Surviving AIDS involves making all the right moves—and even then, your life is at risk.

David W. Driver knows that well: two years after getting married to his wife, Kari-Ann, he discovered that not only did she have HIV, but she was suffering from full-blown AIDS.

The disease came on quickly. First, she began to experience numbness in her right hand, fingers, and mouth—and then the numbness spread to her entire right arm. Shortly after being diagnosed she came down with pneumonia, usually a very deadly illness in the AIDS community, but she left the hospital a...