It is so important to let family know that you are HIV positive. Do not hide your secret out of fear of rejection. Pick the family member most likely to support you and protect you. This person can advise other members quietly.
Perhaps your mother will be best or your grandmother or aunt. You may have the strongest relationship with your big brother.
When you go for counseling, take your family support with you. Both of you can receive advice and ask questions. If your supporter comes each time, the advice will become part of family knowledge.
In early stages, counseling will be very basic:
Stop smoking and boozing
Eat nutritious fruit and vegetables
Go for ARV treatment and check-up
Do daily exercise
Do not worry
Live a normal life in the family
Help with the house
Have hope and peace
Drink plenty of clean water
Spend time in the morning sun.
It is important that family knows. They may be worried about the story getting out to the extended family. But that does not change the fact that the family member is sick and needs peace and love. There should be no abuse and anger at the sick person.
It may be best to change the lifestyle of the family members. All will eat nutritious food and drink clean water. Family goes to church as a group. All show love and caring to one another. No violence between family members.
There must be family members who know of the HIV status of their loved one. There needs to be a family commitment to take the sick one down to the medical centre for new supplies of drugs. It may be 3 days drive down the highway.
If there is no commitment and the drugs run out before the new supplies come, the sick person may die. In the highlands, there may be landslides, road blockages, bridge down and tribal fights. There needs to be several days reserve of drugs to meet emergencies.
Many PNG people would have died in recent years from having no more drugs for several days or weeks. The HIV virus will attack them strongly until death.
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Comment: I looked after Linda and son Jonathan for over 3 years with HIV. She would not let me tell her parents for almost all that time.
When I first met her, she was full of happiness and joy. We would visit her family and she would laugh, smile and tell jokes. She was very lively and hard working. Just the woman to look after my daughters.
Then she was diagnosed HIV positive. The laughter stopped. No more funny stories. She would scream and shout in the hearing of family who had no idea of what was going on. So they blamed the carer.
He was even bashed by her brothers for abusing her. But over that time, she was dying of AIDS and suffering the onset of dementia. Her loving care turned to violence.
As time went on, she had frightening dreams and delusions. She believed highlanders had planned to kill her. She could see an old Samurai woman who turned into a black bird and was waiting in the trees at night to kill her.
She thought her carer was trying to kill her and threatened to kill his daughters to stop him. She was demented enough to do something crazy. Such people are on a pendulum between being mentally disturbed and completely sane. It has an on-off switch.
Family was told in the year before she died and they took her away to Madang. They were in denial and thought that if they ignored the virus, it would go away. She died in December 2003.
This was in the era before ARV drugs. Linda made her health worse by smoking in secret. In the absence of ARV drugs, her baby son had chest infections from her smoking that opened the door to the HIV virus in breast milk. He died in May 2002.
I now feel very sad for Linda and her parents, children and brothers. Her family loved her and would have responded with caring to news that she had HIV infection. But she would not allow them to be told.
Therefore the only person to blame was the man caring for her. She used to be strong. Now she is skeleton like and weak. She used to be happy and carefree. Now she is angry and emotional. Someone has to be to blame.
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