Interview 03  

Interview 03

Age at Interview: 37
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 24
Background: Has only recently returned to full time work. He was diagnosed with HIV as a university student, and in 1997 he very nearly died from HIV-related illnesses.

Brief outline:Has slowly built up his strength since his illness, becoming highly expert in HIV. He did extensive self-development work on himself. He has 870 CD4 cells and currently takes nevirapine, abacavir, and lamivudine with minimal side effects.

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Describes how he reacted to - and tried to deal with - the sudden prospect that he might die.

 



And I said to the doctor at the time… and the ward doctor was my HIV doctor at that point, because he was the head of HIV services and so he did the wards as well. I said, 'What is the scenario here, what is the worst-case scenario here?' And he says, 'The worst case scenario is two months to live.' And I thought okay, okay, what do I do here… And I said okay now get me one of the counsellors, I need to speak to one of the grief counsellors, because when I was admitted, they do it as kind of a standard you know. You had… if you needed to speak to you know a chaplain or a grief counsellor or any of those things… any psychological support that you wanted and I have always said no. I'd been hospitalised before and I have said no, no, no I will deal with this with positive thinking. And I said no, get me a counsellor. And I think it was only the second time I'd ever cried over the situation. I cried when I got my AIDS diagnosis… And I cried to that counsellor and I just have to accept the fact that at that point, it was quite likely that I would die.

It is quite a shift from hope of going out dancing just a few weeks ago…

Ugh hum. To moving into a new flat, and then bang and it being kind of… Yes. I was angry as well obviously. I went back to the anger that I had got when I'd got my AIDS diagnoses. When I talked to the counsellor she asked me how angry I was. And I used some choice words. And it was… Yes, it was, it was for me finally like okay this finally maybe the end. And I did that thing of actually getting in touch with people and saying come and visit me because I thought I don't know, I don't know whether this is going to be okay or not.

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