Question
Should I be stressed to learn my wife is positive?
10 September 2014. Related: All topics, Children, Living with HIV long-term, Newly diagnosed, Support.
Hi
I recently I found out that my wife had HIV, way before I meet her 6 years ago, and now we have two kids.
She was not feeling good being weak so I took her to our doctor. That’s when I found out all those years I knew nothing about her status. I did a rapid test and it was negative.
The reason she was weak was because she did not take her medication for a month. Should I be stressing?
Answer
Hi
Your question cover lots of issues.
Firstly, it sounds like you will need time to come to terms with everything.
If you have a good relationship and love your wife, then I hope you continue to support your wife who may also be having a difficult time. It must have also been stressful and difficult for her all this time, even if it is difficult for you to see this.
There no reason to be stressing for your own health. The HIV test shows that it is much more likely that you are HIV negative than HIV positive. This will need to be confirmed with a second test but it seems you have been lucky.
HIV is quite difficult to catch and all the time your wife was on treatment, the risk of transmission would have been dramatically reduced – perhaps getting close to zero. If your wife was on treatment during pregnancy this is also likely to have protected your children.
It sounds like your wife needs support to find out why she stopped taking her meds. Sometimes HIV positive people feel so good on treatment that they thing they can stop. This is not a good idea because HIV comes back very quickly for nearly everyone.
Good luck with everything and please let me know if you want more links to other information.
Hi Mbali, please contact your doctor again to discuss this. The doctor canthen monitor you if you still decide to stay off treatment. Stopping HIV treatment nearly alwasy results if viral load becoming detectable again within a week or two. The CD4 count then generally starts to drop again and usually reachs pre-treatment levels. There might be other things you doctor can help with about your weight, including alternative HIV meds.
I’ve been taking arvs since 2007/08 and they have been treating me well until recently I started gaining so much wait that I decided to stop taking them a month ago. What will happen to my health?