This woman from Poole, Dorset, who wants to remain anonymous, is 36 and HIV positive. We will be calling her Kate. She has not yet disclosed her health status to her family and friends as she is still going through a traumatic season of her life.
Although Kate has been living with HIV for the past five years, she says she is still as shocked and angry about her situation as she was when she first got the diagnosis. It is only recently that the mother of three gathered her courage to tell her two daughters. An 18-year-old who lives independently and a 16-year-old girl who is in foster care in East Anglia, due to another family issue which is unrelated to HIV.
“I was already depressed beforehand, but I would say that since I've been positive I've been lower. And I have actually stopped taking my HIV drug tablets a couple of months ago because I just couldn't deal with it, and I stopped taking my antidepressants as well because I just couldn't cope.
“And because you're on the HIV drugs you have to take them everyday because if you don't they can mess your system up. So you've got that fear added that if you don't take your tablets it going to make you ill in the future.”
Kate has not only been suffering from depression following her diagnosis, but she has also once been a victim of domestic violence prior to her infection. Kate recalls how painful it was to discover that she was pregnant after her ex-partner who used to abuse her, infected her. She confesses that she cannot forgive herself for passing the virus onto her baby boy, who is nearly five, and has been taken away from her by the social services. They ‘mercilessly’ put her child up for adoption in London because they claimed she would not be able to cope with the illness and take care of her child. As a result, they left a broken woman behind them.
Listen: Kate finds life bitter without her baby
Kate says she is unhappy with the HIV drugs treatments she is receiving because they make her sick and weak. However, as she attends a local refuge centre on a regular basis, she gets as much mental supports as possible. Even though she admits that she tends to lock herself away from the outside world as soon as she is home where she sometimes feels lonely.
Listen: How Kate's daughters reacted to the news