Bridigette
Bridigette was only five when her life changed forever. When she went from being a happy, loving kid to a child filled with anger. Because that was when her uncle started raping her, bringing her brief childhood to a devastating end.
“I couldn’t even enjoy to live because of that,” she says.
Bridigette endured years of abuse at the hands of her uncle, eventually turning to drugs in her teens to dull the pain. By 18, she was addicted. By her early 20s, she was engaging in sex work to keep up her habit. And in 1994, when she was 26, she learned she was HIV-positive.
“In the ’90s, it was a death sentence,” Bridigette says. “People was dying within months. I thought there was no hope, no way.”
Bridigette didn’t die. But she didn’t exactly live, either. For the next three decades, Bridigette crashed on couches, trading sex for drugs and a place to sleep. She made a few halfhearted attempts to get sober over the years, and when she did, she’d come to Vivent Health and take her HIV meds for a little while.
But there was a key ingredient missing—Bridigette simply didn’t believe she could live differently. Drugs were all she knew, and she couldn’t imagine that life had anything else in store for her. So each time, she would eventually slip back into using.
“If you do drugs, you ain’t thinking about nothing but drugs,” she says. “I was so careless. I was living life on life’s terms, not my own. And when I got HIV, I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna die anyway.’ I just didn’t care. I have no idea how I survived.”
It took a stroke for Bridigette to decide she was ready for something different. She was in rehab again, in the middle of a group session, and suddenly she realized she couldn’t speak, and something was wrong with her hands. She got care quickly and made a full recovery from the stroke, but it was the closest she had ever come to dying, and it flipped a switch in her.
“I wasn’t doing nothing but getting high and half-surviving,” she says. “I wanted to see if I still had a fighting chance. And I knew I had to get conscious of my HIV.”
So Bridigette came back to Vivent Health—this time ready to make a change. She was in rough shape (“I was so skinny I looked like a toothpick with a wig on,” she says). And she was really scared; she had been doing drugs more than 35 years and had no idea what life would look like on the other side.
And she was met with nothing but open arms.
“I was looking crazy, but they didn’t even see that. They welcomed me like I wasn’t even gone. They held my hand all the way through,” Bridigette says.
That included Bridigette staying sober—this time for good, with the support of her behavioral health team at Vivent Health. And it included getting her HIV under control.
“My doctor got me on medication, but I was scared about my bloodwork,” she says. “But then he actually called me and said, ‘I want to let you know you’re undetectable,’ and I was like, ‘WHAT!’ ”
“He said, ‘I knew you could do it. Just keep up the good work,’ ” Bridigette says. “Every time I came back, they told me how proud they are of me—even when I wasn’t proud of myself.”
Meanwhile, Bridigette’s case manager had been working to help her find and pay for stable housing. And at the age of 57, Bridigette moved into an apartment—her first one ever. Not only did it fill her with pride to have her own place—something she never thought would happen—but the stability was key to helping her maintain her sobriety.
“The case managers at Vivent Health are the holy grail of this place,” Bridigette says. “If they didn’t help me get my apartment and pay my rent, it probably would have been over. I would have gone back to where I was, abusing drugs. But Vivent Health, they got me covered. And living here, this is the most peaceful time I have ever had in my life. This is the first time I get this love of being by myself. And I’m crushing it.”
Vivent Health’s dental team gave Bridigette even more to smile about—because they gave her a whole new smile. After years of drugs and neglect, Bridigette’s oral health was in dire need of attention. The repair was difficult; Bridigette needed all her teeth pulled, as well as oral surgery to help dentures fit her palate. But she trusted her team, stuck with her treatment, and came away with a mouth that’s healthy and a beautiful new smile.
“Every resource Vivent Health has, I think I have used every last one of them,” says Bridigette.
She regularly visits the pharmacy to get her medications , as well as the food pantry to keep her apartment stocked with nutritious food and household essentials. Our legal team helped her get her taxes in order.
“I can’t believe I’ve made it this far,” Bridigette says. “I never knew I had this power over my own life. But I didn’t do it myself. Vivent Health gave me the resources to have a place to live, to eat, to have someone to talk to if my head is messed up. There hasn’t been anything that came to me that was too difficult for them. Vivent Health just took me by the hand and helped me.”
“I can honestly say Vivent Health saved my life,” says Bridigette. “They gave me the hope of a new life, and the power for me to take over and take care of myself. And I’m so glad. Because I would have missed out on a whole lot of living otherwise.”