Affected in other ways Do you know anyone living with HIV AIDS? That may be a difficult question, so I’ll rephrase. As far as you know, do you know anyone living with the virus, disease?
Doctors have predicted that very soon we all will know at least one person who is. It is not uncommon nowadays to hear someone talk about a friend who is living with HIV or a family member or someone in the village that people say has it.
Medicine has greatly increased the time people can live without succumbing to complications caused by the weakened immune system. Some doctors fear this may cause few people to view AIDS as a death sentence. Nonetheless, because many people are living without knowing or not seeking medication because of the need to keep their identities confidential, not everyone survives that long.
Those left to mourn are often children and many are too young to comprehend what has killed a parent or both. But friends and family members can tell the tale and this week one of them has decided to share her story. Listen
John and Jane’s Friend My friend died from AIDS before she could see her son grow up and her husband followed some years after.
She was one of those young women who could always make a man turn to look two or three times as she walked past and other women looked at her with envy. I remember sitting down with her and exchanging girl talk or woman’s talk rather because we were by then adults. We were very good friends and one of the reasons for that was she was very open minded like myself.
I don’t know how she contracted the disease, whether she got it from her husband or her husband contracted it from her. But then again what does it matter? She was suffering both mentally and physically. She found out after her son was born, after he took ill first and then her husband too was found to be HIV positive.
It was the end of a marriage that was worth saving. They had made quite a couple. My friend went back with her son to her homeland, took ill during that time and never returned.
She died sometime after from complications due to AIDS. The little boy took ill after that and after my friend’s parents and other family members found out what she died of and also that her child was HIV positive, the boy was sent back to his father. The father was really unable to take care of the child and left the grandmother to take care of him.
Because of all the stress he was going through and also denial that his diagnosis was true, he wasn’t taking any medication and he took ill and was hospitalized. As if all the suffering was not enough, his mother died. He felt like it was the end of the world.
I could feel his pain because even though I had been closer to his wife, we were also close friends. I held our son soon after he was born, a handsome baby boy who was going to be a handsome little boy. So sweet, so innocent, it is said that there is a thin line between sanity and insanity and that proved itself in the life of my friend’s husband.
He just could not cope, his family members were not there for him. To them, it was like he didn’t exist. After a very long time, he appeared to put all of the madness behind him even though he said he could feel the eyes watching him as he walked on the streets.
Persons could be seen watching him, some staring, whispering, pointing fingers. It was hard for him to find employment for people weren’t kind to him, they discriminated against him. He became aggressive, confused, distraught, depressed and could hardly sleep at times.
But he was trying for his son. No one wanted to take up the responsibility of caring for what they called the little AIDS boy, how wicked persons were to be calling him that name. I, who had quite a number of children, could not handle the responsibility of caring for another but I was there for him in my own way.
I hope many of you who are reading this will open your minds, educate yourselves and stop discriminating and judging. Give persons a chance, even if they have this disease, because if you are not careful yourself, you may be the next victim. The father, being unable to care for his son, left him in the hands of some caring person at a certain institution.
Just recently, this father died. I really felt it. I also felt that if he had taken better care of himself and taken the medication as he was supposed to, he would have lived longer.
