Zandela's Story

I met Zandela for the first time on Friday.  She was fairly young, with two boys...her boyfriend passed away last month from AIDS.  He had contracted HIV from one of his many other girlfriends and given it to Zandela.  Rebecca and I talked to her for a few hours and listened to her talk about how she was going to get better, and get a job so that she could make a better life than the one she had for her kids.  She wanted 450 Rands in order to get ARV drugs that might help with her HIV...so Rebecca and I talked to the nurses.  They informed us that she had cancer as well, so the ARV wouldn't help.  In addition, her morpine had run out and she was in a lot of pain.  She then showed us her wounds...she had lumps filled with pus or some sort of liquid all down her thighs and into her vagina...they kind of looked like a mushroom fungus.  They are blocking the flow of all her liquids to her legs.  The nurses then left and so did Rebecca and Zandela asked me when she would be getting the ARV drugs.  I tried to explain to her that the nurses had told me that the ARV drugs wouldn't help so we were going to try and get her morphine.  She asked what could be done about the cancer, and I had to tell her the nurses said nothing would help...Zandela said, "What happens to me now?"...I could only give her a hug.  How do you tell someone that they are going to die?
Rebecca saw her again yesterday and she has deteriorated so much.  We are going to see her now but she has very little time left.  I'm trying to organize for her kids to come and see her, but there's a lot of politics at the Dream Centre and the nurses insist that she must stay in isolation...Rebecca and I are the only ones that are allowed to see her right now.  The cancer has spread all the way up to her chest and she can no longer sit up.  I can only imagine the pain she is in.  Yesterday she said that she was going to die without having seen her kids for seven months.  It was really upsetting.  Hopefully we can try and fix that this week but she hasn't got much time left...