For The Future Or Hypersensitivity To Reward? Neuropsychologia, 40(10), 1690–1705.

I'm wondering, on a perspective note: Should the third person narrator come in at the beginning? Or does this structure seems OK?

Also: Would a third person omniscient narrator be too much? Should that narrator be limited?

And, finally: Should Margaret talk about coming face to face with this disease in the beginning (when she's speaking)? I made her evasive about the subject (because there is so much of her perspective already) and was going to let Stephen talk about it in his part.

UPDATE: Thanks for your input, Jessica. I too think that Margaret (and also the audience) shouldn't know about the disease until the end. So that will be the way it is.

Again, this story will definitely be filled with associative memory (flashbacks).

Just in case I haven't mentioned this before: The sequence of present events in the story itself will take place in one day (when Margaret finds out she has AIDS).