Skin Care Medication

‘My womanising partner gave me AIDS’

July 30, 2006

For Sylvia, spending the last four years living with AIDS has been more than an uphill battle. She officially learned that she had contracted the disease in 2002, but had long been ignoring several clear indicators that she was infected.

Her common-law husband, she confided to the Sunday Observer, was a womaniser who spent many nights away from her and their three children. He gave her the disease.

“Him attitude and him reputation as a wildman did make me suspicious. And because of the type of work him do, fix appliances and so, him go all over the place. Him used to drink and smoke and so on and keep woman all ’bout,” she said.

With that in mind, she decided to get an HIV/AIDS test done early 2002. What month exactly, she can’t remember, as one of the disease’s more personal side effects, poor memory, begins to work on her.

Fearful that the results would confirm her suspicions, however, she decided not to return for the results.

Later that year, she received a letter from the Slipe Pen Medical Centre telling her that she needed to come in immediately to have a blood test done, a warning which she once again ignored.

The moment of truth came in May of 2003 when her man was admitted to the Kingston Public Hospital. His health had been rapidly deteriorating before then, but he had been blaming it on cancer.

“Him hair start to thin out, and his eyes and lips were red. Him skin did start to look pale and thin, and him start to go to the bathroom every minute,” she said.

Lying in the hospital bed looking as though one foot was already in the grave, her man broke down and confessed to Sylvia that he had contracted AIDS and that he was sure he had given it to her.

“Him tell me ‘Yes, me know me did have AIDS and the reason why me give you is because you are my baby mother and me want you fi dead with me’,” Sylvia told the Sunday Observer, the anger palpable in her voice.
“I take up a shoes to lick him in the face but one of the nurse come and hold me back.”

In a daze, Sylvia walked all the way to her Central Kingston home that evening, bursting into tears intermittently, and at times becoming overwhelmed by her situation.

For days afterwards, she was inconsolable as the gravity of her situation sank in. Also bearing in mind that she had three young children to take care of and no steady employment, the thought of living with AIDS opened the door to several bouts of depression.

Eventually, her common-law husband was discharged from the hospital and came back to the family home. Sylvia put him in a small room to the side of the house and continued to take care of him, despite the difficulty of it. She admitted, however, that she nagged and insulted him every day while doing it.

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“I’m not going to tell any lies, I nag him. I keep at it with him, look on him and say things like “Hey AIDS boy” and things like that. Him couldn’t take it but I nag him every day.”

When the nagging got to be too much, he picked himself up, grabbed his belongings and moved out. On his own, his condition worsening by the day, his health gave way and he died in October 2003.

His death forced another harsh change upon Sylvia and her family. She learned some time that year that he had substituted her name with that of his sister on the insurance policy he had taken out while working at a security company earlier in his life.

The money was intended for the three children, but since they were 6, 9 and 11 respectively, the distribution of the money would be handled by his sister.

This transfer sparked a continuing feud between herself and the sister-in-law, who Sylvia accused of “monopolising the money”. With that hurdle, the family has been struggling to make ends meet, even being evicted from their home.

On a happier note, however, she has found a new place to live with her three children, although the struggle continues.
Sylvia said that the family survived from day to day, mostly through the efforts of her 14-year-old daughter from a prior relationship.

“The 14-year-old is taking care of the other three, living a night life and hustling. I feel like I’m trafficking her, I feel guilty, but I’m not working and it’s hard. I can’t answer her when she asks me what we going to do if she don’t go out and hustle,” Sylvia says, a tear welling in her right eye.
“She cannot live like that for a 14-year-old. She should be in school. I need her to learn a skill, or soon she will catch HIV too,” Sylvia confided.

But the thing that depressed Sylvia most was her belief that her children contracted the disease from her…and that she cannot afford the cost of having them tested.

“I think they have it,” she said. “At night they’ are restless. My little girl have fine rashes all over her skin, and they scratch.”
She admitted that thoughts of deserting her family and dying in solitude have crossed her mind, but that she could never go through with it.

“Sometimes I don’t see the reason for living. It make me feel bad to know that I have children and cannot take care of them. I feel a guilt. I know that they might not listen to somebody like they would listen to me. But sometimes I feel like going away for two days and having the police or somebody pick them up, and take them somewhere,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“I wouldn’t mind if somebody was to adopt one of them, or take them in so I wouldn’t lose custody of them, but just to give them better than what I can give them now.”

Sylvia also hopes to see, in her lifetime, much more government legislation towards assisting persons living with AIDS in Jamaica. Specifically, she would like to see laws ensuring that whatever savings a person with AIDS gathered in life, be automatically made available to their children.

For now, however, she said she would settle for more information on the various AIDS support groups out there to assist her in taking care of herself and her family. She would also like to have assistance in getting the necessary medication for herself and her children.

Posted by toshko under Skin Care News |