Overcoming the stigma of HIV

Overcoming the stigma of HIV

There are many unique and often heartbreaking stories of people living with HIV. Dr Eric Glare, who has lived with HIV for over 14 years, is a former molecular biologist, ironically working in the area of HIV research at one stage.

Eric became positive in the early ’90s, contracting HIV during a long-term relationship which lasted 13 years.

A man of science, Eric has a PhD in asthma genetics. He said his life has been a -œwhole heap of contradictions, growing up in a religious cult in rural South Australia.

-œI don’t know how old I was when I realised I was different because of the church, but then I was different because of my sexuality. Then I went to the city and went to uni and even that made me different because in the gay community, someone who came from the country, raised in a cult and was a scientist, was different again.

Eric says he -œkind of knew he was gay at the age of 11 and came out when he was 22 with his first boyfriend.

He has had a strained relationship with his family ever since. Last Christmas was the first time his family was together since he left home, which Eric described as a -œreally big thing.

-œAs time goes on it’s getting better, I suppose … but they don’t really ring for my birthday or anything like that.

-œI would ring up and my father would pick up the phone and he wouldn’t say -˜hello’, he would call out my mother’s name and say, -˜it’s for you.’

-œThen I worried that when I was talking to her she might be getting in trouble with my father or the church, he said.

Eric’s story is basically a story about stigma, and the ways the HIV safety message can crumble around the edges over time so the virus can strike even the most aware.

He met his (now ex) long-term partner in 1990. It wasn’t until five years later they both realised they were HIV positive after Eric took a test -” three years after what he now realises was a seroconversion illness.

Eric’s partner at the time was in the defence force, and to ask for a HIV test at that time would have meant a dishonourable discharge.

Despite Eric’s scientific knowledge, it took him three years to gather the courage to finally take a test after his partner continually refused to do so.

-œA lot of people expect me to be angry about my ex-partner, but it takes two to do the wrong thing and a lot of the problem was that honesty is a two-way street. Often we don’t give the other person space to be honest with us, he said.

He said he and his partner were so concerned about him -œtaking home HIV from the lab that other things like using condoms slowly slipped from their routine.

After years of tremendous ups and downs, Eric now speaks to groups, mostly schoolchildren, about his life as a positive man as part of the PLWHA Victoria’s Positive Speakers Bureau and said it remains one of his -œpillars.

In 2002 Eric was gravely ill, contracting viral meningitis. After a long period of poor mental health, in 2005 he was diagnosed with another stigmatised health condition, bipolar II disorder.

Eric said from personal experience people let the stigma associated with HIV distract them, and they slowly take their eyes off the ball with prevention.

-œWe used condoms for five years -” but how many couples use condoms consistently for five years?

-œIt’s like people who go to Asia and worry about eating street food in case they get gastro and then they’ll seek out a prostitute and have bareback sex. I’d have three weeks of gastro to get rid of HIV any day.

Eric said if he harbours one major regret it would be not getting tested right away.

-œA combination of denial and the fact my partner couldn’t test because of his role in the army. I waited for three years, getting skin infections … by then my immune system was wrecked.

-œWhen you love someone it’s really hard to think they’ll hurt you. Like getting in a car when your partner’s been drinking perhaps, you just don’t think they’ll hurt you.

Now with his partner of five years, who is negative, Eric said he has been through -œfive years of hell with him, but now takes each day as it comes, keeping busy with the Speakers Bureau, volunteering and spending time on the web, but said he misses life as a scientist -œbrutally.

-œConcepts and ideas still make me tick, he said.

He said it is his partner, his medical team, psychiatrist and the Bureau that keep him on track and in balance.

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