No back-turn once in it
Sep 17, 2010
I promised to fill you in on all the important parts that I skipped last week, when I made my passionate plea: Please keep safe. Please keep those close to you safe. I told you how I only started getting treatment a month after confirming that I was HIV-positive.
Lucy (not real name), a 32-year-old single mother, discovered that she has HIV. She shares with us her emotional experiences
I promised to fill you in on all the important parts that I skipped last week, when I made my passionate plea: Please keep safe. Please keep those close to you safe. I told you how I only started getting treatment a month after confirming that I was HIV-positive. It’s not that I was in denial about what was going on with my body. It was more a case of commitment. Now, when I surely did not have many choices in the matter, I was looking before I leapt. Being careful; irony of ironies! Making sure that I could handle this, be in there for the long haul...
Like I told you, the marriage with ARVs is a delicate relationship. In real life, you can take a gamble. Marry someone, work at it, hope and pray it works out. Sometimes it does, sometimes, it doesn’t. Concepts like irreconcilable differences, separation, divorce... those are painful. No one likes to fail or carry a broken heart, but nobody has died. Life goes on if the relationship doesn’t...
With ARVs, you have got to be sure before you walk down that aisle and slide that tablet down your throat. There are words like adherence. It is till death do you part, but you bring that death faster if you break a single rule. It is a daily date and you cannot be late, or, God forbid, stand him up. It is black and white: When you should, how you should. It’s the one relationship where your partner is not subtle about changing you. Either you adjust or...!
I wasn’t in a hurry to make the commitment. I needed to be sure that I had the strength within me to start – and see it through. (Where was this kind of good judgement when I needed it before?)
Septrin was the only easy part. Kind of like an apple a day; and it will keep infections away, all factors remaining constant. Next, a test to find out my CD4 count.
So many times, I had heard about CD4 counts, but never bothered to know what it was about. You probably don’t know what it is, either. My most well-read, well-informed friends, I tell them about my CD4 and they have that blank look on their faces.
Here is how I understand it: Your immune system contains different types of cells, including CD4 or T-cells, which protect the body from infection. HIV attacks the T-cells, uses them to make more copies of HIV and in the process weakens the immune system. In early stages, the body can make more CD4 cells to replace the damaged ones, but eventually, the number of functioning T-cells decreases. As more CD4 cells become damaged, the immune system becomes weaker, leaving the body at a risk of illness and infection... ARVs help with weakening the HIV action on the cells... Something like that.
The doctor told me CD4 cell tests are reported as number of cells in a cubic millimetre of blood. Normal CD4 counts are between 500 and 1600. When you have HIV and go below 350, World Health Organisation says you should start ARV treatment.
My result came out at a whopping 26 count... Still, here I was, weighing my options: Did I really want to start treatment or not? I probably sound like a total idiot, but the way I saw it, this was probably going to be my biggest decision ever in life. Now, when it seemed like too little too late, I was finally trying to be rational...
I promised to fill you in on all the important parts that I skipped last week, when I made my passionate plea: Please keep safe. Please keep those close to you safe. I told you how I only started getting treatment a month after confirming that I was HIV-positive. It’s not that I was in denial about what was going on with my body. It was more a case of commitment. Now, when I surely did not have many choices in the matter, I was looking before I leapt. Being careful; irony of ironies! Making sure that I could handle this, be in there for the long haul...
Like I told you, the marriage with ARVs is a delicate relationship. In real life, you can take a gamble. Marry someone, work at it, hope and pray it works out. Sometimes it does, sometimes, it doesn’t. Concepts like irreconcilable differences, separation, divorce... those are painful. No one likes to fail or carry a broken heart, but nobody has died. Life goes on if the relationship doesn’t...
With ARVs, you have got to be sure before you walk down that aisle and slide that tablet down your throat. There are words like adherence. It is till death do you part, but you bring that death faster if you break a single rule. It is a daily date and you cannot be late, or, God forbid, stand him up. It is black and white: When you should, how you should. It’s the one relationship where your partner is not subtle about changing you. Either you adjust or...!
I wasn’t in a hurry to make the commitment. I needed to be sure that I had the strength within me to start – and see it through. (Where was this kind of good judgement when I needed it before?)
Septrin was the only easy part. Kind of like an apple a day; and it will keep infections away, all factors remaining constant. Next, a test to find out my CD4 count.
So many times, I had heard about CD4 counts, but never bothered to know what it was about. You probably don’t know what it is, either. My most well-read, well-informed friends, I tell them about my CD4 and they have that blank look on their faces.
Here is how I understand it: Your immune system contains different types of cells, including CD4 or T-cells, which protect the body from infection. HIV attacks the T-cells, uses them to make more copies of HIV and in the process weakens the immune system. In early stages, the body can make more CD4 cells to replace the damaged ones, but eventually, the number of functioning T-cells decreases. As more CD4 cells become damaged, the immune system becomes weaker, leaving the body at a risk of illness and infection... ARVs help with weakening the HIV action on the cells... Something like that.
The doctor told me CD4 cell tests are reported as number of cells in a cubic millimetre of blood. Normal CD4 counts are between 500 and 1600. When you have HIV and go below 350, World Health Organisation says you should start ARV treatment.
My result came out at a whopping 26 count... Still, here I was, weighing my options: Did I really want to start treatment or not? I probably sound like a total idiot, but the way I saw it, this was probably going to be my biggest decision ever in life. Now, when it seemed like too little too late, I was finally trying to be rational...