This has been her morning routine for the last 10 years since she discovered she was HIV positive.

"I cried for about two weeks, uncontrollably, it was like somebody had died," she said of her reaction to the test results a decade earlier.

Jamie, not her real name, is from a small aboriginal community in the Maritimes. And, as Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week winds down today, she agreed to discuss her experience as long as her name and birthplace were not disclosed.

The Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network says native people represent only three per cent of Canada’s population but almost 20 per cent of people living with AIDS in Canada. And the problem is getting worse as injection drug use, needle sharing and unprotected sex are on the rise among aboriginal youth.

Monique Fong, executive director of Healing Our Nations, the Atlantic First Nations AIDS network, said one aboriginal person is infected with HIV every day in Canada.

"There are more and more people using injection drugs, and they’re starting really young. There have been young people, 12 years old, sharing needles."

Ms. Fong said young aboriginal women are at a high risk of becoming infected, especially those aged 16 to 24.

When Jamie was 26, she had a four-year-old son at home. She had a miscarriage with her second pregnancy and only then found out she was HIV positive because of mandatory testing.

"I felt wonderful. I was active, I wasn’t sick. It was just everyday normal life."

Jamie found out that her T4 cells count, or "helper cells" per unit of blood, was very low. An average, healthy human has a T4 count of between 500 and 1,500. The doctor said her viral load (amount of HIV virus) was off the charts.

Jamie’s first concern was that her husband and son might also be infected, but she quickly found out they were negative.

Her second concern was how many months she had left to live.

"Instead of planning your life, you’re thinking about planning your death," she said.

After 10 years, many people in Jamie’s community still don’t know she’s HIV positive. Although she is active in spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS, as a wife and mother, community members don’t suspect she’s infected.

Ms. Fong said the stigma and negative attitudes about HIV/AIDS in the aboriginal community are so high that people often refuse to be tested, partly because they’re embarrassed and partly because they don’t want to know the truth.

The Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network says the ratio of native youth infection to that of non-aboriginal youth is almost three to one and injection drug use is the source of infection in more than half of AIDS cases.

After 10 years of living with HIV, Jamie still isn’t sure how she got it in the first place.

"I did have unprotected sex before my husband, and I had been date raped."

She could never pinpoint how she contracted the virus and one day, while discussing the possibilities with her husband, her son piped up and said, "I wish you’d stop it!" Jamie looked at him in shock and he continued, "Well it’s not like you can give it back."

At that point, she realized it was time to move forward instead of looking back.

"I read somewhere it’s not what life gives you, it’s how you deal with it."

( ryoung@herald.ca)