Case study: Sophia
Sophia is originally from Zambia and moved to the UK as a teenager. She is now a lone parent of three and a full-time student. She was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1996.
Before I was diagnosed, I was working as a health care assistant at a hospital. I loved it so much. I have a passion for nursing, a passion for caring. I've had it since I was a child.
But when I was diagnosed, all of my motivation just left. It was during one of the ante-natal check-ups, they said I would need a blood test for HIV. I didn't think anything of it, they'd taken blood before and hadn't found anything so I was totally happy. After two days they called me in and they said that I was HIV Positive. I confronted my husband and he told me that he had some kind of one night stand with a woman in Africa when he was visiting his father there. I just felt like the world has collapsed around me. I said to him - 'Why did you have to ruin my life, my child's future?' He just said, "I'm so sorry, so sorry, forgive me." He begged for forgiveness. But we are now divorced.
I had to stop work, because I was thinking like- 'I'm a patient now, I can't look after another patient.' And the nature of the illness ... I can't be a nurse injecting people in case I prick myself.
Since then, I've been on housing benefit, incapacity benefit, disability living allowance. Then I decided I had to do something to increase my opportunity to go back to work. For me this is so important, although I'm getting old now, still I have to achieve that, I want to do that. I think maybe I'll live a little bit longer. So I decided to go back to college, and applied for a student loan. The housing benefit came to assess me and said they had to stop it because now I'm a student and getting the loan. How am I going to pay the bills? There's the electricity bill. And the rent, the council tax.
My little boy he's always running out of school uniform and I'm always buying shoes for him, three weeks later, they're worn out. Money to eat is always a problem. You are going to eat chips as an option as you have no means to give a healthy diet. I try hard to at least put a fruit and a vegetable on the plate but I fear because these things have become very, very expensive. It's very, very hard meeting the daily needs. I can't go in the streets and start begging.
I'm moving forward. Once you're qualified nothing will stop you making a move, it's something I control. I'm in my last year at university now and I feel happy but also feel at the end of this am I going to get a job? Is there a job there? We hear so much about companies shutting and people being made redundant.
Posted on 11 October 2010