Chinese couple 'fearless' in HIV fight over 13 years

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A Chinese couple who have been living with HIV for 13 years said in their annual ritual progress note that their lives have become more arduous in 2017.

“We strongly stuck to our lives, just like spawning salmon running to die,” Xiao Xue said in the article published on World AIDS Day on Friday. But she added that she and her husband were “fearless.”

Xiao Xue contracted HIV in 1995 from a blood transfusion, after suffering from postpartum hemorrhage during a pregnancy. The good news was the couple had a healthy first child, a girl.

Xiao Xue was told she was infected in 2005 when she got pregnant for the second time. Her husband Liu Jie was also confirmed with the infection.

Her son was born on November 24, 2015, the first healthy baby born in Shanghai with the help of a program that prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission.

The couple celebrated the first birthday for their son in 2006. /Courtesy of Xiao Xue

The couple has been publishing an article every World AIDS Day in the past 13 years to record their changes in the preceding year.

An update on her son’s schooling is contained in Xiao Xue's report card this year.

“Failing the test of a key middle school, my son was enrolled in a normal one,” she wrote. “We couldn’t dedicate ourselves into his education since we put too much energy on curing the disease. We had to blame ourselves instead of him.”

According to Xiao Xue, Liu Jie’s condition keeps getting worse. “His legs were too numb to move due to Parkinson's disease," she wrote. "I had to help him get off bed for more than four times each night. That is more frequently than last year.

“I had to take care of my husband and deal with all the daily chores. But I am an extremely optimistic person.”

She called herself as “the only healthy person with working ability in the family,” since her own state of health was improving.

Liu Jie and his son had a trip to Jiangxi Province in 2017. /Courtesy of Xiao Xue

The family’s story has touched Chinese online users.

“I can see the love towards life from the respectable couple. I wish they could continue fighting,” Jingzhidehe commented under the press report published by Shanghai-based website thepaper.cn.

“The reason why they didn’t choose aborting [their son] might lie in the persistence of life,” Cattleya-vine said on the same website.

Xiao Xue doesn’t know when their lives will end, but she is clear about how to live them. “I will enrich our days to make them become poems.”