Living positively with HIV How Aled found his feet again

Most of us have heard of HIV – human immunodeficiency virus – but don’t know what it is like to live with HIV in 2020. Ahead of World Aids Day on Tuesday, December 1, we are sharing the stories of people in Bristol living with HIV. Today we tell Aled’s st

The advancements in medicine are enormous and people living with HIV who are on effective treatment cannot pass the virus on. The medication suppresses the virus to an undetectable level Aled Osborne

WHEN Aled Osborne was diagnosed with HIV in 2012, he was left speechless.

He started crying and images of ill looking, frail people flooded his mind – as well as the question ‘Am I going to die?’.

Talking about the weeks leading up to being diagnosed with the virus, Aled said: “I was seriously ill for two weeks – I had severe flu-like symptoms where there were points I could not get out of bed, eat or drink.

“I remember one time I went to go to the bathroom and I couldn’t hold myself up and fell to the floor, then had to crawl the rest of the way.

“I called my GP who diagnosed flu and told me to ‘ride it out’.”

Aled continued: “A couple of months later I went to my local sexual health clinic for a general checkup and full sexual health screen and, five days later, I got called to go in and speak to one of the medical team.”

“I didn’t think of HIV at that time. “I got ushered into a room and that is where I was told the HIV test had come back as reactive. For the first time in my life I was speechless.

“Tears fell and I remember having a lot of negative imagery flooding into my mind. Old, ill-looking, frail people, tombstones and the question ‘Am I going to die?’.”

The 32-year-old said he was then transferred to the HIV Specialist Clinic at Southmead Hospital, adding HIV nowadays has no impact on his life.

Aled said he takes one tablet a day – a combination tablet which means there are three medications in one pill – and that he goes to the specialist clinic twice a year, but that is all.

He said the treatment – which is called anti-retro viral therapy or ARVs – results in much less traumatic side effects than it once did.

“I am living positively with HIV, I am not HIV positive,” he continued. “I still get the odd remark or negative reaction but that doesn’t affect me anymore and is a lot less common now than it was.

“I contracted HIV through unprotected sex but my question is why does it matter? We don’t ask someone how they are diabetic or how they got cancer.

“This is one question people shouldn’t really ask someone living with HIV as it is filled with implicit bias.

“Because I am a gay man who contracted HIV through unprotected sex, is there an implication of blame on my part, should I have known better? Are you judging the level of my ‘promiscuity’?

“Surely all that matters is that I am living with HIV not how I contracted it?”

Aled said for some members of the HIV community the circumstances around contracting the virus could be traumatic if they didn’t consent to it.

“From the data we know that about 90 to 95 per cent of new transmissions are acquired through sex so we already know the answer to the question before asking,” he added.

“For me, the most common misconceptions around HIV are that you can catch it through saliva, that it only effects gay men and this sense of people feeling like they have the right

to know I am living with HIV and how I got it and that I must have led and had a promiscuous and risky sex life to have acquired HIV.”

Aled, who lives in St Annes, said there was still stigma around HIV as in the UK it is very un-British to talk about sex.

“So to then talk about HIV, which historically people thought to be as a result of gay sex, there is further stigma there,” he continued.

“Luckily, I have never lost a job or my family as a direct result of my HIV diagnosis but I have had many messages and comments said to me surrounding my personal relationships

“Questions like ‘You shouldn’t be having sex’, ‘Why are you looking for sex’ and ‘You don’t deserve a relationship’ have all been said to me.

“For me personally 100 per cent of the stigma I have received has been from fellow gay and bisexual men.

“The questions they ask me about my status always come across from a place of judgement rather than concern.

“I also think there is an element of fear – I am a physical representation of the thing they have been taught to fear.”

Aled – the Cabaret Stage co-ordinator for Bristol Pride and also a drag queen – said the fact he has HIV is not a secret, adding he wants to be as open as possible to normalise HIV as after all it is just a virus.

However, he recognises that is his choice and that he was in the minority, adding the main reason many more people are not open is because of the stigma surrounding HIV.

He said, earlier on his journey, he found disclosing to a partner he had HIV nerve racking and that it is always quite a scary thing to do.

“Nowadays I am open from the start so am only embarking on relationships with people who already know,” Aled continued. “It has very little impact on my relationships.

“The majority of the time if there is a problem it is because of a misconception or stigma from the partner.

“The advancements in medicine are enormous and people living with HIV who are on effective treatment cannot pass the virus on.

“The medication suppresses the virus to an undetectable level.”

Aled, who works as a fundraising and campaigns manager at Brigstowe, said a new Governmentbacked public health campaign to inform the public about what it is like to live with HIV today would improve life for people with the virus.

Speaking of working for Bristol’s Brigstowe, a charity which supports people living with HIV, Aled said: “I never accessed Brigstowe or their support services when I first got diagnosed or thereafter.

“I joined Brigstowe as a volunteer as I felt like I had dealt with my diagnosis pretty well and I really wanted to help others.

“I realised that I had been okay but that’s all I was, okay. I could be and deserved to be so much more.

“And now I work for them and spend every day doing a job I love – I am exactly where I am supposed to be and can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

World Aids Day is marked internationally on December 1 every year since 1988. Brigstowe said it aims to remind everyone that HIV has not gone away and there is a vital need to increase awareness, reduce stigma and raise vital funds.

Brigstowe has planned a weeks’ worth of free virtual events to mark World Aids Day, open to anyone, and tell people to watch out for some Bristol landmarks turning red on December 1.

For more information on these events and how you can support someone living with HIV visit the Brigstowe website www.brigstowe. org or text BRIGWAD 5 or BRIGWAD 10 to 70085 to donate £5 or £10.