I'm HIV Positive

On Monday March 1 @ 4:10 pm, I found out I am HIV Positive.

I am writing this blog to share my experiences and struggles with living with HIV, in the hopes it helps others and helps me in dealing with this life changing event.

When she told me the test came back positive for HIV, I didn't cry, I didn't freak out. I just said, okay. I was in a daze. I knew I had been having unprotected sex, I knew there was a good chance this could happen, but it still shocked me. I immediately thought, what did I do to myself.

While I am thinking to myself, the nurse is going on about how it's not a death sentence, I can lead a full life. Then she tells me I will need to provide a list of partners from January 2009 until now. I'm thinking to myself, oh fuck, each time I came to the clinic previously to get tested, I always lied about how many partners I had and if I knew them. She said in the list to try and provide their names and date of birth or at least there age. Thinking to myself, "date of birth? it will be difficult enough providing a name".

Then she handed me some pamphlets about HIV and one about a local HIV organization. Then she started making doctors appointments for me to see an infectious disease specialist. The first appointment is this Wednesday March 10th. During this appointment I am supposed to give them a list of my partners since January 2009; during this appointment I am going to have to tell them 99% of the time, it was anonymous and I don't know. They are also going to draw blood, to run tests to find out what my viral load is and cd4 tests. Viral load? CD4? Huh? I have been doing a lot of searching on the internet, some of it good, some of it freaking the hell out of me. Viral load is how much HIV is in your blood, it shows how rapidly the HIV is reproducing in the blood. CD4 are cells that direct the immune system but are also infected with HIV. These tests determine if and when an HIV positive person should start taking anti-viral medication.

So, she is talking about Viral load and CD4 and I am thinking what the hell is she talking about. She then asks me how I am feeling, I tell her that I have to go to work now. She is shocked and says "I can't believe you are going to work". Not like I have a choice, HIV doesn't prevent me from paying the bills. So I go to work and I am thinking work will be a good distraction, it will take my mind off things. WRONG!

I work in a call center for a pizza company. I work in the complaints department. This lady calls in angry because we don't have a record of her order. She is screaming at the top of her lungs about how she has been moving for three days and her kids are cranky, and her life sucks, and now her pizza hasn't been ordered. I keep telling her to please stop yelling and that I will be happy to retake the order and send it out with a discount. She is yelling at me saying " have you ever moved for 3 days?, have you?" I told her "yes I have, I have moved a lot in my life I know it's stressful". The next thing she says is "fuck you!!! I can't deal with this, and I hear the phone crash to the floor". Then her husband comes on the phone and says in a concerned tone "hello? what's going on?" I said " I can't deal with this! I am disconnecting this call!". Then I hang up. I am sitting there, thinking about how I was tempted to say to her "have you ever found out you have a disease that can't be cured, and then come to work and have to deal with crazy people like you?". Then I start laughing to myself; I am thinking about the husband and the look on his face. He is probably thinking WTF?, my wife is freaking out, the pizza guy is freaking out, it's just pizza.

Then I get another call, woman yelling at me, because the store won't dice the ham on her pizza. I apologize and agree with her it seems weird and ridiculous that the store won't take 30 seconds to dice ham but tell her it's out of my hands, I'm not in the store, I'm in a call center I can't force them to dice ham. She gets even madder and is using the F word every two seconds, yelling at me about how her three year old can't eat the full slices of ham. I snap and yell back " stop yelling at me!!! and then I hang up on her. Somehow I made it through the rest of my shift - it probably helped that the rest of the people that called were relatively sane, lol.

Today it has been one week since I found out I am HIV positive. I have cried a few times in the last week. It's a lot to deal with, I have a lot of anger towards myself, because I did this to myself. Thankfully I have an amazing friend I am able to confide in and who said where do "WE" go from here.

Tomorrow is my day off, I am trying to work up the courage to go the local HIV organization for counseling and to get more information and then my first doctors appointment is on Wednesday with the infectious disease specialist. I will write about how that goes.

So long for now :-)