Commandments of Diagnosis

A guide to your responsibilities as an HIV positive individual. 

Being diagnosed with HIV can be the most terrifying, stressful, anxious, depressing moment of your life, but that doesn’t mean you get to stop being an adult. 

Imagine how you feel, or felt, when you were told the news.  Do you think anyone would want to feel that?  Absolutely not!  And I, for one, wouldn’t wish it on anybody. 

Once you wrap your head around that fact that your life isn’t over, you need to contact the people you have had any sexual contact with.  I don’t care if it was only oral, with a condom, or if you were dressed up as superheroes, you NEED to tell EVERYONE.  Making up excuses so that you don’t have to tell people your diagnosis is a cowardly way to avoid confrontation. 

There are different ways of going about it.  In NY, where I was diagnosed, the health department had a guy who’s job it was to contact the people I could tell him and then I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I decided to do it personally, but I’m sure you contact the health department in your state and see if they have someone who can help. 

If you decide to do it personally, like I did, be realistic.  You’re going to be dealing with a lot of emotions from these people.  Only one person I told actually asked me how I was doing.  Every other guy was freaking out, and I understood.  Just make sure you keep it to facts. 

For example, “Hey there’s something I need to talk to you about.  I got tested the other day and it came up positive for HIV.  Please go get tested ASAP, I’ll go with you if you’d like.” 

Try your hardest not to apologize.  I’m pretty sure I did, but in hindsight, they don’t get an apology from me.  I didn’t contract HIV on purpose, and would never wish it on anyone else.  They may blow up and get really angry, that’s normal.  Stay calm and give them space.  Tell them how you feel too.  They aren’t the only one with an overload of emotions. 

When people make excuses to avoid telling people about their diagnosis, they are promoting the spread of the virus for absolutely no good reason.  Find the strength inside you to deal with the situation like a responsible adult.  Otherwise, you may be condemning a lot of people to hear the same news you heard. 

Lest we forget to be open about our status with sexual partners henceforth.  Condom or no condom, undetectable or not, TELL THEM BEFORE YOU HAVE SEX.  Honestly, it won’t change your sex and/or dating life THAT much.  With some education, a lot of negative guys are ok with sleeping with and having relationships with positive men.  If they don’t understand and are afraid of it, or judge you based on your status, then honey, they weren’t worth it anyway. 

Make sure you know who you’re having sex with.  Don’t just assume that because they know your status that it doesn’t matter who you sleep with.  Ask them too.  People don’t like to ask questions and I don’t get it.  If I’m going to sleep with a positive man, there are some things I want to know.  What medicine is he taking? Does he seem like he’s a very heavy drinker or drug user?  I tend not to trust that men who are alcoholics or drug addicts will take their medicine regularly, and therefore are putting me at risk for a strain of HIV that may be resistant to a certain drug, worst case scenario, MINE. If you just want to have sex without all of the investigation, I suppose your best bet is to just make sure there is a condom involved.

Well that covers my rant for the day 🙂 

Have a lovely April, folks! ❤

Vegan Dan 🌱

HIV Boot Camp

Being someone who is open about their HIV status brings a lot of questions, usually daily, and can make me feel like a broken record.  Just incase someone who is negative is stumbling upon this, or someone who has HIV and is still learning or newly diagnosed, I figured I would put some common questions and answers in one spot :).

Let’s start with ettiquette.  Please, for the love of all things holy, INTRODUCE YOURSELF.  I’d really appreciate a conversation starter before you decide to barrage me with questions and scenarios.  Get to know me a little, let me get to know you.  Nothing is more rude to me than seeing a message from someone and the first thing they say to me is, “How’d you get HIV?”/”Who gave you HIV?” Or some other personal inquiry without knowing anything else about me.  Don’t forget, I am not a virus, I am a PERSON with a virus.  It is not something that defines me, it’s just a small part of me.  I know that sometimes curiosity is overwhelming and you just need to ask questions, and that’s totally awesome because I’d love to educate people instead of letting them continuing along with ignorance regarding HIV, just be polite. Manners go a long way :P. 

Second, remember that I am not, in fact, your personal HIV-radar, nor do I have one!  I do not know if you got HIV last night from whatever act you committed with a man you don’t know.  I don’t care how well you explain the scenario, I still won’t be able to tell you whether or not you got anything.  Please just go get tested, and on a regular basis.  It’s really the only way to know.  I know it’s scary to get tested.  No matter how sure you are of being negative, you ALWAYS have doubt while you wait for the test results.  I may not know what your status is by listening to your sex stories, but I will go with you to get tested.  Going alone is terrifying, all you have to do is ask if I don’t offer beforehand.  

Next, for those of you who are newly diagnosed, or just felt too overwhelmed to remember, here are some HIV basics.  The very first thing to remember is that it’s not a death sentence.  The first two things my doctor told me were that my life expectancy was shortened by only about 6 months compared to the average HIV negative person, and that if I wanted to have children of my own, I still could.  

Upon diagnosis, you will find out a few things.  Your Viral Load, CD-4 Count, and Resistances.  The viral load is how many copies of the virus are in 1 milliliter of blood.  If you don’t know how much that is, it’s a very small amount of blood.  Like, really small.  One teaspoon is 5 milliliters, so if you can imagine one fifth of a teaspoon, that’s one milliliter. Some people have viral loads up to or over 100,000 copies when they are diagnosed.  That’s a lot bro. The viral load is what needs to be treated with medication. 

CD-4 count is a class of your immune cells, also known as T-cells.  These guys are like the generals of your immune system.  They boss the other immune cells around and tell them where to go, but go with them and fight alongside them.  The more you have, the stronger your army.  

They also test for drug resistances when they do initial bloodwork.  This will tell them if you’ve got a strain of HIV that won’t respond to a certain drug.  For obvious reasons this is important for treatment options.  

Now once treatment is started, the goal is to bring the viral load down to what is referred to as undetectable.  That means that there are less than 20 copies of the virus per milliliter.  Some doctors are now referring to it as the new negative because the transmission rate from an undetectable person to a negative person was 0 in a 4 year study of serodiscordant couples.  Good news for people who want to date someone with a different HIV status than themselves.  

Now the CD-4 count fluctuates on its own depending on whether or not your body is fighting something or not, but typically as your viral load goes down, your CD-4 will go up.  Everyone’s body is different and will have a different number as their average but typically it’s 400-600ish.  

Quick side note: a CD-4 count of 200 or less is considered AIDS. 

Let’s be clear here, AIDS is not a virus.  AIDS stands for Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.  It is caused by HIV, but is not itself a virus.  It means that the immune system has been weakened to the point that it is difficult to fight off any kind of illness, even simple bacteria.  AIDS is not very common in the U.S. because of the advancements in HIV treatment.  Remember the difference and don’t ask me if I have AIDS, it will make me think I look sick or something.  

For all of my HIV-negative readers, we need you to be a voice for us.  Unfortunately the way that society/medicine approach the topic of HIV is to scare the negative community by telling them how horrible the virus is, but then turning around to the HIV-positive person newly diagnosed and reassuring them that they will live a long healthy life and not to be disheartened.  This is a large part of why there is so much stigma against HIV positive people.  They are terrified of it and take out their fear on people who carry the bug.  I’m not trying to say that people should just not care if they get it or not, I’m just saying, it’s not something to fear.  Be smart, be safe, be cautious, but don’t give it so much power that you live in fear from it and ridicule people who have it.  There is a lot of ignorance regarding HIV out there.  The more people we have educating, the better.  At the very least, send them to this blog where they can read a bit about it. 

Hopefully this is helpful to at least one person out there 🙂 I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! 

All my positivity, Dan 😜