Happy International Women’s Day to all our 4M Net Members and women living with HIV across the globe. This month, we celebrate our Mentor Mother Sam, based in Brighton, who shares her story here.
My name is Samantha, and I am a 4M Mentor Mother.
My journey starts 18 years ago this March when I was diagnosed as being HIV positive. I was shocked and just instantly thought I was going to die before my parents and before my children. I will be honest I did not really know a lot about HIV and through the shock I developed Generalised Anxiety Disorder and an eating disorder. When they told me that I had more than likely had it unknowingly for 5 years I just wanted to hide away and I did for a solid 3 months, thinking of nothing else, my anxiety reaching heights that affected me so severely.
I lost the ability to do most things and saw no future. I felt dirty and at the time of my diagnosis, there were different guidelines on when to start treatment. They said that my CD4 count was still too high to start medication. It needed to be below 350 and it was still above that, but I had a viral load present, it wasn’t higher than about 2000 but as far as I was aware this meant that I could pass the virus on to others. To be honest not that I thought I would ever want to have sex ever again. This went on for 5 years but during those 5 years I was hospitalised on many occasions, the worst point was when I was told I had a brain virus. If only I knew then, what I know now about medication. Oh, and just in case anyone was worried, I did have sex again. I started treatment 5 years later which felt like being diagnosed all over again.
A support worker suggested I went to a women’s weekend and that was the turning point in my rollercoaster HIV ride. The weekend flew by, it was full of laughter, tears and most importantly information that let us all leave that weekend connected with others but also empowered and armed with the knowledge that provides power.
Things were never the same after that weekend and that fast forwards to now, I am proudly living my life as a woman living with HIV, it does not define who I am, but it is an important part of who I am today.