AFTER THE TEST

“I laugh, I love, I hope, I try, I hurt, I fear, I cry and I know you do the same too. So we are really the same me and you”


A couple of minutes after one is told they have tested HIV positive are probably the worse minutes of their lives. I know they were mine. Although after living with this virus this long one tends to encounter other worse things, but that day in the VCT center 5years ago will forever remain etched in my mind.

Everyone has a different story of how they first found out, others decided to go for the voluntary counseling and testing (VCT), others found out after being sick, yet others found out after deaths of spouses raised concerns. What’s common though is the reactions we all exhibit as soon as we find out. Some of us sink into shock and only realize what’s happening way later, there are those who start crying and wont stop no matter what, then there are those of us who just walk out of the doctors office and forget we were ever there. How one is treated at this time, most often determines how they will handle the news and progress from there on.

After surviving the first few moments and the hours, one grapples with various emotions and stages as the reality of the news sinks. Here are a number of emotions (not is any particular order) that one deals with and here’s- in my opinion- how best to deal with them.

Fear
None if us likes going into a new place they hadn’t planned to go to. We always get apprehensive about what we may find there. With the knowledge that one is HIV+ comes the fear of death. Then we fear what the society would do or say to us once they know. We have seen how they treated other people in the past; we know how our family and friends talk about this. We know how the society has judged this a moral disease and we are scared of being judged immoral. We cry a lot at this time mostly because we know at some point or another we will have to deal with family, friends and society reactions and we don’t think we are strong enough for it. My counselor advised that whenever I needed to cry I should go ahead and do it.
“Crying is therapeutic and good for you.” she said.
I have since discovered that the best way to deal with fear is by facing it head on. Sounds insane? Believe me it works. Nelson Mandela once said,
“I learnt that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man isn’t he who doesn’t feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Numb
This is when one feels, nothing, zilch, zero! Most of the times, this is because one is in shock. One can be in shock for days or weeks, normally they don’t talk about it, go on like all is well but often times break down at the least expected time. After my own results were given to me, I went to a party and spent the weekend with friends like nothing really happened. I broke down three days later in my office when the news finally sank in.
Other times it’s because they are in denial. You tell yourself that this isn’t happening and it can’t be happening to you. Different people go through denial in different ways. Take Emily for instance. She found out she was HIV positive when she was 20years old. She blocked the story from her mind, went on with her life, got married to someone else and has a seven-year-old son. 10years after her test, she decided to seek treatment and is currently in a support group.
Now denial is not a bad thing for helping you go about your life as you deal with the big change that this news has brought to your life. It allows you to take sometime off making some very important decisions but usually it doest work forever. Eventually you will need to make decisions like about where to seek care and treatment, how best to disclose to your friends and family, whether to have a baby or not to and many others. The sooner you get off this stage the better for you. You may get stuck in this stage and end up sick because you didn’t seek the help you need to live a better life.

Rage.
This is the intense anger that one feels towards others or themselves. You may be furious at yourself for having not protected yourself, for having let it happen. Some people resent or get angry with the people they believe infected them, others get angry with God for allowing it to happen. At this time people always exhibit reckless behavior. Normally when one feels there is no other way out of the mess this news has on their life. They reckon,
“I’m going to die anyway so why should I care?” or “I want to drink and have as much fun as I can because I will die soon.”
Some people sell all their belongings albeit at a throw away price because, you guessed right, they believe they are dying. Such behavior will not get you anything but regret. Regret for when 5 years later you are not dead but broke or poor and with a long list of people you infected on your conscience.
Others lose psyche for work or their families. Often times this is the time when most people have given up on life and all the beautiful things it has to offer. This is an understandable feeling. However, it’s advisable to channel all that energy to something more productive. With the help and support from family, friends and counselors one can get over this

Depression
You are tired, you don’t want to get out of bed, and you probably would welcome death if it stretched out a hand to you. Well, all of us have gone through such feelings in our lives for one reason or another. Like the grand break up from your first love? It gave you similar kinds of feelings only this time it feels worse?
“I wished I would just die and not have to deal with people finding out.” Caroline a member of my support group once told us.
This was echoed by a lot of other people. At this point some of us get suicidal. We see no reason to go on, we wonder why we shouldn’t save everyone the agony of seeing us sick and just end it.
Depression sometimes slows us down as we recover from a big blow in our lives but just like denial, it shouldn’t be allowed to overstay its welcome. Depression doesn’t work well when one is HIV positive. It’s advisable to seek counseling or support of family and friends if you can. Join a support group or post-test club near you. Group support gets anyone out of the rut. I know because it was the beginning of me finding strength enough to do what I do today.

Negotiating.
At this point, you believe that everything is happening to you because for some reason or another you were evil or bad and you are getting punished for it. For some people this is the time you feel philanthropic and give a lot of donations to make peace with yourself, others contact family and friends that they had lost touch with and yet others become fanatic church goers.
“ I used to go for all the prayer sessions and meetings.” Confessed Mary.
“ I was totally disappointed when after a year I still had an attack of TB and this time had to go to hospital.” She goes on
We negotiate with God that if we try to be good for a while, then he will wake us up from this horrible dream. We negotiate with ourselves that if probably we try
To make right what we made wrong then God would forgive us. There is a lot of frustration later on when one finds out that no matter how good they try to be, the condition isn’t going away and they have to deal with it. The sooner one realizes they need to deal with this news, the better for them. Talk to someone a counselor or friend to help you through this, or better still join a support group near you.

Low Self Esteem.
You will at all times be faced with low self esteem at one point or another. Different people have low esteem issues for different reasons. There are those who now feel their spouses will not want to stay married to them, most women go about feeling they are not right for any man and end up being used, humiliated and made to feel worthless. Some people maybe due to weight loss from being sick or weight gain from medicines begin to hate their bodies and feel bad about it. You don’t see reason why you should dress up and look nice, or go to parties or to get togethers. You withdraw from family, friends and colleagues
This is often times the reason for misery in our lives. You begin to believe you are not good enough. You don’t apply for that good job; don’t seek educational, professional or personal growth because you believe those things aren’t for you.
“For a long time I convinced myself and my friends that I didn’t like children.” Terry told me.
“I believed that if I kept saying this then I would believe it.” She explained. At the moment, Terry is trying out for a baby after she got married to a HIV-ve man last year, another of the things she thought impossible.
The best cure for esteem issues is self-love and self-acceptance. This doesn’t happen overnight. One needs to inject doses of positive things and energy into their lives every day. Loving you makes it easy for you to deal with lots of things that may happen to your life.


Acceptance.
This is the point when you can look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself; I have HIV but I am not defined by my HIV status but by who I am.
The sooner one gets to this stage the better for them. There is no time limit however for one to get to this point where they accept they have the virus, it’s not leaving and so they have to live with it. At this point most people reach out for help. Look for a doctor or a hospital, go for tests, start treatment, research on how best they can live their lives, disclose to their partners, family and friends and how they can cope with everyday challenges. Getting to this point doesn’t mean that we wont get anymore challenges to deal with but from here, we can about face any of them and with the help of our support system overcome it.

This is probably a cliché, testing HIV positive isn’t really the end of the world, and with the right support and help one can live their lives as productive as any other person. So many people have lived this proof; we just need to believe in our self that we can do it too.
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