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Aged 36-40

Interview 12

Interview 12

Age at Interview: 38
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 24
Background: A gay man of British/Irish descent who works full-time and is in a long-term partnership.

Brief outline:He suffered from severe diarrhoea and peripheral neuropathy while taking an earlier combination of anti-HIV drugs, but he currently takes nelfinavir, 3TC and abacavir with few side effects. He has had to cope with HIV-related illness, depression and mania at various times in his life.

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When facing death he comforted himself that an early death was not unusual in human history.
Print Were you afraid? Yeah, definitely. I mean, well also... an anchor as well, and the anchor of human experience I suppose. And also I was looking for something that provided a structure for the insecurities of life. And that's another thing as well with studying history, was… very aware of how… it was unusual for my generation for me to be very ill in my mid 20s, but it wasn't unusual in the human experience. That only you know… 50 years before they didn't have antibiotics you know. And even, you know I don't… that within my parent's lifetime, there were no antibiotics. Within my parent's, both my parent's lifetime a war was fought which killed significant numbers of people of my age group kind of thing. So it is this sort of thing that you know, we have lived a very unusual… and in sort of human experience, a very unusual… or we've been encouraged and we've developed these set of expectations which have been that illness… that haven't accepted mortality first of all. Which haven't accepted illness… and we have actually grown up with an expectation of health, of happiness and of beauty actually you know. And I mean these all feed into other sort of… I think a lot of people's problems with self esteem as well, things like that you know. But… and it did actually help ground me about that, that how… what I was actually going through wasn't unusual in human experience.

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