HIV.......The Virus
My dreams to read medicine coincided with the emergence of HIV/AIDS on the global scene. It was I presume one of the reasons my dad tried albeit unsuccessfully to dissuade me from the pursuit of a career in medicine. My first inklings of the disease had to do with the pictures of patients with full blown AIDS, My first glimpse of a patient with AIDS was exactly as the pictures portrayed. I can still remember him, he was dark in complexion, he lay back in bed hardly able to move, he stared at us with sunken eyes, his body emaciated, fat pads long disappeared, he was too ill to even talk.
It was my first posting in clinical school; patients with AIDS were something of a novelty then. We all stared at him from a distance of about two feet as if the virus was waiting to infect us if we dared come close enough. He may have been the subject of a residents teaching (I can’t remember now) all I remember is how we stared at him, unwilling even to offer a word of comfort lest he grasp our hands in his own. I went away severely depressed and made a vow never to join the throngs of those who stared at their patients even if it was a disease entity I had never seen before. He died the next day!
Before that year ran out people with HIV/AIDS were no longer a novelty it was now the disease of exclusion, a list of differential diagnosis was not complete without immunosuppression KIV Retroviral disease. My sister who had once told me that she believed all the hype of the disease was grossly exaggerated since she had never seen anyone with the virus will by now know at least a dozen carriers of the virus. It seemed HIV had come to stay.
I have met, managed, counseled several patients with the virus. All patients who are going to have a retroviral screen done have VCCT (Voluntary Confidential Counseling and Testing) it is interesting to note that when I ask if they have heard of the disease HIV/AIDS, most people usually deny having heard about it. When you probe further they admit very reluctantly to hearing a bit of information about it on the radio or television, asking them to state the various ways by which it can be acquired is like trying to draw water from stone, asking them if they think they are at risk of the disease is usually very difficult. To come to terms with their knowledge of the disease is to admit being at risk and is to ‘God forbid” admit they have it is how I presume they reason. But those who are honest admit to being at risk.
What strikes me is their response to having the disease, for some they are half expecting the news and hearing that they have it is a relief of some sort. To many it is a devastating blow that rocks the once secure foundation of their once stable and predictable world. What is going to happen to me, to my children when I die they question, for them no hope is in sight, death is certain they conclude. I salute the courage of many people living with HIV who are doing all they can to reduce the level of stigma associated with having the virus, for many people who thought that having the virus was the end of life, they receive a morale boost at support group meetings, where they see others who are going on with their lives despite being HIV positive.
The lives of those who have the virus and go on to having the full blown disease is in no small way irreversibly interwoven with that of their family. One case that had a lasting impression on me was during my youth service year, she was a young lady not more than 25years who was a tailor. She had until recently been living with an older sibling somewhere in the north earning her living. She was brought back home when she became ill. It was obvious she had full blown AIDS. Her parents did the best they could in the circumstance, buying the most expensive antibiotics prescribed for a chest infection she had, they did not leave her side, if the father left the mother stayed, and vice versa, they spent from the little they had and it was evident that they did not have much.
I was on call the day she died and the way her mother responded broke my heart. She had been quiet for several days refusing to talk to anyone. Then she became comatose, it was clear that the end was near. Her death brought the kind of finality that could not be reversed, while she was alive there was some hope even if it bordered on the hope for the miraculous, her death brought with it the end of that hope like the gavel sounding when a court hearing ends after the judge has given his judgment. The floodgates holding back the tears were released and her mother wept, not like the weeping with reckless abandon of the hired mourners but tears of a mother who has seen the birth and death of a child of promise, quiet weeping with each flood of tears symbolizing some grave and precious moment in the life of her child.
Many tears have been shed on account of HIV many more still will be, but hopefully in the not too distant future, HIV will no longer be a scourge but some disease which once had devastating effects but now has not just a cure but a vaccine!
It was my first posting in clinical school; patients with AIDS were something of a novelty then. We all stared at him from a distance of about two feet as if the virus was waiting to infect us if we dared come close enough. He may have been the subject of a residents teaching (I can’t remember now) all I remember is how we stared at him, unwilling even to offer a word of comfort lest he grasp our hands in his own. I went away severely depressed and made a vow never to join the throngs of those who stared at their patients even if it was a disease entity I had never seen before. He died the next day!
Before that year ran out people with HIV/AIDS were no longer a novelty it was now the disease of exclusion, a list of differential diagnosis was not complete without immunosuppression KIV Retroviral disease. My sister who had once told me that she believed all the hype of the disease was grossly exaggerated since she had never seen anyone with the virus will by now know at least a dozen carriers of the virus. It seemed HIV had come to stay.
I have met, managed, counseled several patients with the virus. All patients who are going to have a retroviral screen done have VCCT (Voluntary Confidential Counseling and Testing) it is interesting to note that when I ask if they have heard of the disease HIV/AIDS, most people usually deny having heard about it. When you probe further they admit very reluctantly to hearing a bit of information about it on the radio or television, asking them to state the various ways by which it can be acquired is like trying to draw water from stone, asking them if they think they are at risk of the disease is usually very difficult. To come to terms with their knowledge of the disease is to admit being at risk and is to ‘God forbid” admit they have it is how I presume they reason. But those who are honest admit to being at risk.
What strikes me is their response to having the disease, for some they are half expecting the news and hearing that they have it is a relief of some sort. To many it is a devastating blow that rocks the once secure foundation of their once stable and predictable world. What is going to happen to me, to my children when I die they question, for them no hope is in sight, death is certain they conclude. I salute the courage of many people living with HIV who are doing all they can to reduce the level of stigma associated with having the virus, for many people who thought that having the virus was the end of life, they receive a morale boost at support group meetings, where they see others who are going on with their lives despite being HIV positive.
The lives of those who have the virus and go on to having the full blown disease is in no small way irreversibly interwoven with that of their family. One case that had a lasting impression on me was during my youth service year, she was a young lady not more than 25years who was a tailor. She had until recently been living with an older sibling somewhere in the north earning her living. She was brought back home when she became ill. It was obvious she had full blown AIDS. Her parents did the best they could in the circumstance, buying the most expensive antibiotics prescribed for a chest infection she had, they did not leave her side, if the father left the mother stayed, and vice versa, they spent from the little they had and it was evident that they did not have much.
I was on call the day she died and the way her mother responded broke my heart. She had been quiet for several days refusing to talk to anyone. Then she became comatose, it was clear that the end was near. Her death brought the kind of finality that could not be reversed, while she was alive there was some hope even if it bordered on the hope for the miraculous, her death brought with it the end of that hope like the gavel sounding when a court hearing ends after the judge has given his judgment. The floodgates holding back the tears were released and her mother wept, not like the weeping with reckless abandon of the hired mourners but tears of a mother who has seen the birth and death of a child of promise, quiet weeping with each flood of tears symbolizing some grave and precious moment in the life of her child.
Many tears have been shed on account of HIV many more still will be, but hopefully in the not too distant future, HIV will no longer be a scourge but some disease which once had devastating effects but now has not just a cure but a vaccine!
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