MY MISADVENTURE

This blog was submitted by one of our clients. He is a GIPA volunteer blog writer. It’s his first blog and we wanted to thank him for sharing his story! For more information on the GIPA position available please check out http://www.aidscalgary.org/getinvolved/gipa.cfm

THE BREAK UP
HIV what can I say about that topic. Well the only way to talk about it is to share my experience with all of you. And the only way to describe my misadventure is to start from the beginning.

Once upon a time... No I am totally kidding, this was definitely no fairy tale story, however I totally wish it had been. You know, one of those stories where the prince saves the day, gets the girl, and lives happily ever after?

13 years ago I thought I was in love with a beautiful girl and she was in love with me. We had it all - wonderful jobs, going to college lots of amazing friends and quite a beautiful life at that time. I know what you are thinking; sounds like a fairy tale, well I thought that as well. To top it all off we found out on New Year’s Eve of all days that she is pregnant and we couldn't have been happier. It was a straight man’s fairy tale.

9 Months had passed without a hitch and everything was going swimmingly well for us. It was just perfect - until a few complications with the birth. It was nothing life threatening but nonetheless still extremely stressful. This caused us to have a horrible detrimental break up. Don't get me wrong we are best friends now and have a truly amazing healthy daughter, but I am jumping ahead a bit. It wasn't always that way.

GETTING HIV
I was completely devastated by our break up. I like to call it "THE BREAK UP OF 98". It was like it was a natural disaster or something. Pathetic I know but that is how I saw it.

I had decided one fateful night that I needed to go out by myself and have some me time. Well I spent the night bar hopping and getting completely hammered. My misadventure took me to a gay bar where I was hit on a few times, well more like a lot of times as I am not completely flawed with looks and personality. Then I got the OFFER to go home with someone from the gay bar and by this time I was so drunk that I was in no position to argue. I would have gone home with an alien at this point in the night. No I am kidding. I thought to myself that night what the heck don't knock it until you try it. That used to be the phrase I lived by. I say that because before having our daughter I had gone skydiving and bungee jumping and caving as well. I am getting off track here, back to my one fateful night. I had now tried it and I liked it, jeepers I sound like a Katy Perry song lol.

In case anyone is not really following the story right now I am talking about the S word o.k. I'll just say it anyways "SEX" and not just any sex, sex with a man. And you have to understand why I am talking like that because when I was younger I grew up in a house where you must watch baseball and football. Whenever we had family dinners it was the women cooking and the men would eat go in the rumpus room as my grandmother would call it and lie on the floor and stick their hands in their jeans and watch baseball or football. So that is why I had never tried anything with the same sex and I had a girlfriend and child, a dog and a white picket fence. So old-school I know!

FINDING OUT
Now back to "THE BREAK OF 98". Before we became friends my ex and I had a battle for custody in the courts. I am not going to go into detail about the ordeal that I had gone through however I am going to say this. She tried to keep my daughter from me at first and I was not going to stand for it so I sought a lawyer and took her to court. You may ask what does this have to with my finding out I am HIV positive? Well it has a lot to do with it. In fact it is a key part of the story, I want to say heart of the story but I don't want to use the word heart as to me that is a positive word used in that text.

The stress of the trial (I'm kidding again I was trying to make the story more exiting like a John Grisham novel) had made me extremely ill and I could barely make it to the court room but with the help of my mom supporting me in court I made it through. Everybody had thought I should go to the hospital but I being the stubborn person I am made it very clear that I will go to the hospital as soon as I had joint custody of my daughter. The outcome of that was that I did win joint custody of my daughter.

I went to the hospital right after and found out I had pneumonia. They treated me for my health problems and took some blood samples from me. Later in the week I had gotten a phone call from the hospital asking if I could come in immediately and discuss a few things. I had a gut feeling what the problem was and I ignored the docs for months. They kept bugging me to come in so finally...

My mom, a friend of the family’s and I went in to see what the problem was. I remember waiting there and thinking it couldn't be what I thought it was. That could never happen to me. Well it did happen to me and it could happen to anyone of you if you are not careful or maybe it already did happen to you and I am right here with you struggling with this long term health problem.

After we had left the hospital with the detrimental news I remember standing beside my mom’s red Dodge Ram truck and I just started to cry and cry. My mom came running up to me and hugged me so tightly and I said to her being the non-selfish person that I am "I am so sorry". She said to me "You have nothing to be sorry for and don't ever apologise for anything, we will get through this".

I was living with my sister at the time, my mom had dropped me off at home and I came in to the dimly lit basement suit to find my sister sleeping on the couch. I sat down beside her and started to cry again this time I didn't have to say anything she just knew and she got up and just hugged me and cried with me.

I have many, many more experiences with dealing with this heart wrenching disease, but I will save that for another time. I have learned one very important lesson here. Never go out and use drinking as a way to cope with your problems at hand, it could lead you to even greater heart ache than what you had started with. One other thing that helps me deal with my stress is humour and laughter; if you don't have that then you don't have anything. I have 12 years more to talk about but that will be in a second part blog that I am still working on and thank you all for taking the time to listen to my story.