What's 'ATT' got to do with it?

Your attitude is an expression of your values, beliefs and expectations.

Brian Tracy.

ATTITUDE- A complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways.

Today a couple of weeks ago, we buried Patricia.She would have turned 26 on Saturday. Her death was so sudden it left most of us confused and panicking. You know, living with this virus forever makes you on the lookout for things that will make you sick.
Some people become obsessed with their health so much just in the hope that if they do so, they will be able to go through the year with as little drama as possible.

I was just checking in at the airport when I got ‘the call’. At first because I was busy ensuring everything gets on board I didn’t think much about it. Reality sank in when we took off. I couldn’t understand why she died so fast. It wasn’t even about her, I guess I was scared at the fact that it is possible for someone to go down that fast.

About two weeks before her death, a friend told me she was sick and was hospitalized.
“I am scared Flo,” she said.
“Why? What’s wrong with her” I asked surprised.
“Her kidneys collapsed” Catherine said
“Everyone seems to be dying this year.” She explained. Catherine had been sick most of last year and has never fully recovered. She keeps being admitted in hospital for various complications and seeing people go to hospital and not come out alive wasn’t helping.
“You will be fine, Patricia will be fine” I insisted. “We can’t have anymore people dying this year; I don’t think I can take it.” I tried to reassure her.

I was so scared as much as I didn’t want Catherine to know. The following day and for a bout a week afterwards all I did was Google Kidney/renal failure in relation to HIV. I just realized there is a lot about this virus I don’t know about. I tried to ask her friends if they knew of anything that she may have done wrong but no one seems to know.

A number of us called each other and picked on a date to go see her at the hospital. I couldn’t get out of work at lunch time to go with them. So because i dread being in hospitals alone, I called a dear friend to take me.

We got to the Hospital at around 4.30pm and were led to the High dependency Unit wards. I kept telling myself “it can’t be that bad.”
Nothing prepared me for what I saw. Patricia looked different; no one would believe she is the girl I bumped into in town just a month before. She was swollen all over with tubes sticking in and out of her hands and mouth. She just managed to say a weak hallo before the nurses asked us to give them time to give her medicine.

I got back to the office and kept reading and prying before I found out that Patricia had refused to start her ARV’s despite various doctors advising her to do so since 2007. I couldn’t believe it. Something she said to me last year quickly came to mind. We were doing an interview for one of the local dailies and it was about the challenges of young people living with HIV. She was being featured as one of the people who have never disclosed their status to anyone, family or friends and I was the loud mouth as usual. When the reporter asked her why she found it hard to talk about her status which she knew about when she was in 1st year of college.
“HIV has always been a disease for immoral and poor people, I can’t bring myself to accept that I have it because I am not those things.” (Immoral or poor)She said.

I understood a lot of things about her that day. Like why she never came to our support group meetings, why she didn’t talk about her status even at work where the majority lived openly with the virus and why she was always keeping to herself.

What I didn’t realize though was how much her attitude affected her health. I was angry, I couldn’t believe it could go this far.
Patricia worked in an organization where HIV talk was normal, sat about 50metres from a clinic, could have gotten referrals to the best doctors if she needed it but what stood in her way was her attitude towards HIV.
There are people who would only dream of such privileges. There are people who still have no access to medication and they lose their lives for it. She had everything including a number of doctors pleading with her to start medication but for one reason or another she felt it wasn’t important.

I hear a lot of confessions from people who will not cut down on their smoking or binge drinking because they are scared of what their friends will say. Or people who won’t start their ARV’s because they don’t want to deal with its side effects. Or people who continue to put their lives and the lives of others at risk because they don’t want to ‘lose’ them and be alone when they disclose their status.

All these are attitudes. Things we can change. I am not for people raising banners and screaming ‘I HAVE HIV’, but it doesn’t mean that in your silence you can’t reach out for help that you need to enable you live a long, healthy and productive life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Your mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.”