I was with my husband the day he got the news. It never is as expected, you know… being told that your partner has an illness that will eventually lead to his death.
It was New Years Eve when my soul mate and the father of my five year old son, was admitted into the hospital. He had had a persistent cough for over a month now and had suddenly started getting night sweats, then had become so overcome by weakness that we knew that something was wrong. He went in on New Year’s Eve and came out on the ides of March a very different man. The doctors and nurses were all giving me this pity miss poor thing look and I was finding it strange. Being a foreigner in England, one does not normally get looks like that. I still had no idea, after the doctors kept my husband in the hospital for a series of tests until two days later when he was moved upstairs to the respiratory ward.
My husband was a big guy when we met. Built like a boxer, or a doorman. He was handsome, charming and aggressive. He made me feel safe and sometimes very unsafe because of his trivial preoccupations with female flesh. As his wife I put up with more than I could and it came to a head when I was nine months pregnant and we fought like two animals over his most recent indiscretion. But hardships had tied us together and we had come out of each situation renewed though always more battered than the previous occasion. I knew my husband loved me and so I stayed by his side. My son was born out of that tempest and he is very much like a small power ranger for want of more adult television since he came into our lives.
So when the doctors came into the secluded room to say, I am sorry Mr. Campbell but you have tested positive, it was natural that I would say “Positive with what?” They looked at me with that deeply pitiful look and said “HIV”. I started groaning, you know that deep, filled, ancestral moan that was beyond tears. They then added “You have been diagnosed with PCP, an opportunistic infection which occurs in the stage called AIDS.” Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! The name that ricocheted in my head or in the pit of my stomach – wherever thoughts occur. Of course you go through the, how, the who, the when, the me too and the what about my son issues and at the end of the tsunami you come out at the other side.
My husband and I are what they call “sero-discordant”, and that’s a euphemism for two people whose bodies are now at odds together with a deadly virus in between. Life has been difficult since then but not in the worst way as you can imagine. My husband is out of the hospital, and looks more like himself than before he went in. He is almost back to his fighting weight and takes his “for life” medication on time every time. Sometimes we look at each other in disbelief that we are still able to look into each other’s eyes. You see my husband’s PCP led to his organs becoming sceptic, his lungs filling up with water, his body more or less wasting away. He was in intensive care unconscious, being fed through a tube, then on the third day he rose again. No – there is no comparison. But we both know that God has given him another chance and YES we do believe, we would be ungrateful not to. How do you let go of someone you love?
You don’t. My husband is my hero. He is a fighter and for as long as forever, I will never let him go.
