Learning to Live with HIV/AIDS

About fifteen years ago, Terry Kasdorf came down with flu-like symptoms. He went to his family doctor who could find nothing conclusive, so the doctor tested Terry’s blood for HIV. After waiting for six weeks his doctor phoned him to tell him the results had come back “fuzzy.”

“You could have knocked me over with a feather,” he says. “I cried for the rest of that afternoon.”

After about 5 years of working 12-hour shifts at a warehouse and taking advanced computer courses, the flu symptoms returned. His new doctor treated him with an antibiotic to which, Terry had a near-fatal reaction, causing seizures. The doctor also tested him for AIDS.

“This time the results came back within 2 weeks and the doctor asked to meet me at a clinic on the Friday of that week,” Terry remembers. “While in the waiting room, I started reading the posters on the wall that were all about needles and being careful about the spread of HIV. A shiver ran down my spine and I knew what the doctor was going to say but I waited to hear from the doctor first.”

The doctor confirmed that the test results were positive: Terry had HIV. Terry responded with little emotion. This had been looming over his head for so long that the test just confirmed what he had secretly felt for years.

His family supported him right away, visiting him in St. Paul’s hospital, taking turns making the long commute from Surrey to downtown Vancouver. Terry was plagued with seizures that left him blind and paralyzed on one side.

“Even my tongue was affected much to the joyful relief of many an ear,” he jokes, revealing a sense of humour that gets him through many a tough day. But Terry credits the Lord for giving him strength and carrying him through dark times. “My blindness was such that it was like looking through thick plastic. The seizures caused my brain to be starved for information so it made up its own entertainment and I hallucinated like crazy. I knew that these apparitions couldn’t be true and I prayed that the Lord would give me the strength to get past this lie that I was being tormented with.”

It was during his stay in St.Paul’s that Terry came back to the Lord after some 20 years of trying to do it on his own. One afternoon, while watching a baseball game on TV with his brother, Terry felt like scales had fallen from his eyes. Suddenly he could make out the players and the teams that were playing.

“At first everyone thought I was just joking around but when I started describing the action of the game they were amazed as was I,” he says.

The doctors at St Paul’s were able to try new medications on Terry and though he has a whole “cocktail” of drugs he needs to take in order to remain healthy and stable, he says the Lord has blessed him and gives him daily strength to live with all that, adding happily that he is “still alive and kicking!”

Terry has also been a part of an MCC support group for people with HIV/AIDS. Terry found the group very supportive and helpful, adding that in the group, he didn’t feel so isolated, finding support from others who were in the same boat. But Terry has been unable to attend lately because he has no way to get there.

Transportation to and from support group meetings is just one way that you can help someone like Terry get the support and care he needs as he lives with this disease. For more information on how you can help, contact Bridget at hivaids@mccbc.com