If you are interested in skin care, beauty and well-being, you will know Andrew Donaldson-WheatCroft with more than 200,000 followers in your social media account. Along with this content, Andrew advocates people living in HIV. In this blog post, he shares a story about HIV diagnosis.
Before I was diagnosed with HIV in 2015, like many others, I thought it was unlikely to happen to me. HIV is no longer discriminated and anyone can catch it. The misunderstanding is harmful and the virus harms people’s health, allowing the virus to spread.
My experience still says that many people still say that HIV only affects gay men, but for the past two years we have seen. His heterosexual HIV diagnosis overtakes the gay, bisexual and other men with sex. (GBMSM).
Regular testing is important for identifying HIV infections because most people feel good and have no symptoms for a while. Some people can experience short diseases after contracting viruses that can appear like a flu, but the symptoms can be different and Rug is easy to be ‘another winter virus’. I doubted nothing. I just didn’t know everyday life. It is easy when not tested regularly.
I was diagnosed only when I rushed to the hospital after serious illness with pneumonia and meningitis. When I arrived at the hospital, doctors didn’t know what was happening in my body. Even if I knew, I couldn’t even tell them because I couldn’t even speak because I was so sick. When the test results came back, doctors were able to work together after discovering that I had HIV.
Unknown
Since I did not know my condition because I didn’t test it regularly, I couldn’t fight the infection because the virus was able to quietly damage the immune system. After checking the diagnosis in the test, NHS staff provided the right treatment and regained their health.
HIV drugs keep me healthy, so you can live a normal life. The drug I take has now reduced the virus load to an irreversible level. This means that the virus still exists, but it can be reduced to a small amount of my body and cannot be delivered. You may have heard about the term ‘untransitable’ or ‘u = u’. This means that people living in HIV and those who can’t detect them are at risk of conveying viruses to sexual partners.
For me, HIV drugs are miraculous, but are not a treatment, but a treatment. The road to recovery was not a fix of the night. It was a trip. I have been taking drugs every day and have to go to regular promises to see if treatment works properly for the past 10 years. Because of my dedication to my health, I heard that I no longer need to check in with a doctor or regularly eat blood. I am on the moon because I am the most healthy on HIV trip.
HIV usually keeps a lot of stigma because people lack information about it. If you are a vocal for my HIV positive online, it can be easily done, but it took five years to tell people that it was HIV positive because of the stigma. I was most afraid of anything in my life. Older beliefs in the past remain, but the reality of HIV is completely different today.
Consistently use condoms It’s really important, but now there are other effective tools that can be used to reduce the risk of transmission. Prevention of pre -exposure (Prep) is a daily pill that greatly lowers the risk of HIV of high risk. Prevention after exposure (PEP) is an emergency drug that can be taken within 72 hours after potential exposure to prevent the virus from being maintained. You can try to prevent new HIV infections by combining these methods with regular tests and condoms.
Normalizing conversations on HIV and encouraging regular tests can cause the stigma to collapse. We should see the essential part of self -management, just like eating well and taking care of exercise and mental health. Knowing your status is about authorization and control. HIV can affect everyone, regardless of gender or sexual taste. Regular testing leads to early diagnosis, which can start effective treatment faster, protecting health and preventing infection.
Protect yourself, educate yourself, and get a test!
