HIV victim quits drugs, starts family
For many people, becoming HIV positive is tantamount to a death sentence. For Oleksandr Sidletskiy, the diagnosis led him to a better life. The 32-year-old Kyiv man quit drugs. He fell in love and got married. He also had a baby boy.
And to top it all off, both wife and son are HIV negative.
“When I heard I was HIV positive, I understood there was only some time left for me to live. No one knew how much,” Sidletskiy said. “And it was just up to me how I will live the time I have left, to whom I will dedicate my life, which system of values will matter to me. I understood that, from now on, I cannot just waste my time.”
Sidletskiy abused hard drugs for more than 10 years and seemed to have a death wish. He lived only for the instant pleasure of the drugs he injected, leading to his HIV infection, presumably from a contaminated needle. “I didn’t give a damn about anything, including my relatives who were trying so hard to help me,” Sidletskiy said. “For some time, even they were so disappointed in me that even the closest of them had little hope I would change.”
The only person who didn’t give up on him was his mother. In 2002, she sent him to a rehabilitation center that required HIV testing. His positive status completely changed his outlook on his life. “That was the first time I felt a strong desire to live, to make my life meaningful, to make my relatives happy and, finally, to have a family.”
The single man believed that he should limit his prospective choices in a mate to HIV positive women. “I thought those who were HIV positive were absolutely selfish if they did not understand that they could infect a healthy person,” he said. “I was sure they were totally crazy and irresponsible.”
He fell in love with a woman at the rehabilitation center. Thinking he would propose to her, he learned from a mutual friend that she was HIV negative. He was devastated and decided to break up with her.
“I called her. We met. I had planned a long speech, but when I opened my mouth she said she didn’t want to hear anything. She said she loved me the way I was,” Sidletskiy said. “She said she was ready to risk and to give her life and soul for me.”
It turns out that she already knew that Sidletskiy was HIV positive long before they started going out. “There was some event connected to HIV/AIDS problem and I saw him on the stage talking about his status. He was a stranger to me, but I felt his warmness at the first sight,” Oleksandra Sidletska said.
At first, her mother tried to dissuade Oleksandra because of the risk that he could infect her. “But when she saw how much he loved me and cared, like no-one had before, she understood this person would never harm me in any way. He wouldn’t do anything to make me cry,” Sidletska said.
Her devotion strengthened Sidletskiy and prompted him to help others who are HIV positive.
Today, he is feeling healthy and works with HIV-positive children and their parents for the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.
“The most persuasive argument I use is that I help people believe that they do not live with HIV, but it lives with them,” Sidletskiy said. “They should not close their eyes and let it ruin their lives.”
He sees death around him and reminders of his past life.
“When I visit families to supply some humanitarian aid or therapy to kids, it seems like I find myself in hell where all that surrounds me and the child is drugs, a drunk mother and her [drunk] friends.” Sidletskiy said. He calls social services agencies to have the child removed to an orphanage.
His 3-year-old son, he vows, will have a much happier – and healthier – fate.
According to the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, more than 550,000 people are living with HIV in Ukraine. The World Health Organization says the chance of giving birth to a healthy child if the mother is HIV positive is 98 percent. But the doctors say the risk rises if the father is HIV positive. The reason is so-called window period, an interval of three weeks to six months between the time of HIV infection and the production of measurable antibodies to HIV sero-conversion. During the window period, there can be a virus in the HIV negative woman’s body, but there are no antibodies made by immune system which are detected by testing.
“If the woman is HIV positive, we know for sure which drugs to give her for a child to be healthy. But if there is a man who is HIV positive, we cannot tell if he infected the HIV negative woman. Her testing during that time can be negative, though there may be HIV, but as her doctor, I can not write out prescriptions for any pills,” said Oleksandr Kushakov, head of the Slovyansk municipal center of the fight against AIDS.
For more than two months, Sidletskiy and his wife consulted with Ukrainian and foreign doctors before trying to conceive a baby. When it happened, Sidletskiy didn’t know whether his baby and wife had become HIV positive.
It was a time for prayer and bravery, as they hoped to defy the risks.
“Each night I prayed for them both to be healthy,” Sidletskiy said. “Eighteen months after the child was born, when I finally knew he was HIV negative, I was the happiest man in the world.”
And now his time is spent educating, motivating and serving both God and family, he said. Many still wonder how the HIV positive man gave birth to an HIV negative boy.
“It is the greatest gift of all, the greatest miracle of my life,” he said. “I cannot understand it, but I am sure it is a sign from above that moral fortitude and prayer can conquer HIV.”
