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that it would mean I’d never be able to have children, strange thought to have because, as a gay man, there’s always the possibility you may not have children. But it’s that loss of opportunity.”
At the time, Lloyd was working for the Student Union at the University of Bradford. Having known he was gay “from as soon as I knew what the word meant”, he became sexually active during his late teens and ensured he had regular health checks.
It was after one of these that he had received a call from the clinic asking him to return immediately, and found himself in that tiny consulting room.
He said: “Looking back there were signs but I had no idea. A week or two after I must have contracted the infection I had the most awful fever. My sheets were sodden and every bone and muscle in my body hurt.
But we’ve all had flu like that so I didn’t think of it in an HIV context. And then I had a cough for about six months. I remember the university vice chancellor saying, ‘I can always tell you’re coming down the corridor because I hear your cough first’.
“I went to the doctors, they tested for a chest infection and asthma, but I never thought it might be HIV.”
So the diagnosis, when it came, was an enormous shock to the system.
Lloyd was too young to remember the HIV and AIDS awareness advertising campaigns that terrified a generation in the early 1980s.
“But I do remember growing up with the idea that HIV was something you die from,” he said.
“I remember being at the beach with my mum when I was little and going into the public loos and there was blood all over a sink, and Mum saying: ‘Don’t go near, there are very dangerous diseases in blood.’ So there’s always been that spectre.
“I knew HIV wasn’t a death sentence any more, but my knowledge was probably 10 years out of date – and that was 10 years ago. I thought that I’d survive if the odds were with me but I would be wedded to a regime of drugs with nasty side-effects.”
But it was not like that. Lloyd was put on a one-a-day antiviral drug with minimal side-effects. And six months ago he got a new drug with no side-effects at all. Life expectancy with HIV is now just three years shorter than without.
HIV is officially “undetectable” in Lloyd’s body and he is unable to pass it on to anyone. But 10 years ago his first concern was to tell former partners so they could be checked out.
“The difficult thing is you have to trace back your former partners and then it’s how you tell them,” he recalls.
“I went around trying to tell them in person. One man, about a week or two later, was quite angry. He said, ‘Why on earth didn’t you ring me straight away?’” But I hadn’t wanted him to be on his own when he found out, even though I didn’t think we’d done anything unsafe together.”
Lloyd has never again seen the man he believes unwittingly infected him, but refuses to harbour resentment. He said: “If you go around feeling angry it’s not going to help. Of course I’ve felt frustrated with myself. But you have to live your life and that’s not going to be helped by second guessing what I should have done. But you can help others by making people aware.”
Which brings us to why Lloyd has now chosen to speak out so publicly about his condition. Until yesterday just two of his closest colleagues in parliament knew he was HIV positive.
“I did consider whether I should have talked about it when I was first standing as an MP in 2016, but it was a short election campaign and I wanted to talk about how to transform Britain. Now I’ve been an MP for two years and it’s good to be open. December 1 is the 30th World Aids Day and it is almost 10 years since I became HIV, so it felt the right time.”
Is he not worried about how some people might react – particularly in the bear pit of modern politics?
“You can’t live your life worrying what the haters will think,” he said. “In an ideal world this announcement wouldn’t mean anything, but until then you have to have outriders who put their heads above the parapet.”
Just one MP has previously told of living with HIV, Labour’s Chris Smith, shortly before leaving politics in 2005.
Lloyd said: “It’s important we have new voices talking about HIV otherwise people will think it doesn’t affect people now – and that’s a sure-fire way of meaning it kills people. If you get the support you can survive normally, but if you don’t then it will kill you.”
Living with HIV brings a personal angle to his devotion to the NHS. He says: “In the US the treatment is £1,565 a month. So if we’re creeping towards an American health system, that cost burden – and getting the insurance for it – isn’t just a political discussion.
“It’s me thinking, ‘I could be dead if things go the wrong way.’”
Now he seems more determined than ever to make the best possible use of the life sustained by the NHS.
“It’s not just about being alive – it’s about using that life to make things better. That’s what I feel I must do.”