Lifting the taboo I GOT HIV FROM A TATTOO
Nowshe’s challenging attitudes
Asplit-second decision to get a tiny tattoo of a butterfly on her groin has had a lifelong impact for Aucklander Lyn Parent.
For the former model and successful entrepreneur, the tattoo was a nostalgic nod to the name of her childhood home, Papillon, in Paris – but the etching also left her with HIV. At age 32, Lyn contracted the virus at a studio in London, where she was inked.
“I’ve spent more than 20 years talking to doctors and specialists about how I got HIV, and it can only have come from the tattoo clinic,” tells Lyn, now 57. “Although I watched the guy change the needle, I remember there being blood everywhere.”
Despite being told she had six months to live, Lyn has spent the past 25 years carving out a successful career as a businesswoman and activist, marrying, and having two children, François, now 20, and Amira, 17.
In that time, it hasn’t been the physical effects of the virus that have had the greatest impact on Lyn’s life, but the stigma the virus still carries.
“I’ve lost 11 jobs and the custody of one of my children because of HIV,” explains Lyn, who lives in Grey Lynn with her partner of nearly 20 years, Tim Kitchin, 57, and their daughter Amira. “I’m sick of being stigmatised, especially as a middle-class woman and a mother.”
There has been a sharp spike in HIV transmissions in New Zealand in recent years. Last year, 244 people were diagnosed with the virus, the highest number since records began in 1985. Of those, 20 were women infected through heterosexual sex.
“HIV isn’t a gay man’s disease any more. People need to realise that anyone can get it,” says Lyn.
Eight weeks after having her tattoo done in 1992, Lyn became ill. “I had yellow spots on my face, I couldn’t eat for eight days and my temperature rose to 43 degrees.”
She spent a fortnight at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in England, packed in ice and sleeping up to 21 hours a day. “They did every test under the sun and I remember them saying they’d test for Aids,” recalls Lyn. “I asked, ‘Why? I’m not gay. I’m a nice, middleclass girl from a good family and I don’t sleep around.’”
When the nurse returned with her results, Lyn knew it wasn’t good news.
“I could tell by her body language. She walked in and the wooden door slammed. I said, ‘I’ve got it, haven’t I?’ And she said, ‘Yes, start putting together your bucket list – you’ve got six months to live.’”
Lyn laughs now about the fact she had “rob a bank in Milan” on the list.
Instead, she travelled to Australia and then to New Zealand to “get busy living”.
On the way through Los Angeles, she met a businessman from Rotorua, who she would later marry. When she told him she had HIV, he said, “Don’t worry – Magic Johnson has it and he’s fine!”
“I thought I was coming to New Zealand for the rest of my life, to die in peace near the Blue and Green Lakes of Rotorua.”
Cruelblow
The relationship didn’t last and Lyn lost custody of her son François. Despite being told she shouldn’t have children, both François and Amira were born virus-free, but Lyn says the stigma began as soon as her son was born.
“He was the first baby born at Rotorua Hospital to an HIV mum, so the way I was treated was prehistoric. Then I lost custody because a picture was painted of me as a crazy lady who was dying of Aids.”
Since 2000, Lyn has been campaigning tirelessly to lift
the stigma of HIV, especially for heterosexual women.
As well as running her own businesses importing coffee and managing a global matchmaking company, she’s a public speaker with Positive Women, an HIV support group for women living with the virus.
She runs LiveAid Australasia, a free event to raise awareness and money for World Aids Day. On December 1 last year, she ran free testing for gonorrhoea, syphilis and hepatitis C at Freyberg Place in Auckland’s central business district.
She’s also pushing to get affordable HIV kits available for sale in chemists. “Why can a 16-year-old walk into a chemist and buy a pregnancy kit, but not an HIV kit?”
And despite being told she should have died back in the ’90s, Lyn is still busy living life to the full.
After years of separation, she’s close to her son François, who is living with his partner and son in Rotorua. And this summer, Lyn and her partner Tim – a man she describes as her rock – are taking their daughter Amira to London and France to spend time with family.
But first and foremost, Lyn wakes up every day driven by a desire to lift the taboo on HIV.
“I want people to talk openly about HIV the way we do about mental health,” declares Lyn.
“We have the ability to eliminate the virus altogether through acting responsibly, and rapid and readily available testing – so let’s do it.”