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Personal stories - Ange
‘Have you looked in the mirror?’ the GP asked me. I thought he
must be a bit mad! I had only just managed to drag myself from
a bed I’d been lying in for days, too sick to move. Where would
I even have found the strength, let alone time, to look at myself
in the mirror?!
As it turns out I looked quite yellow and he suspected I
might have hepatitis. He asked me to go for a blood test at
the hospital. This was way back in 1992 and I was a final year
student at Manchester University. I never went back for my
results as I was doing my exams, felt better and moved back
to London. My medical records were transferred to a new GP
who in turn called me to the surgery, confirmed that I had had
Hepatitis B and suggested I go for a test to ensure that things
were ok, and then suggested I go for a second to make doubly
sure that all was well. I did as I was told. Weeks later, he called
me back to the surgery. I remember I went with my little sister
and when I was called in, I took her with me but he said I
should go in alone.
I thought nothing of it. As soon as I sat down, he told me that I
should go for an HIV test. I think the blood must have drained
from my face because he said, ‘you look very pale.’ What
did he expect? He had just told me to go for an HIV test, no
information, no discussion! I sat there in silence while he wrote
on the piece of paper that I was to take with me to Whipps
Cross Hospital instructing them to do a blood test for HIV.
I remember looking at it and seeing the word HIV written on
it. I took it, picked up my little sister from the reception, and
walked home.
I hid the piece of paper under my bed and went to the local
library to look up hepatitis. I never went for the test. After a
couple of weeks (in those days it took about that time for the
results to come back), the GP wrote to me. I remember the
letter said something along the lines of, ‘I strongly suggest you
go for an HIV test’, with the ‘strongly’ underlined in red. I got
so scared, I took myself off to the hospital the next day. It was
not an easy day. After two weeks, the GP rang me and asked me
to go to the surgery. I never went back. So I never really found
out my results from him. However, from then on, every time I
read a newspaper or watched TV there always seemed to be
something about HIV, as if reinforcing the message that I must
be positive. I lived with uncertainty for about six months, then
I thought I’d be better off finding out for certain. I went to a
local hospital where they did pre and post-test counselling.
This time I am glad to say that I went for the test and I was
much better prepared.
Around the same time, my brother had just disclosed his HIV
status. He was quite unwell and spent long periods in and out
of hospital. He must have had every opportunistic infection
going. He had Kaposi’s sarcoma, meningitis, fits and TB. He sadly
passed away a year later in 1994 from PCP before I had a chance
to disclose my status to him.
It was a difficult time for me, though one of the first things
that gave me the strength to carry on was the fact that I got
confirmation of my diagnosis in the same week that I got the
offer of a job as an information officer for one of the then
Regional Health Authorities. I decided I might as well take the
job and keep myself busy while I waited to die. I think it was
one of the best decisions of my life. Since then, work has been
a great source of strength for me. I also decided quite early
on that I had to find a way to cope with my diagnosis. Either
I could choose to be bitter and twisted and blame whoever
infected me, or I could make the most of whatever life I had
left. I chose the latter and to this day, I appreciate each day
that I am alive. I do what pleases me, within limits of course,
and make absolutely no apologies for it!
If you would like to read more stories like this one you can subscribe to Positively Women magazine or click here for more stories online. |
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