February 27, 2016 - San Francisco Chronicle.
Her daughter was 4 years old when Vicky Blake learned she’d contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It was 1994, before the advent of antiretroviral drugs that could help arrest the virus, and Blake feared she would not live to see Curtisha turn 10.
The grim medical prognosis was compounded by the fact that everything else in Blake's life was crumbling. She was in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship, and had lost her job in a family-run care center for the developmentally disabled after disclosing her HIV status. She had also seen four siblings die, one from a gunshot to the head, and five cousins contract the virus.
Blake sought comfort in drugs and alcohol. Even after antiretroviral drugs were developed in 1995, offering a chance to keep her HIV in check, she couldn't muster the will to take the pills. "I lost my life skills, and everything went down," she said while tidying her crowded Mission District apartment recently. "Some days I would call my doctor and say, 'I have six quarts of beer in front of me, and I've smoked $50 worth of crack. I need help.'"
Like many people with HIV, particularly women, Blake doesn't suffer just from the physiological ravages of the virus, but also the psychological impacts of trauma. Sexually abused throughout her youth, becoming HIV-positive was just one more blow in an already turbulent life. It was a symptom of struggle. Continue reading…
