Social media influencer Gena Tew has celebrated another weight gain as her health continues to improve following her AIDS diagnosis.
Tennessee-based Tew has been documenting her health journey in a series of social media posts since going public with her diagnosis in March 2022.
In one TikTok clip, shared on June 11 and viewed over 14 million times, the model showed herself struggling to get up from her bed. Her weight had plummeted to 65 pounds, and muscle atrophy had weakened her legs, she revealed.
Her health has bounced back in recent months, she said, with her weight increasing to more than 100 pounds, but Tew continues to deal with other problems, including an inability to walk unaided and blindness in one of her eyes.
Tew recently took to her TikTok account to excitedly reveal that her weight has continued to trend upward.
“Guys, I went to the doctor today and your girl must be eating good, because I was just 105 pounds a couple of months ago. I was trying to keep it there, but your girl is 109 today,” she said in her video clip.
Tew, who recorded the video while sitting in a car, then pulled herself up by her hands to give viewers a closer glimpse at her physique.
Wearing a pink ribbed dress, she said: “Look at them thighs, y’all!”
However, while Tew was celebrating her weight gain, she admitted that there were limits as she said she was getting “chub-chub” around her abdominal area.
“I need to calm down. I don’t want to be too thick,” she told fans. “I just want some muscles, because I’m getting a little chub-chub. You can’t see it, but I can see it.
“Ain’t nothing with me wanting to stay skinny. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. But I need to chill out on my eating, because I eat too much. Progress!”
Tew told her TikTok followers back in November that the CD4 count in her blood had been boosted as her health continues to improve. The count is a measure of the number of CD4 cells, a type of immune cell attacked by HIV.
In a video clip, she said: “I just had my recent bloodwork done, and as you know… my CD4 count was 112. So now it is 159. So I think in the next three-and-a-half to four months, I’ll be over 200. I’m excited.”
She continued: “As my doctor sees it, they say on paper they will see it as HIV instead of AIDS.” Once her CD4 count surpasses 200, she will be classified as living with HIV rather than having AIDS, she explained. HIV typically turns into AIDS in approximately eight to 10 years if left untreated, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Tew, who remains unable to walk unaided, said in October that the viral load in her blood means that she cannot transmit HIV to another person.
“I am undetectable, you guys. That means untransmittable,” she said in a TikTok video. “With that being said, people are asking me, ‘Are you going to marry or have a baby with someone with AIDS?’ I don’t need to marry somebody with AIDS. They don’t have to have AIDS. That means I cannot transmit it to the other person.”
Tew went on to say that her potential partner could take precautions, such as going on a medicine called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which reduces the chances of contracting HIV through sexual intercourse or while injecting drugs.
“I can have a normal life. Let’s get rid of that stigma,” she said in her video. “AIDS isn’t a death sentence. I survived—I’m a survivor.”
Thanks to antiretroviral therapy, HIV/AIDS patients can suppress the viral replication within the body and block transmission to others. The patient will subsequently have such a low level of HIV in the blood that it becomes undetectable in conventional analysis.
Social media influencer Gena Tew has celebrated another weight gain as her health continues to improve following her AIDS diagnosis.
