Hi all!
I'm new to the site and am learning to navigate so bear with me lol, I'm very green here. I am recently diagnosed (April 1st - wow huh?) and am still learning how to cope. One thing I have realized is that this is a very lonely place to be. I have always been somewhat solitary, however I have never felt this isolated. I have a great support system and my family and friends are amazing. But as this affects me profoundly, it affects them too and I know sometimes it's a bit much for them. So I am looking for an ear/shoulder but to also extend mine to you ladies. I feel a little bit better knowing that you gals are here if I need you. I hope to get to know you all and if you ever need an ear inbox me I am here for you guys too!
Lilly
Hi
Welcome to you as well and congrats on the birth of your son and on being able to breastfeed your baby successfully! I hope you have found some of our resources helpful and that you feel like this is safe space to connect if you need to! Blessings and hugs
Bridgette
I’m so glad to hear that your son is negative. Such a blessing. I can only imagine how you must have felt and I’m so sorry you had to go through that. My children are all adults so it was a bit easier to tell them. I had began losing weight early last year and initially paid it no mind because the job has always been pretty physical so there was nothing out of the ordinary when I switched to a more high demand job. But the weight just kept coming off. By December of last year going into the new year, seems that everyone caught Covid around that time and that’s when things took a turn for me. I started to develop these mouth ulcers and I was unable to eat or drink anything most days. I was back and forth to the doctors and they would prescribe something and send me home mainly because everyone was still so scared of Covid. After a few months and going from 170lbs in dec 2019 to 113lbs by apr 2022 I had to get some answers. I remember looking in the mirror and no longer recognizing myself. I was terrified. I got my fiancé and we headed over to the closest urgent care and I was going to get some answers. I had had a breakdown and a breakthrough pretty quickly. All my trauma, fears, and insecurities had come to the surface and I had no other choice but to shed the old skin and start anew. So as I waited for the results to explain why I was so sick I went over it in my head and although I thought it was a possibility I never thought I would really be positive.
I was at work on April fools day of this year and saw that my results had come back. I told my coworker I was going out for a smoke and would be back. Most of the rest of that day was a blur. All I know is that everything stopped. I was about to open my results when I noticed there were results from some tests I took in 2019 - quick backstory. Around Aug of 2019 I had split with my guy (my fault) and I was out right back into a situation I had tried hard to avoid and me being me well I slept with someone a friend introduced me to. About a month later I started to get a sore throat that wouldn’t go away. I went to the doc paranoid so I told them run all the test you got back there lol. Anyhoo, about a week later I was scheduled to go back for results but wound up in the hospital with a 104 fever. So close to Covid all they cared about is that you didn’t have Covid. I was in for about 3 days and told I had ovarian cysts that ruptured and that was the source of my problems. Being the bumble head I can sometimes be, I didn’t feel the need to go back to the clinic for results when I already know what was making me sick.
So I was fine until Dec of last year. It was like a gut punch when I read it. I was so scared and ashamed and what if I passed it to my fiancé. We have had a rocky road to redemption to say the least. He’s a normal guy and that frightened me because it wasn’t normal for me. I knew he would leave me for sure with this news. His mom I thought omg she’s going to hate me as well. So I left work early that day and tried to figure out how I would tell him. It was a relief when I finally did but boy I felt like trash. The guilt I felt was overwhelming. He has since continued to test negative which we attribute to God and the meds he takes for his ulcerative colitis. He was researching while awaiting his results and saw where there were some studies using the medication Entivio to treat HIV and the results although spotty, did provide some positive results. All I know is that I was relieved and he was too and that’s all I cared about. I knew I had to change my life. Get help and start to finally live. Today I can honestly say I feel good about the future. I never did before and as crazy as this sounds I think I needed something major to jolt me into fully understanding how sad and hurt and unhappy I had been. I want to be happy. I deserve to be happy and so do you all ❤️ Thanks for being here to listen to my ramblings lol.
Wow!!
Oh Lilly!! You went on quite a journey. I’m so happy that you have your fiancé and you have a support system. The only people my husband and I have told are my mom and sister, and two of my friends. My husband is very private and he has definitely dealt with Shame and guilt and he blames himself because he did not know he was positive and hadn’t been tested in several years. So finding out while pregnant was a total shock and very scary. But it hasn’t changed much for me, I did not get overly sick, but my husband did! He had ALL the symptoms you are describing- but he was in an intense police academy and we thought he was just very stressed. He had recurring severe sore throats and ulcers for YEARS!! And we went to doctor after doctor, and no one suggested getting tested. Either way, it has all worked out and we’re both a lot healthier now with our meds. It’s a twisted way of seeing things but I’m so glad that we found out together and were already married, because this would be even more isolating if I were single or out in the dating world. I tell my husband all the time “marriage is just a piece of paper but HIV is forever babe” LOL!