Three countries, 6 weeks and a blog that's terribly overdue...

After spending a month travelling around Thailand, without a map, guidebook, plan or clue, not thinking about anything yet pondering everything at the same time, I have now arrived in Sydney, Australia and am ready to re-join the (virtual) world.

Since my blog post went out a few weeks ago lots of people have got in touch with me and within the space of 48 hours I literally went from feeling isolated and alone to feeling like one of many who potentially felt the same way. It was such a relief!

Before flying to Bangkok, I passed a week in London, where I met with some other magnets for the first time ever. The first one I met was Pete (all names changed), the negative pole in his marriage, who told me he had never spoken to anyone openly about his and his wife's situation. I think for both of us it was so empowering to realise that another shared similar experiences, fears and frustrations throughout the journey that comes with being confronted with HIV in this way. For example, following my husband's diagnosis I went into research-overdrive, trying to find out as much as I could and passing the info on to my husband. Unfortunately my husband's needs were different to mine and, understandably, got quite fed up with me trying to 'force-feed' the info.. Pete had been doing a similar thing with his wife who didn't appreciate it either.

I think we both realised in our discussion that we were trying to cope with our feelings of utter helplessness by arming ourselves with as much information we could possibly gather. For me it was as if the more I could know about HIV, the more I could feel in control of it. Of course, since I was still an 'outsider' in this experience, this wasn't really enough and so, by sharing it (which seems like the logical thing to do), I attempted to make it a shared experience. But I was often frustrated to realise that my husband did not concur with this sentiment. In fact, he got quite irritated after some time, which baffled me.

Rachel, the second person I met in London and who is the positive partner in her relationship, made it very clear that she didn't appreciate her husband's efforts in this regard either. She made it very clear to me and her husband that she needed to deal with things in her own way, even if it meant not talking about it, not reading about it or discussing it. In fact, she looked me straight in the eye and said: "This whole mothering thing with constantly providing information and reminding about taking meds- NOT COOL! Stop it!" So there. Duly noted.

As I am writing this I am in Sydney, Australia. Earlier today I met with someone from an NGO that also have a focus on families and serodiscordant couples as well. It was a very stimulating and interesting discussion, and it was good to hear how things are similar and different in Australia (plus I got some fab travel tips for South America as an added bonus).

This trip is bringing me into contact with lots of fascinating people and I am learning lots about them (and even more about me) every day.

Next up: One week Auckland, New Zealand, then a month in Argentina (feel free to get in touch!).

Greetings from down-under,

Magnetic Mama

Hi everyone!

Okay, so this is me, Magnetic Mama, welcome to my blog! I am very excited to join the list of TheBody.com bloggers, and I think I might bring a slightly different perspective to the amazing bunch of people already out there. I am the negative i.e. uninfected half of a HIV magnetic couple. In my eyes (err...ears) 'magnetic' sounds so much more positive than serodiscordant because it implies attraction rather than some kind of clash (that's not to say I don't have any of those with my hubby...)

I am fairly new to this form of communication but I have somehow managed to make a Mini-Mama 'WeeMee', which kind of looks like me *burstwithpride*. The reason I am not showing my actual photo is to protect my husband, who is not open about his status and I don't want to inadvertently disclose it by proxy.

Who am I? Well I'm a 27-year-old woman, a psychologist, a good friend (at least I think so), an enormous fan of good food, movies and endless chats about everything and nothing. I currently live in South Africa with my husband, I am German by birth and I lived in the UK for a long time (confused yet?).

I have been working for a South African NGO that provides paediatric HIV services to the public, so basically I’ve been working with children, and adolescents as well as their caregivers infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Now that that's out of the way, what is this all about? Well, in about a months time I am embarking on a rather ambitious, exciting and frankly a little terrifying trip around the world, spanning 10 countries in 6 months all on my own. Along the way I am hoping to meet up with other couples or families in my situation or with whoever is interested in connecting with me, and here I will write down my experiences, thoughts and undoubtedly some mishaps as well.

So, if you live in Thailand, Australia (Sydney), New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Peru, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Canada or the US (especially along the Route 66) and you'd like to get in touch, that would be lovely.

Look after yourselves and each other,

Magnetic Mama

travel bug

I am leaving South Africa in a few weeks and slowly but surely I'm preparing myself. Over the past few months I have been back and forth around what focus to to put on my trip. First of all I know that I need some time out. The question is just from what?

My work, sure - working with sick kids is very intense and then, so am I, so that's a bit of an emotionally destructive combination. My life? In the past 3 years I have almost lost and then married my husband, started and abandoned aPhD, started 2 new jobs, both in the HIV field, battled a bout of serious depression and exhaustion and had a constant and at times unhealthy obsession with starting a family. Plus, I feel the constant pressure of needing to know what I want. Unfortunately I don't. At all. If I do make a decision, I second-guess it.

So it's no surprise that I abandoned planning my trip, finding other magnetic couples to connect with, writing this blog and even deleted an entry, thinkin it wasn't interesting or worth it.

Anyway, now that the trip is drawing closer and is becoming more of a reality, I've finally got the travel bug! And somehow this is infecting (bad pun, I know) everything else, in a good way.

A few weeks ago an old friend got in touch with my husband (a story I'll elaborate on another time) who's in a similar situation to ours. They live in the UK and she is infected while her husband is negative. Since my trip starts off on that little island, I'll try to meet up with them, of course.

Shortly after via Facebook I got in touch with a 'magnetic family', also from the UK who have adopted a little HIV positive girl. The mum and I have been exchanging some emails and it's so great to share concerns and experiences!

And today I was asked if I would like this blog to be carried on TheBody dot com, what more could I ask for. I look forward to hearing from and getting in touch with magnetic couples and families all over the world.

So it looks like I don't have to know everything in advance, some things will just sort themselves out. Hmm, I think this will be a great motto for my trip: Who knows tomorrow? (Noone, so why stress - I'm feeling uncharacteristly zen right now)

Excited and not feeling so lonely,

Magnetic Mama

Surrounded but isolated

This map shows the world according to HIV prevalence. It was presented by the UK Telegraph with this caption:

HIV prevalence
The size of each territory shows the number of people aged 15 to 49 with HIV. The highest prevalence exists in Swaziland, where 38 per cent of 15 to 49-year-olds carry the virus. More than a fifth of people in Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, within this age range, carry HIV.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/3109042/The-Atlas-of-the-Real-World.html?image=11


So this is something quite ironic. I am surrounded by HIV every single day. On any given day I speak to at least three to 20 people infected and affected by HIV. I counsel them, I offer support, I can give hope and sometimes provide that feeling of not-being-alone-in-this.

Yet somehow I feel like I am. Virtually no one I work with knows about my husband's status/ my magnetic situation. And to date I have never met a single person who is 'in my situation'. Sure, I've counselled negative parents of positive children, and even a few couples where one partner is infected and the other is not. However, working at South African government hospitals, the issues that concern my clients are usually very fundamental at the time they see me. Will I survive? How can I afford to bring my child/myself to the clinic every month? I do not even have enough food to fill my stomach, how on Earth can I get 'healthy' food? We need to have more children, what do I do?

So far I have not found any support groups in Johannesburg or even South Africa that cater for people in 'my situation'. How can this be? I live in the country with one of the biggest HIV prevalences in the world and there are NO groups for negative spouses? No support groups for people on medical aid?

I sometimes feel that since not only do I have a roof over my head, good health care for myself and my partner, as well more than just the bare necessities, I do not qualify to feel pain, to be sad and angry and qualify for some blerry support! This is clearly something I need to get over. I just wish I would find someone to bounce this stuff off. Anyone out there who feels the same?