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One Time: An AIDS Story Part 1

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sex disease aids hiv teenager hospital treatment cure :: Sunday, March 2, 2008 by nataleekw

     My name is Kiyah; I am HIV positive. Imagine me, a sixteen-year-old girl, HIV positive. I lived in an ordinary house in a small plain little town. I have never taken drugs. I am not homosexual, and I have never had a blood transfusion; HIV positive.

     I got really sick. In the middle of Geometry, I broke out in a cold sweat and my pupils dialated. I was sent to the office, and then home. I was absent from school for a week afterwards with a temperature of one hundred and one degrees. I didn't eat. All I could do was sleep. I felt so weak. Celia, my stepmother, thought that it was mononucleosis. She took me to her doctor. They did several different blood tests and sent me home with some antibiotics.

    Days later, we got a call from Dr. Jones. Celia spoke to the doctor for several minutes before tears filled her eyes.

     "Thank you, Dr. Jones, I will talk to her," she said as she hung up the phone. Slowly she turned around to face me with tears streaming down her face.

    "What is going on, Celia," I asked with a confused look on my face.

     Celia walked over to me, grabbed my wrist, and led me into the living room where she sat me down on the couch.

     "Kiyah, one of the blood tests that they conducted was an HIV test. The results were positive; HIV positive."

     My expression fell and a tear built in my eye. I watched as Celia collapsed to the floor in sobs. I got angry. My expression built to furious and I exclaimed, "What? But I am only sixteen. My life hasn't begun yet and you are telling me that I am going to die? It can't be right! What is wrong with you? It's not right!"

     My stepmother raised herself from the floor and decided that the best thing for me was rest at this point. She led me into my bedroom, turned on the television, and handed me a blue pill.

     "This will help calm you down," she said, "I'm going to call your father and have him come home so that we can talk about this."

     "What is going to happen? Am I going to die," I questioned. "Is there a cure?" Celia looked at me and then the ground.

     "Kiyah, there is no cure for HIV. But they are coming up with new treatments every day that can help prolong your life and keep you healthy so that you do not develop AIDS. Get some rest." She got up and headed toward the kitchen to call my father. Minutes later I was asleep.

     When I woke up, it was morning again. My father was in the kitchen with Celia and to my suprise, Dr. Jones. I walked into the kitchen wiping the sleep out of my eyes. "What is goin on?"

     Kiyah, there are a few treatments that we want to talk to you about, " Dr. Jones said as he motioned for me to sit down. "Come sit here and we will go over the changes." I walked to the table and sat down beside my father as Dr. Jones continued. "There is a series of treatments that we call HAART therapy. It stands for highly-active-anti-retroviral-therapy. This treatment is not easy. The drugs have to be taken at specific times and they usually cause side effects."

     "Side effects like what," my father asked.

     "Well, Ben, side effects like nausea, abdominal distribution of body fat, and diarrhea. The down side to this therapy is that it doesn't always work. HIV can mutate which makes the treatment ineffective," Dr. Jones replied. "I would like to start her on this treatment right away. Her CD4 cells have not yet plummeted to two hundred and we want to keep it that way."

     "Does this mean that I will be hospitalized" I asked, "Am I going to get to go to school? What about my friends?"

     "Kiyah, the only thing that we need to worry about right now is that we get you better so that you can go back to school and see your friends," Dr. Jones replied.

     Celia and my father looked at eachother and then at Dr. Jones, "let's start this therapy," my father replied.

     Four months later everything went back to normal. I was back in school. I wasn't feeling sick anymore and I was taking pills that Dr. Jones had told us would help. It wasn't two more months before I was sick again. This time the news wasn't as good as before. I was sent home from school again and this time we went straight to Dr. Jones. This meant more blood tests to check my CD4 cells. Days later we got the results from Dr. Jones, my CD4 count was way below two hundred; I had AIDS. This time there were no treatments, no therapy, and no cure.

     Weeks later I started experiencing shortness of breath and lapse in memory. They admitted me into the County Hospital. They hooked me up to a bunch of machines and gave me pills to put me to sleep. I woke one morning to see my friend, Jeena, standing beside my bed. "Hello, Kiyah, I brought you this," she said as she pulled a fuzzy, white teddy bear from behind her, "it is from Matt, you know how he is with hospitals."

     "I know," I said as I sat up and began brushing my hair. "Here, I'll do it, Kiyah," Jeena said. I smiled and handed her the brush.

     "You know," she continued, "a lot of people in school are talking about you." I looked up with a frightened look on my face. "Oh no, Kiy, it isn't bad." I let out a sigh of relief.

     "Do they know," I asked. "I don't think so, but I could be wrong," she replied. "Kiy?"

     "Yes."

     "Are you scared," she asked. "Extremely, I have never been this scared in my life," I exclaimed.

     "I'm here no matter what, " Jeena assured. I turned back at her and smiled. "Thanks Jean." She gave me a big hug.

     Nurse Judy came into the room. "Excuse me, Kiyah? Your friend needs to leave, you have to rest." We said goodby and the nurse brought my medication in for me. Shortly after, I fell asleep.