My story...What's yours?

It takes a lot of courage and strength to come out to the world and say you have a disease, sickness or ailment.  I am writing this post with tears in my eyes. After reading this post feel free to judge or better still learn from this story cause it’s a true life story. I am saying it as it is and it is for people to know what other people are going through. They say experience is the best teacher, I have learnt from my cousin’s experience and I will not want you all to go through what she went through.

It took my cousin years before she knew she had the killer virus. My dad just came in from U.S.A.  and he saw my cousin and said ‘you look sick, you need to see the doctor’. My cousin said she just had tuberculosis and that she was using drugs. My dad insisted that she must go for blood test or better still see a doctor, which she went for with my dad. When we got the result, it was shocking and my dad said that it could be a mistake, that she should go to another hospital. They went to 5(five) different hospital and all 5(five) results were the same thing. Then it dawned on us that she had the killer virus.

She was enrolled in some counseling classes and also for the anti-Trevor injections too, the anti-Trevor injection was to help keep her going but it was not helping out because the virus had grown to the worst killer virus.  She later passed on two months after. It was so sad, but we all knew she was going to die one day, sooner or later.

Nobody really knows how much anyone else is hurting. We could be standing next to someone who is completely broken and not even know it. Such is life.

Before my cousin passed on, she could not tell where she got the virus from maybe sex, salon or from a hospital. Ladies and gentlemen before going to the salon/barber’s shop to get your hair done, take you needles or any instrument that you may need because you don’t know how many people would have infected the instrument you will be using at the salon. Don’t EVER feel embarrassed to take your instrument to the salon, you are only helping yourself from a more embarrassed and stigmatize situation.

So I want to advise you all, trust no one, your partner, family, friends and anyone could have the virus without you knowing. Before you have sex with your spouse, boyfriend, or any random person take time to protect yourself. Some people might say, ‘oh I know that’ but we all make mistakes.  We can be so eager to have sex that we forget to protect ourselves. Some people will say I like skin-to-skin, but before you do skin-to-skin with anyone get tested, you can’t tell if your partner is infected.

Did you know that 63% of teenagers are HIV positive in U.S.A.? No. Well when I found out I was shocked because if teenagers could be 63%, what of adults and older people. We live in a world of surprises, different people, experience and stories.

So people, let’s take time to get tested so we can know our status. Some people use to say’ what you don’t know will not kill you’ but I will say ‘what you don’t now will definitely kill you’ if my cousin had known earlier, she would have responded to anti-Trevor and lived longer than she did.

So people, get tested and protect yourselves because the life you could be saving could be yours.