OF HOPE AFTER SHOCK CALL I thought getting HIV from lover was a death sentence but now I have a new lease of life

had HIV and that I had been diagnosed too. She looked at me and said, ‘Mummy, you’re going to die aren’t you?’ I said ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to live a long and healthy life’.

“Of course she struggled with it, and that is natural. I had to educate her and the wider family about how HIV no longer kills everyone.” Sue says her condition did not put her off dating – and she remarried last year.

She goes on: “If I liked someone I’d simply have an honest conversation with them. I told my husband I was HIV positive early on and he said okay and we spoke about it and what it meant. It wasn’t easy but it’s something you have to disclose. I had two partners between my ex dying and my husband and they were fine once they realised I couldn’t pass on the virus.

“Of course there are people who will walk away. One person told me he valued his health too much to be with me. This is why education is so important.”

Sue now works as a Positive Voices advocate for the Terrence Higgins Trust, educating young people in schools and universities about HIV and AIDS.

She says: “I don’t want anyone to go through what we went through. The aim is to stop transmission but also remove stigma surrounding the condition.

“I want my daughter’s generation to grow up with a different view of HIV. The diagnosis changed me.

“Discovering I could live a long life with the condition meant I wanted to tell others that was the case. I gave up my job in retail and started to work with Terrence Higgins. I’ve never looked back.

“When I was first diagnosed I felt suffocated by it because I was scared and isolated and afraid of what people might say about me. But my life has been empowered by what I do in the community.

“It’s given me a new lease of life. This weekend is very poignant because I lost someone very dear to me and I feel grateful because he found the courage to tell me.”