Friday, 10th April 2015
The number of young men being diagnosed with HIV has doubled in ten years – but many people are ignorant of what it means to live with the condition now. Here, three men in their twenties talk about living with the virus. We'll be sharing each story over a number of days.
Cristian Sandulescu, 28
'HIV isn’t a death sentence. It’s a punctuation mark in the long sentence that is life'
“I was diagnosed when I was 25, almost exactly three years ago. I was studying philosophy of science at UCL and became very poorly, which I now understand was a seroconversion episode [when HIV antibodies develop].
“For weeks on end I would be bed-bound: my body temperature was out of control, I couldn’t hold anything in. I kept going to specialists but they couldn’t work out what was wrong, which was very scary.
“When I did eventually get the diagnosis, it was really disturbing to hear I was positive. I knew nothing about what it’s like to live with HIV. I thought I would probably die before everyone else, I would never be able to have children, I would develop some ghastly diseases – none of which, of course, is true.
“I think what surprises people most when I talk to them about it now is that, being on the right medication, my chances of transmitting the virus are negligible. Studies are coming out which show that, in couples where one partner is HIV positive and on medication which gives them an ‘undetectable viral load’, there are no transmissions whatsoever to an HIV negative partner.
“Since I’ve been diagnosed, I’ve had two relationships with HIV negative people, who were both very supportive.
“My life expectancy is no less than anyone else’s. In fact, there is some data to suggest that people who are diagnosed with the virus in the West can live longer because we are being monitored more closely. We see doctors a few times a year, so they have the chance to pick up conditions which have nothing to do with HIV earlier in us than they would the general population.
“I wish this was reported a bit more, rather than stories like ‘HIV monster goes around and infects hundreds of people’, which breed fear and always turn out to be untrue anyway. There’s still so much to be done on the ignorance and stigma side.
“The last thing many people will have heard about this was the campaign in 1989 [which featured tombstones and the slogan, ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’]. So it’s no wonder they don’t know about the changes that are happening every year.
“It’s like Lord Fowler, who came up with that campaign, said: you wouldn’t expect Coca-Cola to do one advertising campaign every few decades, then just imagine people will know what their product is and carry on wanting to buy it.
“I do know how I contracted the virus but I don’t want to focus on that. If I said, ‘Oh, I got it through unprotected sex,’ you’d have a very different opinion from me from if I said I had it through a blood transfusion, or if I’d been born with it. We need to move on from the idea of good AIDS/bad AIDS. We have to make sure we’re not divided more than we already are.
“How you live with the virus is much more important. I felt a lot of anger about how I contracted it but I let it go. You get older faster if you’re a hater.
“I was diagnosed just before my first year exams. I decided to leave my studies and now I work full-time as an HIV peer-mentor and patient representative.
“A positive diagnosis is not a death sentence, it’s a punctuation mark in the long sentence that it life. It makes you reassess your decisions; it’s a reminder of your own mortality. We’re all vulnerable; we all suffer; unfortunately we’re all going to die.”
Article by Theo Merz; The Telegraph
Original Article can be found here.
