Hellò Good to hear your well .

The meds today are very good healthy undectable lad here take 1 eviplera at night

Hello chibai how are you

Hello chibai how are you

I find such stories very impressive and put modern diagnosis in some perspective. I have heard some incredible stories of people in 95 or so simply waiting in bed to die then HAART comes along. From lying down incapacitated they rise up a few months later in much better health. Quite an incredible story!

As one of 'statesman' of HIV, having been disgnosed in 1985, I have to smile when people suggest that we are lucky to be around after 30 plus years.

Luck has very little to do with it. Its hard work!

Friends were dying at an alarming rate at the start of my journey, people I had become dependent upon to help me find out who I was. Friends who you had imagined would be there for you for years and years to come. My life as a gay man started with tremendous loss, misery, rejection, funerals, suicides. There was so much pressure for a teenager trying to kickstart his life.

I honestly expected to die before my 21st birthday. The reminders of the death sentence that was now coursing through my body were there daily - from the media and government alike. we had no THT and red ribbons were still just for little girls hair.

We had pneumonia, Karposis Sarcoma and other 'minor' infections that turned deathly. Hidden in hospital 'clean' rooms on TB wards. Nurses and doctors alike, frightened to treat people or as in one friends case wearing rubber gloves that wouldn't be out of place in space.

Some of us were then 'lucky' to trial AZT, the 1st real step towards treatment. It worked, but not for all. I have friends who have been pumped with so many experimental HIV drugs over the years, that they are now at a treatment cul de sac - with limited options going forward.

There is the depression, 'survivors guilt', suicide, lack of planning for a furure (that wasnt expected) and loliness that still consumes those that are now getting older with HIV. The larger organisations still dont have adequate support for long termers - prevention still being the buzz word 30 years later. This is where the next big problem lies. Keeping us alive is now the easy bit - we now need to keep those of us at the other end living well and living healthy (both mentally and physically)

I got this far by being bloody minded and not letting HIV be the definer of my life. There are enough labels each of us can carry. Its not luck - it has been hard work - IT IS HARD WORK.

What we all need to be thinking of now, now that we all have a good chance of being and remaining undetectable are the problems with long term HIV, older people with HIV and just as importantly why people are returning to unsafe sex and those who think HIV is a badge of honour. Let's not abandon the few that have been around from the start and the ever growing number to come...