HIV+ woman beats anger and denial
She struggled to accept her HIV status and could not see a future for herself.
“Even though I had engaged in unprotected sex the news of my diagnosis shocked me,” said Zitha. “I went into panic mode because I thought if my siblings could not survive to tell their story, how would I? I thought of committing suicide because I knew that, emotionally, I was not ready to deal with the huge responsibility that comes with being HIV-positive.”
Zitha said because she lost weight, people started gossiping about her and some people told her she would not see her son grow up. “But what made me the angriest was that amongst those people who told me I would die were my so-called best friends. That’s when I realised why people with HIV die in denial.”
Denial
According to lay counselor Bheki Khumalo, many people who test positive for HIV experience denial. “At this point, many people will tell themselves that it’s not true even though a confirming test has been done. Some will even ask you to do another test because there might have been a mistake. If the result is the same they will do the test at a different facility because they are still hoping for different results.”
Khumalo said stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV is the reason why many people with HIV find it difficult to accept their HIV. “This anger and hurt can lead to people taking risks like using substances and having unprotected sex,” she said.
Zitha said her sister helped her come to terms with her status. “She told me I was perfectly beautiful and strong. Those words helped me to regain my strength and purpose of living. I began seeing my status as a second chance to change my lifestyle and behaviour. I read more books about HIV and socialised with people who had already accepted their HIV status. I realised I didn’t have to submit to people’s ignorance and cruelty. I have been on treatment for three months now and I have accepted my status. No one has to die.”
An edited version of this story was published by Health24.
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
HIV+ woman beats anger and denial
by cynthiamaseko, Health-e News
September 5, 2018