My child....my world

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” Elizabeth Stone

I met Jane about three months ago when my boss called me to her office.

“Jane is from Kisumu and I believe we need to help her.” she explained.
Apparently Janet had been going through rough patches (she was sick and had just gotten fired at a hospital where she worked as a nurse) and had written a distress letter to my boss who asked her to come in and see her.
She travelled from Kisumu and now didn’t have a place to stay. My boss had decided to give her a volunteer job with us as she regained her health.

Looking at her at the time, I couldn’t help noticing the helpless look on her face. So I reluctantly accepted to take her in. She later on confided in me how on that day she had hit rock bottom and if we didn’t help her she was just going to take poison and feed some to her daughter. I was shocked when she told me that, I have hit my low key moments but I never thought about killing myself before.

My sisters were of course not amused when I broke the news to them,
“Are you sure she will leave at the end of the month?” asked my sister Maha
“You are taking this 'mother Teresa' thing too far sometimes” Admonished my sister Debs.
I was of course panicking for Jane was still sick. She travelled back to get her things and to sort out issues about her 10year old daughter.

She did come back around 2nd of October. Jane spent most of that month sick with one ailment after another. Waking up in the middle of the night because she had serious cramps became the norm. Later on she got hospitalized and after about a week she got better. Jane did get a house and moved in with a cousin she met during our support group meeting.

She has regained her strength and has now been employed in our clinic as one of the nurses. She is good at what she does and seems to be doing fine. I guess that’s the reason why she brought her daughter to Nairobi.
“I am school hunting for her and every academy seems to have crazy fee structures.” She joked
“Welcome to my world dear.” I joked back

Two days after her daughter got to Nairobi, Jane decided to have her tested for HIV. She didn’t have reason to suspect her girl had HIV because she isn’t one prone to illnesses. Being a nurse, she believed she could take whatever the results were. " i was so sure she will test negative." she later on confided.
That however wasn’t the reaction she had when she got the results. Her daughter had tested HIV+.
She was crushed. So crushed we had to take her daughter away from her for a couple of hours.

I couldn’t stop having ‘what if’ thoughts. I just had junior tested a few months ago. What if the results were positive? How would I have dealt with it? would i have been strong about it? its crazy how there is such a thin line between testing positive and negative. Its heartwrenching when the person bearing the positive results is your baby girl or boy.

As we all gathered around her telling her it will be okay and that she could take it. I knew she will need a lot of counseling to get through the next couple of days. She has to accept that her daughter has a delicate health system, the clinic visits and probable medications.

She has to deal with the fact that now she knows for sure when she got infected. Most of us always put this question out of our minds just so we don’t have to look for someone to be angry at. Then she has to deal with her HIV- boyfriend who may probably not be able to take it.
Life's a bitch they say.