Yeah I mean it empowers you by ohexpressing this feeling the way I feel. They have passed through the stages I’ve passed through and yet he is making it… why do I have to hold back?

Then I try to emulate them and do whatdo those challenges they are doing, which I have, I just think that oh, because my, because of my illness because of my condition, I’m not able to do that, so I try to push myself to do those things.

One other thing is to get the support, because sometimes some of the things that you feel you cannot discuss with your doctor sometimesI would say specifically, say things like maybethings which might be caused by the side-effects. If you have a relationship and then you sometimesthe medication sometimes makes you loose your sexual feelings. So such things, it’s always best to talk to other women, just to find out from them how they feel.

You know, when you are married or maybe you have a relationship, after taking medication at some stage you just feel you are not as active as you used to be. So you don’t whetheris it the medication, or is it the HIV itself? Or is it just the depression of being HIV? So when you talk to other women it helps a lot, because that’s when you will discuss this whole issue. If someone has experience of the same thing, that’s when I will have courage now to go and approach your doctor and tell him about it.

So I started to use drugs more than I had, and not just recreationally, but just for every day. And I was using Speed, and Cocaine just to get through the day. I had never used this before, and I was using it as an anti-depressant’ You know to try and function, so stupidly then you know continued that. And friends were concerned they got very concerned because I wasn’t acting in the right way, and I was acting badly you know. Just, just unreliable, irresponsible and so I then started to see I was recommended to see a psychiatrist at [hospital] that was through my consultant and did. And I just changed all of a sudden. First of all I had to deal with the fact that I was taking the drugs, which I did. And they treated it as if I was an alcoholic. Which was brilliant because I can’t understand’ I thought yes, I am taking drugs but I am fine you know. I’m thinking well, you’re not fine you idiot you know. You’re just doing these drugs, why do you need to do this you know.

I’ it helps me to be able to talk about it, but some people do find it difficult to cope with I think. I haven’t had anybody’ no hysterical reactions, nobody’s run away, or not wanted to know me any more, ever. But some people have been more, more distressed than I might have anticipated I think. Of course in those days, people did expect you to die, and indeed most, almost, most of our friends did die, it was appalling carnage, I was very lucky.

As a Christian, we always say prayer’s the answer. That’s, that’s one of the mottos in Christianity, to say prayer is an answer. I think when you pray, usually you feel relieved that you’ve talked to somebodyBecause you’ve talked to God. You haven’t talked to anybody, but you’ve talked to GodHes above all, and hes going to give me an answerI’ve got my communication with God.

You know, communication line is open. And I say, ‘God, you are in control of everything. And that’s also what faith in God talks about. That when you have faith in God, you leave everything in control to God. Even sometimes when you know it’s beyond your controlIf youWhen you know things are beyond your control, you just say, ‘God, you are in control of everything.

The difference is actually being there and saying, yeah I remember how it was. That’s how it was and this is what it has become, which is a damn sight better. So hang in there and you’ll be fine. Because the rash will go away, the headaches will stop, the night sweats will change. Because until you’ve had night sweats, and I’m not talking about the odd bit of perspiration, I’m talking about wet soggy sheets that you cannot possibly sleep in. If you’re in a double bed, you could always roll over the other side, but if you’re in a single bed it means you’ve got to get out of bed, change the sheets. And who needs that at 3 o’clock in the morning when you are hurting, when you’re tired and you just want to die. And if you’re living by yourself, well it wo’ what’s the option?

I suppose where what came out is that, is that… I had to take charge of, you know of my health. I had to take charge of treatment decisions, but also I suppose I had to take charge in other aspects of my life like my, my relationship, my sex life and, and all that. So it was in that way that it that it helped. I think, somehow, I reached’ it was, it was a fixed period of three months of therapy and somehow by the end of the three months I reached a point where I was ready to, to make a decision. I think a part’ perhaps the way in which it helped is that, is that it was a structured process in a way, because I knew there were, I knew I had these three months. I was seeing the the therapists once or twice a week and I can’t remember now how, how often it was, but there was, it was, it was a structured process. And I, I, knew at the end of it my aim was to, was to make a decision about treatment. That’s right, I had two aims. One aim was to make a decision about treatment and the other aim was to make a decision as to whether I needed to, to look into doing longer term therapy. And the and at the end of the period the decision about treatment is that I would go on treatment, and the decision about the long-term therapy is that I didn’t feel that it was essential for, at this stage.

I mean I think for the first time in certainly a year, and probably a little bitpossibly a little bit longer, possibly, I really viscerally feltsad at my diagnosis. And then got over that. I let out a lot of feelings, I suppose, that I hadn’t let out. And that enabled me to move on a little bit. You know, to, to acceptance.

So I think I’d got stuck in this sort of knuckle down, all hands on deck, sort of thing. And then counselling helped me to sort out priorities in terms of what I wanted at that moment. What I wanted out of life in the future, what I want out of life in generalAnd the thing that changed it was this thing. But that wasThat, and the sort of feeling issue and the direction.

And the sort of coming out issues from childhood. And the sort of self-confidence issues from growing up. And sort of, sort of repressed anger.

And also I realised yeah, actually I do have things to feel sorry for myself about. It’s actually perfectly alright for me to be furiously angry about the way I was treated at school about having HIV. You know that these are but I mean how unfair it is as well it was this you know. I had a number of friends I would talk to’ I was talking to about that time and you know they’ve had loads of unsafe sex and they hadn’t got HIV and I did! And then there was this sort of thing it always happens to me doesn’t it. I got bad luck. Actually it can be very seductive place to be, self-pity actually.