Once, no one thought HIV babies would live long enough for anything, let alone summer camp. But there are now more than 10,000 US children infected since birth with AIDS who have grown up desperate for a chance to get away from the insularity of their illness. A lucky few find that reprieve for a week every summer at Camp Heartland, where they escape their outsider status to enjoy the simple pleasures of community.

Set on 80 acres of woodland in Willow River, Minn., Camp Heartland was started in 1993 by Neil Willenson, then 31, after he saw how Nile Sandeen, then 5, born HIV-positive, was mistreated. Willenson made it his mission to create a summer camp that would offer the Nile Sandeens of the world a week of "normal childhood" during which they could experience fun like ordinary kids before they died. "I predicted I'd lose them all, one by one," said Willenson, whom campers call "Noodles." He never expected any campers from those years to defy their early odds and still be around today, healthy enough to work as camp counselors. Yet of 1,500 campers since 1993, just 48 have died.

The drugs that prolong these kids' lives are the outward sign of their invisible illness. Each day in the infirmary (known as Club Meds), a team of nurses sit around a table on which hundreds of pills are lined up. The nurses carry those pills to the camp's 10 cabins two to three times a day. Some of the 80 campers must take as many as 30, which can inflict hours of nausea, dizziness or nightmares. Smaller kids have trouble swallowing horse-pill-size tablets designed for adults, and the liquid medicines can induce instant vomiting.

Yet the pills have given the kids a future, and many are planning theirs. "I've had my heart broken a lot, but this camp helped educate me so I can go out and educate others," said Stacy, 14. "That's what it's all about."

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