WHAT WE SHARE!!!
My name is Chimkamso. My Father is HIV positive and could not bear any child to avoid transmitting the disease to us. He has been on retro viral drugs for as long as I can remember. I have two siblings and I’m the oldest of them all.
My Mother had learnt of my father’s predicament a year after their wedding. They had agreed that my mother will finish school as she was in her finals which would take at least one year before they can start raising children. My Parents were so in love with each other. What my mother didn’t understand was how my father cheated on her during their first year of marriage because the love making between them was so intense, and the usually had sex twice everyday. She underrated my father’s sexual libido.
It’s been three days and the itching in mother’s private part had increased tremendously and discomforted her. She used her one hour break period from office to visit the staff hospital. The Doctor conducted series of test on her and found out that she had STD. She was dumbfounded because she has never cheated on father, not even while the dated. Her spirit was low as she was filled with thoughts, could father be possibly cheating on her? She cringed at the thought. It had to be, because, it was just the two of them.
When she got home, she was crying and waiting for him to return from work. Father, a cheerful fellow, happily came back and was shouting ‘’Nkem’’ because that’s what he calls mother. Mother began shouting on hi, calling him all sort of names and threw her test result at him. He picked it up with his jaws open and his countenance changed how could he not know that he had infections that serious. Mother asked him how long the affair has been going on and who the other woman was. He said her name was Sandra, that he met her during a workshop their office conducted.
Mother was devastated and insisted that the both visited the hospital to get tested and get treatment. Father was crying, apologizing and begging mother not to leave her. Mother was hurt but she remembered her vows at the altar ‘’for better or for worse’’ and she forgave him. At the hospital, mother tested negative except for the Candida that was diagnosed earlier but father tested HIV positive. In that instant, life seemed to flash out of my father but the doctor sensitized them and prescribed retro viral drugs for him.
All these time, mother stuck with father and continued to shower him with love and affection. During the third year of their marriage, father insisted that mother should look for someone to get her pregnant to enable them have children. Mother refused at first, but had to oblige him because she wanted children that will console her and care for her the way she has been caring for father. Mother got pregnant by another man and that was how she had me and my siblings. Father treated us like his own despite his deficiency and I respect him greatly. I am a medical doctor now and my family is the most valuable possession I have. I love my parents and siblings regardless of the story we bear in our hearts.
CHIOMA HENRIETTA OKOLI
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