Two years ago today, I was diagnosed with HIV. Having managed to remain negative throughout the first 28 years of the epidemic, here was I, in my sixties, suddenly finding myself HIV-positive. The diagnosis itself was not unexpected - I had made some decisions to have unprotected sex - but the shame of having to admit that I had seroconverted was difficult for me to reconcile with the self image I had of myself. And with the image others had of me. After all, here I was - an educated, aware gay guy who’d lived through the early years of AIDS, a social worker who’d worked within the gay community for over thirty  years - now having to deal with the shame that I’d allowed myself to become poz.

But I was well-connected in the community and had the support of a wonderful life partner and some great friends. They, along with the excellent care I was receiving from my GP, who is also an HIV primary care physician, enabled me to handle my emotional turmoil. And because I have a natural curiosity, and because I wanted to learn as much as possible about HIV and what it meant to live with it, I began to read voraciously about every aspect of it. I found a great deal of help and useful information at a number of websites, particularly Canada’s CATIE,  Vancouver’s Health Initiative for Men  and the UK’s aidsmap.com. 

Then I found PositiveLite.com. This website was a revelation - a Canadian online HIV magazine by and for people who are either HIV-positive or who are our friends and supporters. Here were women and men, both from Canada and elsewhere, who were writing openly about their lives as poz people. And they were writing not just about living with HIV but about all aspects of their lives, which were as rich and as varied as those who were not living with this chronic illness.

But there was more. They were also writing, from their own lived experience as HIVers, about issues of importance to us all - the best approach to take in the 21st century in preventing the spread of HIV, developments in treatment, about stigma and discrimination, about how to manage disclosure and deal with the increasing criminalization of non-disclosure, about aging with HIV and about how, paradoxically, HIV had changed their lives for the better.

I was so impressed with what I read on PositiveLite.com that last summer I wrote to publisher Brian Finch to tell him so. He was very gracious in his response and asked if I would be interested in providing more specific feedback about the website, which was about to undergo a major redesign. I said I would. Before I knew it, I had an email from PositiveLite.com editor Bob Leahy inviting me to write for the magazine the story of my seroconversion.  I agreed to do so, anonymously. I was not quite ready, at that stage, to have my name, face and the intimate details of my life plastered all over the internet for all to see.

I guess Brian and Bob must have liked what I wrote, because they arranged for my story to be picked up by aidsmap.com. So it was not long before Bob started using his considerable charm in encouraging me to become a regular contributor and to write more about what I was learning. I took some time to say yes, because I’d just retired from my long-time job and was looking for volunteer opportunities that would provide me with the chance to to work with people face-to-face and to make new friends - writing, after all, is a somewhat solitary pursuit. But, in the face of Bob’s persistence, I overcame my hesitance.

So before I knew it, I was actually starting to enjoy sharing my experiences as an HIVer and my increasing knowledge of HIV with PositiveLite.com’s community of readers. Through doing so, I quickly decided that I no longer wanted to remain anonymous. I was ready to stand tall and proud as an openly HIV-positive gay man. For this I have to thank Brian and Bob and the opportunities they provided me to share my thoughts and experiences with others. After all, coming out as a gay guy when I was in my early twenties had been a liberating experience and I reckoned that coming out as poz should be equally as liberating. And so it has proven to be. I now feel a great sense of freedom and liberation living as an openly poz guy.

It was not long before I began to attend HIV community events and do interviews for PositiveLite.com with other people who who had interesting things to say. Then, at the beginning of this year, Bob offered me the position of assistant editor. And now, just three months later, I find myself as publisher. Never in my wildest dreams did I think, on March 15, 2010, the day I received my HIV diagnosis, how having HIV would change my life in a such a positive (pun intended!) way within two short years. 

As he wrote here yesterday, Brian has come to the decision that it’s time for him to pursue some new opportunities and that he’d fulfilled his job of creating PositiveLite.com. Last week, he asked me if I’d consider taking over the position of publisher. How could I say no? I’m in awe of Brian and what he’s created here. He’s a guy who’s lived proudly and openly with HIV for over half his life. He’s a true survivor with a passion for enabling HIVers who may not otherwise feel they have a voice to have the opportunity to be involved in a discussion about what it really means to be HIV-positive today - the rationale behind PositiveLite.com.

I’m both honoured and humbled that Brian has entrusted his creation to me. His are enormous footsteps to tread in, yet I fully intend to ensure that his trust in me is justified.   I can do that only because Brian will be remaining an integral part of PositiveLite.com as our founder and I will continue to benefit from his wisdom and wise counsel. I’m also supported by our knowledgeable and indefatigable editor, Bob Leahy, and by an amazing community of writers and contributors, who are at the heart of PositiveLite.com. Without them, the magazine would not exist.

I have a strong sense that this three-year-old, PositiveLite.com, is poised to continue its progress beyond its early years as it becomes an increasingly important and respected part of Canada’s HIV community. And while we are indeed Canadian, and will continue to reflect the Canadian experience, we remain open to the world - indeed half our readers and many of our writers now come from outside our nation’s borders. We welcome that diversity of experience. Yet we are equally committed to reflect the increasingly diverse face of HIV, both in Canada and elsewhere.

At present, most - but by no means all - of our writers are gay men who write about HIV and their lives from that perspective. This reflects the historical nature of HIV in countries like ours. Gay men still account for the majority of HIVers in Canada, and their experience of HIV will continue to be portrayed in our pages. But the face of HIV is changing, a reality that all of us here at PositiveLite.com are committed to reflecting. Thus, we’re actively engaged in increasing our coverage of HIV as it affects women, First Nations, transpeople, those from countries where HIV is endemic, injection drug users and others. By the same token, by the middle years of this decade it’s estimated that 50% of all HIVers in North America will be aged 50 or older. This reflects the reality that, thanks to anti-viral medications, HIVers are living longer than anyone ever expected only 15 years ago. There are also an increasing number of people who, like me, are seroconverting in later life. These realities will continue to be reflected in our pages even as we continue to tell the stories of younger people infected with and affected by HIV.

We will always remain faithful to our mandate, to be a place for HIVers and our allies to talk about the reality of our lives. Sometimes we will be funny, sometimes angry, sometimes controversial, but always honest.

As I said earlier, you, our readers and writers, are at the heart of what we are all about here at PositiveLite.com. I hope you continue to enjoy, be inspired by and encouraged by what you read here. And if you think you have something to say yourself, then why not consider writing about it here on PositiveLite.com. It may be that you just want to comment on something you’ve read here, in which case I invite you to share it in the comments section at the end of each article (currently an underutilized resource). Or it may be that you want to contribute your own thoughts through submitting a post of your own. In that case, I invite you to contact us through our facebook page, via email to our editor Bob Leahy at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by sending me a tweet @John_McCullagh. 

Thank you all for your support. And Happy Reading!

I didn’t know one person who was HIV-positive before I walked down that long hallway to get the results of my recent-exposure HIV test. I didn’t know one person who was HIV-positive before I made a decision, on December 18, 2011, to have unprotected sex, based on my assumptions about someone’s character instead of my knowledge of their status. But everything changed for me on January 24, 2012. On that day, the answer I have given for my entire life - that I’m negative - changed.

Hello, PositiveLite.com readers. I’m Josh Robbins. I’m 29-years-old, I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I just found out that I’m HIV-positive.

Growing up in a small town in western Tennessee, I had big dreams. I was very active in my non-denominational church—a leader in the youth group. I loved playing basketball and found tremendous comfort performing community theatre on a massive stage. Both socially active and educationally grounded, I felt invincible, that the world was my stage. 

Yet I knew at a relatively early age that something was a bit different for me — that I was attracted to men. But if this was the worst thing about me, I could keep it quiet from my friends and family. Actually I was quite great about leading a double-life, even when I moved to New York City a month after graduating high school. I was free, I thought.

It was in New York that I was first openly introduced to safer sex. I was in a group discussion about sex and I was asked to participate in a game where I had to name a condom. It was uncomfortable but amazing to be able to have a dialogue about something that was never really discussed earlier in my life—sex. I named my condom “Camouflage” because “nobody would see me coming.”  Of course, I realized I was a natural at comedy. Or so I thought.

But after living in the Big Apple during September 11, 2001 and its aftermath, I decided to move back home to Tennessee. It was at that time that I realized how extremely close I was to my family. My sister became my best friend.

Because of my closeness to my family, and because of my ability to allow the world to be my playground, I made the decision at age 25 to come out as gay to my family and every one of my friends. But I revealed the news in a very matter-of-fact way. I never asked for their approval, because I felt I didn’t need it. I took the power of the conversation and said to every one of them that if they couldn’t or wouldn’t still love me, then I would choose for them to not be in my life. It was sharp, I must admit. But it was how I felt.

Almost every important person to whom I came out to as gay remains close to me to this day. Little did I realize at that time that the power that I’d mustered during those conversations would again be tested when I decided to reveal my HIV status.

The words that I heard when I got my test results - “It is a positive viral load” - still remain ingrained in my memory.  It’s very ironic how six simple words could literally take the breath out of me, even though I’d prepared for the possibility of this news for over three-and-a-half weeks, while waiting for my test result. You see, I’d been very active in local HIV awareness campaigns. I’d become the poster boy (literally) for an HIV vaccine study, with my face being on club-goers’ bathroom walls, beaming awareness and activism, in a very visible campaign, educating others about safer sex.

But the message didn’t seem to affect me personally. I thought I was invincible. And now I’m infected.

I felt alone—not knowing even one person who was HIV-positive. I felt scared and I didn’t want to die. So I made a decision. I would not allow myself to go back “in the closet” because of my status.

With this determination and personal decision not to remain silent about my status, I wondered what it would be like for others to actually hear the words from the hospital staff that I was either negative or positive. So, I armed myself with my phone camera and documented the long walk from my car to the actual clinic, keeping the recording going in my pocket. This was really important to me—documenting and recording the experience that so many fear or refuse to really consider. If I heard the news that I was HIV-positive, I wanted to both educate and make real the process others have, will or, hopefully, won’t go through. [You can view Josh’s video made on the day he got his test result at the end of this article. — Ed.]

Then, two weeks after I got my HIV-positive test result, I bought the domain imstilljosh.com.  The decision to start my blog at this site was simply that I wanted a place to put the video online, as well as be in control of the message that others may or may not hear about me in my hometown. I wanted to control the release of information and lead my personal narrative. Within three hours of the purchase, I wrote a very simple blog—“I’m Josh. I’m HIV Positive. So What? I’m Still Josh. You still be YOU!” And I posted on my blog the video of me going to the clinic to get my test results.

Simple enough, right? Well… not really. I had to get the word out that I had a blog, so I made a very simple status update on my personal facebook – just the link to the blog. I guess it went well—the blog had over 1,800 views within 24 hours. I don’t even know 1.800 people, let alone have that many virtual facebook friends. Well, the cat was out of the bag—and it feels great!

My thinking is pretty simple—the world continues even though I’m HIV-positive. My cell phone bill is still due at the end of the month. And if I don’t work, I can’t pay my car loan. But, I’m changed. I’m changed not only because of my HIV status, I’m also changed because I now realize that, before I became infected, I was mistaken in not allowing the message about HIV prevention to impact me. I’m also changed because I have a love for the other gay men in my city who also believe that they’re as invincible as I once thought I was.

So the journey starts, the fight continues, and humor is how I’ll continue to make it through. When things get stressful or people start acting crazy around me, I simply say. “You’re raising my viral load!” They get shocked; I laugh.

Because I blogged openly and candidly about being HIV-positive, another positive guy here in town made a video announcing his status that I posted on my blog. And more are on the way—the emails are rolling in from other HIV-positive men in the area willing and ready to share their stories as well. It’s all quite inspiring.

I’m still Josh. You still be YOU! And check out my blog imstilljosh.com.  http://imstilljosh.com

You can also follow Josh on Twitter @imstilljosh and friend him on facebook www.facebook.com/joshuarobbins 

Images courtesy of Out & About Newspaper". www.outandaboutnewspaper.com

This is the second of three articles by PositiveLite.com writers on “what undetectable means to me.” Read Bob Leahy’s earlier take on this topic here.  Wayne Bristow will follow later this week.

Three months after I started anti-retroviral therapy (ART), I got a call from my doctor. Even though my next appointment with him was still a week away, he phoned me because he wanted to give me the good news right away. My lab results had just come back showing that my HIV viral load had reached an undetectable level.

He was excited for me and I was excited myself. Why? Because the goal of HIV treatment is to reduce the amount of virus in the blood to a level so low that it cannot be detected by the standard tests. Being “undetectable” confirmed that ART was working for me. HIV had been stopped in its tracks; it’d been defeated in its attempts to damage my immune system. It was a milestone that I celebrated that day and continue to celebrate because my periodic viral load tests still come back undetectable. 

Reaching this status was a personal demonstration in my own life of what everyone had been saying in recent years. That, thanks to ART, HIV is different now. It’s no longer the death sentence it once was but is, instead, a chronic, communicable disease that can be controlled by medication.

This is a big deal as far as I’m concerned. I’m of the generation that was most affected by the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s. The majority of my peers, gay guys  in the prime of their lives, were either dead or dying. At that time, there was no treatment that could have saved them. I was one of the lucky ones in that I didn’t become infected at that time, but to this day I still grieve the loss of those men - my friends, colleagues, loved ones, drinking buddies and sex partners.

Many years later, as the result of some decisions I made that I now regret, I became HIV-positive myself. But, because of the anti-HIV drugs that are now available, I’m not going to die of AIDS like my friends did 15 or 25 years ago. Rather I’m going to live the kind of active, healthy life that they could only have dreamed of. Achieving an undetectable viral load is a marker of that expectation.  

I’m fortunate in that I was diagnosed early, have access to ART and am the patient of a knowledgeable and caring physician. It was he who advised me to go on ART immediately after my diagnosis because he believes that long term outcomes are better if treatment is started early. Everything I’ve subsequently read and learned confirms that belief. On top of that, I tolerate my drugs so well that I could go from one day to another not thinking about HIV at all (except that my role as assistant editor of PositiveLite.com won’t allow me to do that!).

For many others, however, having a chronic illness such as HIV can be exhausting, unpredictable and isolating. Finding good care and treatment may be hard. And having HIV can, all too commonly, be fraught with stigma and discrimination. Meanwhile, other HIVers of my generation are long-term survivors who often suffer significant side effects and damage to their bodies caused by the toxicity of an earlier generation of anti-HIV drugs. So celebrating my own good fortune is tempered by this knowledge.  

That having been said though, having an undetectable viral load provides me with a positive sense of being in good health with good long-term health outcomes. Baring a cure, I anticipate dying with HIV, not of it.

The status of being “undetectable” also gives me a sense of positive self-esteem and emotional well-being. I’m not diseased. What I have is a well-managed, chronic illness. It’s unfortunate, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s part of the human condition.

This, in turn, has enabled me to feel good about being out of the closet, as it were, with respect to my HIV status. Proudly labelling myself, as I do, an HIV-positive gay man is a profoundly liberating experience. People can see that I’m healthy, enjoying life and contributing to the community through volunteer work (if I hadn’t reached the age of retirement, I’d still be working) and that’s allowed me to become a role model of sorts.

One of the most important outcomes for me of having an undetectable viral load is that it’s lessened the burden of worrying about infecting others when I have sex. A number of recent research studies have demonstrated that, with certain caveats, a person taking HIV treatment with an undetectable viral load in their blood should not be considered sexually infectious. Indeed, Julio Montaner, one of Canada’s and the world’s most respected HIV scientists, has publicly gone so far, in an exclusive interview with PositiveLite.com, to state that he’s “very comfortable that [ART] is at least as protective - or more - than condoms”.  

From this knowledge comes my desire to focus my energies on fighting against the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. Because those of us who do what we have always been taught to do and wear a condom when we should or if we have an undetectable viral load - or both - don’t pose, in the words of the current law, a “significant risk” of infecting our sexual partners. What we do have, however, is a responsibility to protect our own health while not harming the health of others. That applies whether we’re HIV-positive or HIV-negative or don’t know our status. 

So, to summarize. I realize I’m privileged and don’t represent every HIVer out there, but I rejoice in my “undetectable” status. It allows me to live an active, healthy life with the expectation that, when the time comes, it’ll be old age not HIV that I’ll die of. It gives me a sense of emotional well-being that enables me to be proudly poz and to give back to the communities to which I belong. And it lessens the worry of infecting those with whom I have sex. For all these reasons, I feel blessed to have an undetectable viral load. As I said at the beginning, it’s a status that I celebrate every day.

 

Summer is here, and I’ve just stocked up on sunscreen to protect my fair skin from being roasted to a crisp. I’ve never been able to tan without at first experiencing excruciating burns. Now, I embrace my paleness!  

A tan looks nice in moderation, but some people don’t know when to stop.

This week I saw a man in town with his face tanned to the extent where it looked fashioned from an old leather handbag. Then there are the fake tanners, who in their over-eagerness to tan, end up looking like oompa-loompas (Editor's note: or George Hamiltons) with white necks and streaky legs. The website Pale Is The New Tan has some pretty shocking tanning-disasters on show....      

This got me thinking, why are people so obsessed with tanning? I think in the gay community, there is that stereotype of the bronzed, gay hunk... perhaps that is why I used to see so many people on the gay scene trying to transform themselves into walking walnuts.    

So, please, if you are bronzing over the summertime, be careful not to overdo it!

And for your viewing amusement:

I had to say goodbye to my doctor recently. I was moving out of state, and Dr. David Morris of Pride Medical Group in Atlanta had been nothing but a patient, supportive teacher to me. Over the years he’s seen me through Hepatitis C, a few crystal meth drug relapses and three boyfriends. I love him and what he’s done for me, and I hated the prospect of finding a replacement in Florida.

Fortunately, Dr. Morris agreed to give me some tips to make the process easier, and in this video episode you’ll see me take his advice. From medical records to being honest about my history, you can watch me use his advice during my very first appointment with Dr. Dominic Riganotti in Ft. Lauderdale.

That’s right. Dr. Riganotti allowed me to film our very first meeting, and I appreciate his willingness to educate others through this process. And here’s the biggest lesson: don’t be afraid to ask questions about anything you think is important (several suggestions are provided in the video). It is perfectly customary for potential patients to question the doctor’s qualifications to treat them.

If there is anyone is our lives for whom nothing is “too much information,” it’s our doctor. As a patient I used to be more hesitant disclosing private issues like my sexual habits or drug abuse history, but I got over it when I realized my doctor wanted to help me, not put me in jail.

If you visit a doctor who doesn’t like the questions or gives you attitude, you can thank the jerk for their time and go find someone else (or request another provider at your HMO or community health center). This relationship is too important not to feel completely confident in his or her abilities.

I hope this video is helpful to you or someone you know. Thanks for watching, and please be well.

Find Mark at his regular home My Fabulous Career http://marksking.com/ for more great stuff.

On April 21st 2003, I was on my way out the door to see my dentist when the phone rang. It was my doctor wanting me to go in and get the

results of my blood-work. I asked him "can you just give them to me over the phone because this damn tooth has to come out......today!"

He told me he isn't allowed to give them to me over the phone but if I couldn't make it, then, "your HIV test, it came back positive."

All I could say was, "oh!" but in my mind, I was saying, "at least he didn't say cancer." Then he told me he would make me an appointment for me to see some other doctor, I was like ...... "Ohkay"!

To this day, hearing those words hasn't frightened me at all. I knew people who were HIV positive. I know a couple that, when they met, one was positive and the other was negative. They remain that way to this day, so I knew I could meet someone and have a normal life. I knew too that I wouldn’t die from HIV, that it wasn't a death sentence. I knew this wasn’t the “80’s and that there were medications for it.

When I met with the new doctor, he ordered the HIV test to be done again because the counts were at undetectable levels and this could thus be a false positive. But the next test came back the same, so it was clear I had HIV. He told me that because I was undetectable, he wouldn't be putting me on any medications, that it might be ten years before I would need them. Before I left his office he ordered some other blood-work, shots for this and tests for that, I had a feeling I was about to become a pin cushion. They put that strap around my arm so long it was going numb.

I knew that sooner or later I would have to tell everyone who was close to me, I also knew I wanted to tell them. I just had to find a way to do it without scaring them or thinking that I'm going to die. The first person I told was a close friend and then I told a couple other friends. When it came to family, there were only a few that I could tell, others didn't need to know. Telling my mother was the toughest of them all. She was very supportive when I finally told her I was gay but when I told her I was HIV positive, her response was, "I'm very disappointed!

It was then that I finally felt something. It was like a kick in the gut. But after she had said it, I had to agree with her, and admit "I'm disappointed in me too". I should have known better, I had all the information.

Why wasn't I angry - at the disease or at the person who passed it on to me? 1 thought about how I could have been infected. Tthe only thing that came close to being a risk factor was the tooth--that damned tooth. It should have come out months before. It would flare up and ache badly, I'd fight the pain, it would go away,only to come back again. Oral sex may be in the lowest risk category but not in these circumstances. Add some low self esteem issues, too much alcohol and a side order of reckless behaviour and I had created the perfect situation to get HIV. The only way I could feel was “responsible”. I guess that is how I have been dealing with it ever since - accepting my responsibility.

So tomorrow I will wake up, it will continue to be just another day. Me -- living with HIV.

“I have HIV, HIV doesn't have me.” I live by this mantra but I can’t take credit for it. I heard it from someone else but I don’t have permission to mention his name here, so again I thank him for saying it