I don’t feel OLD old, ‘cause I’m still feeling young, because I’m still here, you know. I feel really grateful that I don’t ponder on, oh, you know, I’m turning into this old woman or anything. I used to be offended when, say 10 years ago, when people would stand up for me in the […]
It’s very difficult to meet positive people, because mostly, they’re still too afraid to come out and disclose their status to almost anyone. And I really would like to have a positive partner. I don’t ever want to infect anyone with this thing – because although it’s not a death sentence anymore, it still is
I think it’s harder now to live up to the expectation that you’re well. People think that HIV has been finished. That the treatments are great and everyone’s fantastic. Because “the drugs are working so well now.” “We’ve solved the issues.” “There’s no more side effects.” “Yeah, it’s all done.” Um, no it’s not. And
By the end of ’99, I’d really been living with HIV for over a decade – my health was going downhill rapidly. I was doing a PhD thesis. I was telling people, check the hard drive in case I die, check the hard drive. Everyone was saying, go on the medication, Susan. I saw all
It’s strange to say: I was living in Sydney in the 1980s when the newspapers, every week when they came out, they had dozens of people dying from HIV. I didn’t know of any of them, and so I must have been moving in a completely different circle of friends. Whereas other people, they knew
My partner started to show symptoms of AIDS in 1983, and I talked to my doctor, who said, “Look, this is all happening in the United States. It can’t possibly be.” But in fact it was. So over the next two or three years I worried, but without confirmation. He got very sick at the
It was the 15th of January, 2002. I had a needlestick injury from one of my HIV patients. I’m a nurse, a retired nurse. Once I’d finished with my patient, I got in touch with my superiors. I was taken to hospital. I had blood tests. I was put on prophylaxis straight away, within two
For me, I had to make that distinction between “Me the Caregiver” and “Me the Person.” I couldn’t see myself as the person in the bed, because if I saw myself as that person in the bed, I wouldn’t still be here now. I never thought when I started in this area that it’d be
