HIV

And she says, 'How are you doing?' You know, 'You're here to find out your result and everything.' And say, 'Yes.' And she's just going… flick through the file like 10 minutes. Maybe she didn't find… I, I looked so happy, I was so excited. You know, everything's… Is… I tell my… I convinced myself everything will be fine. 

And I wasn't expecting anything. So she was just going through, over and over and over again. Again and again and again. I asked, 'Is everything Ok?' She say, 'Yes, yes, I'm just checking a few more details, so I…' Then she put the file down. And she said, 'There's… The test come positive.' I was happy. I… Positive in term… I take it different way. So I thought it's good, isn't it? Yes. Positive is good result. 

She said , 'No, no, no. Your HIV test is positive.' 'OK. But…' I was so panicked. I panicked. I can't understand exactly what she trying to say. HIV positive. Positive in my terms is good. Because I never know anything about HIV or AIDS anything.

I thought she disseminated the news quite well. That's what I thought. She, she was quite calm with it. She didn't, she didn't panic. And she, she was quite empathetic. You could see it in her eyes. She was feeling for me as well. And she was, she was quite good. She held my hand. And I just looked at her. And then she… Eventually she… We… She kept quiet after that. 

And she said, 'Do you think you want to talk to anybody?' I said, 'Not at the moment. I don't feel like it.' Then she said… She did tell me also about the available services, you know. After a while she did talk about the available services that… the counselling services in that are around the hospital. 

And she, she did tell me I've got to think about it, which people I do want to talk to, or to tell. To disseminate the news. And I thought that was quite good. I, I… At that time I don't think I cried. I just, I just… Well, I was just too numb. I just looked at her. I just wanted to be left alone…

I suppose it's drummed into you [sigh] in nursing, or it used to be, that you didn't go off sick unless you were very sick, unless you were really ill. Otherwise you, you come on duty. I, I was able to… to sort of do that because having been in the Navy that was the sort of discipline we had in the Navy. So I was able to carry that on really. 

So I used to go into work on my dying knees sometimes, but but it was always instilled into you that you don't take time off unless, unless you're really ill. And I couldn't come to terms with the fact that I'd looked after…. my speciality I suppose was the terminally ill. I couldn't come to terms with the fact that this virus was threatening my life I suppose. 

I couldn't come to terms with the fact that I was now a patient and that I had a potentially fatal illness. Maybe I didn't want to, maybe it was denial, maybe… I don't know what it was, but, but I was still in, in professional mode I suppose. In fact, I gave the nurses and the doctors hell for quite some time because... and then in the end I had to admit, and I used to say to them, 'Look, I'm the patient now, I'm not a member of staff', because it worked in reverse. Where you get the doctors and the nurses not actually telling you the whole story, because they think you should know it already. 

And that used to infuriate me, because I'd say, 'Well look, I've come to the… I've come to the realisation now that I am a patient, I'm not a member of staff any more.'

Then the following morning they came and they told me that I was HIV positive. It was very bad moment for me. Very bad, because I didn't know that I was HIV positive. I was just thinking maybe it's just TB, it's common in…. every way. I feel really hopeless. 

I just feel, knowing, you're told you're HIV, the next thing you just feel that you are like a grave, you're waiting to die. That's… what, that's how I feel. So I as so depressed I couldn't even bother to think about…. I mean anything. Eating no, washing no, even talking. You just feel it's better to die quick, before I suffer much.

All I could do is replay in my mind how I had contracted HIV. I was seeing my partner for nearly a year and he wasn't aware that he had it. I had been tested yearly and was fine until February of 2000. 

By July of that year I was infected and by late August I had gotten mononucleosis but it still didn't occur to me that anything was wrong until my partner began showing symptoms of shingles and his doctor told him it was very strange for him to be in his early thirties and have shingles. 

He was told that he should be tested for HIV and when he found out he was positive then I instinctively knew I had contracted it as well. Testing wasn't hard for me - I just knew to myself that I had gotten it. The odds were in favour of me being positive, so that's what I prepared myself for. 

The first response wasn't to go, 'Oh my God, argh!' It was to say, 'Well, at least I'm a, a white gay middle class man in a developed country.' You know, that really was… I think the second year of my diagnosis was really then thinking about feelings. And I think a pattern in life had been to over-rationalise… As a, as a sort of coping mechanism, maybe. 

And also just because, that's the way I am. But the second year was much more about connecting with my feelings about me, anyway generally. And my feelings about life.

But also about HIV diagnosis. And sort of actually… Rather than just saying, 'Oh well, shit happens. And it's… You know, it is shit, but I'll get this, this, this and this out of it.' And I've rationalised, rationalised, rationalised. Just thinking… Actually, for the first time since telling a couple of very close friends, sort of getting, yes, a bit upset about it. And a bit angry about it.

You find that, if you compare with men, women tend to sort of look inside themselves you know, inside, say well you know, it's their responsibility they are, they are positive. You know that's the nature of women. They try to embrace that concept, and even if they are sort of frustrated or… you know with the an, with the anger, but it's something which they want to express internally. 

And this is demonstrated in many ways, sometimes maybe getting closer to God or something, you know. Because it's something they accept and want to do something about, yeah. And that's the nature of women which is, this is totally different from men. 

When men are diagnosed, at the point of diagnosis, the first thing is to deny. Basically they start looking perhaps 5, 10 years ago. Where? Who was supposed to be responsible? You know. So they forget about how they behaved sexually or what, but they just want to, to point at someone else.