Living normal with AIDS: 4 case studies
By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:40:00 11/30/2008
Filed Under: People, Diseases, Health
MANILA, Philippines—Three former overseas Filipino workers and a busy businessman have stopped counting the years that they’ve beaten what could be the ravages of HIV-AIDS.
They’ve survived the gloomy outlook that burdened them when they first learned they had the virus that continues to claim human lives in the millions all over the world.
But then science also continues to uncover new ways for persons living with HIV-AIDS to live productive lives. What was once deemed a death sentence, if confronted with the proper treatment and lifestyle, could stay in the distance, so to speak, until dramatic breakthroughs in science would spell the difference between illness and wellness.
Jomars, 45, was a seafarer who worked with several cargo shipping companies and traveled the world from 1988 to 1999.
He was what was called an “able-bodied seaman.” And as any seafaring man knew, there were sensual pleasures waiting in every port.
In 1999, while in Manila and waiting for his next sea voyage, Jomars underwent the required routine medical examination, including the HIV test.
When he went to get the test results, he was told to wait. No one explained why it was taking some time. He became worried.
The doctor was forthright: Jomars was HIV-positive. His blood sample was taken to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) for a confirmatory test. The result was the same.
“My world collapsed,” Jomars recalls. He had to tell his wife and, later, his parents.
Three months later, his wife underwent testing herself. She tested negative.
“We have accepted the situation,” Jomars says. “For one year I was idle.” He went regularly to the RITM for monitoring and for his supply of free antiretroviral medication (ARV).
From the RITM the road led Jomars to Positive Action Foundation Philippines Inc. (Pafpi), a non-government organization founded in 1998.
Through its programs, Pafpi empowers persons living with HIV-AIDS and their families so that they can “live happy and productive lives in the mainstream of supportive society.”
Jomars, a college graduate, now holds a responsible position in Pafpi and oversees several projects. About 60 percent of the foundation’s volunteers are HIV-positive.
Lalaine
Lalaine, 32, married and with one child, works in a Pafpi project.
She tested HIV-positive in 2000 after she came home from Hong Kong, where she worked as a domestic helper starting in 1996.
“I was already married then,” Lalaine recalls of the first time she flew to Hong Kong. She knew she was a few weeks pregnant but the tests did not detect the pregnancy because, she says, she diluted her urine sample.
In Hong Kong, some people advised Lalaine to have an abortion. But doctors refused to do it because she was already on her sixth month.
Lalaine planned to deliver the baby in Manila, but on the eighth month of her pregnancy she gave birth prematurely. The baby had to stay in the hospital for many weeks.
“I was terminated from my job and the agency told me to make an apology to my employer for breach of contract,” Lalaine says.
Someone took the baby to Manila and Lalaine stayed on in a boarding house before finding a new employer. She needed to earn.
Eventually, Lalaine found a boyfriend, a Nepalese. She says it was not really love: “Kailangan kumapit (I needed to hold on to someone).”
“I was infected by my Nepalese boyfriend,” she says, adding that she has not heard from him since. She didn’t even have the chance to tell him he had given her the virus.
Lalaine says her husband isn’t much of a man, and that he knew about the relationship. In fact, after she returned to the Philippines in 1998, the Nepalese came to visit and her husband didn’t mind.
In 2000, Lalaine was again Hong Kong-bound and had to go through the routine tests. She tested HIV-positive.
Her husband tested negative.
Melo
“I hid for six years,” Melo says, recalling his reaction in 1995 when he learned that he was HIV-positive.
He left Metro Manila, retreated to a rural setting and concentrated on farming. Few people knew why he retreated from view. Even his wife did not know the reason.
But six years after he was diagnosed, Melo realized he was not dying. He thought it was time to go back to the mainstream.
He, too, now works with Pafpi.
A high school graduate, Melo worked in the Middle East from 1988 to 1995. He was employed in a business establishment that sold products for women.
Although married, Melo carried on a relationship with an Arab man. “In the Middle East, a man is not supposed to be seen with a woman other than his wife,” he says. “But a foreign man like me was also not supposed to be seen together with an Arab man.”
And so they always met in secret. “It was an MSM (men having sex with men) relationship,” he says, adding that it was a monogamous one.
Melo came home in 1995 with plans to return to the Middle East. But his predeparture tests decided there was no going back. He was HIV-positive.
He broke the news to his sister but not to his wife, with whom he had a three-year-old baby at that time.
Melo began to distance himself from his wife. She wondered why he insisted on using condoms during sex.
Not long after, Melo went away to live in a farm. Even now that he has returned to the city, his wife is unaware of his condition.
She has not been tested but Melo thinks she must be okay just as he is okay.
They no longer live together and Melo thinks his wife suspects that he is bisexual. But they get along and he has a good relationship with his teenage son whom he continues to support.
Melo now has a male partner who is also HIV-positive. “We use condoms because we might have different HIV strains and we want to prevent cross infection,” he says.
Mig
Fifty-ish Mig recalls: “I went through that stage that many HIV-positives go through, which is to do things we’ve always wanted to do, to splurge.” To embrace and enjoy life because time might run out.
In Mig’s case he traveled to see friends and the world. “Alone sometimes,” he recalls.
He could afford the travels. He runs a business that is earning well because of his creative talent. He lives in a big house in a gated subdivision.
When the Philippine Daily Inquirer visited, Mig was already in his well-pressed, self-designed, color-themed “working clothes.” He was ready for a busy day.
Diagnosed HIV-positive in 1994, Mig says he could have had the virus years earlier. “I had itchy skin ailments that would not go away. I went to many dermatologists and they could not tell me what was causing them.”
One doctor finally suggested that Mig be tested for HIV. Mig went to an HIV-AIDS support center to arrange for a test at the RITM. The verdict came two weeks later.
“I was not really surprised because I had an active night life,” Mig confesses. Openly gay, he had sex with men and had multiple partners.
He has no idea who infected him.
The first person he informed was the doctor in his family. “Sure, there were tears, but blame was never in the picture. My mother said, ‘We’re going to fight this.’”
He also told those he had sex with to have a blood test.
Immediately after Mig was diagnosed, he took medicines for HIV, and his skin rashes vanished.
“I learned that rashes were common symptoms,” he says, adding that the RITM doctors were baffled because he probably had been HIV-positive for so long but he seemed OK.
“My T-cell count is always below 200, but then perhaps I have a mild strain. I had blood tests every three months. We called it a blood donation,” he says, laughing.
The drug cocktail at that time had a lot of side effects, Mig recalls, and there were so many pills to swallow. Then came the ARV drugs, which come packed in a few capsules.
Mig is now in a monogamous relationship. His male partner is HIV-negative.
Medication and information
It is clear that Pafpi was born out of the positive outlook of its volunteers who were once in the dark but moved toward the bright.
“We were a small group, but we wanted to make a difference. One of our goals is to give care and support through medication and information,” says Mig, a founding member of Pafpi. (Its president and executive director, Joshua CT Formentera, was abroad while this article was being written.)
Mig and Pafpi volunteers travel abroad regularly to project their advocacy and bring home the latest on HIV-AIDS.
Pafpi networks with different groups working in the HIV-AIDS sector. It oversees various programs and projects supported by international donor agencies.
Pre-departure orientation seminars are among the Pafpi volunteers’ activities.
Drop-in centers
Jomars, Lalaine and Melo are on call for the seminars. Sharing their knowledge and experience has added meaning to their lives.
Pafpi has put up drop-in centers in Manila and Iloilo and promotes the creation of local AIDS councils. It offers counseling services, hospital visits, burial arrangements, legal referrals, support group activities, assistance in benefit claims, medical referrals and information.
It was instrumental in the drafting of The Manila Manifesto of Filipinos Living with HIV/AIDS, which promotes their rights and their role in a supportive society.
The Pafpi office and drop-in center in Manila are at 2613 Dian St., Malate. Call 5284531 or e-mail pactionphil@netscape.net.
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