“If I’d not had a test for a long time, in terms of my personal health it might have been OK, but I may have really struggled with feelings of guilt of possibly unknowingly passing it on to other people over a much longer period of time.” “I’d had a negative test in December and a positive test in March, so it really narrowed the window that I knew I’d probably contracted it, and that I’d potentially put other people at risk”, he explains. John Thomas in 2010, shortly after being diagnosed with HIV and Hepatitis C (Image: supplied) While John admits he was “quite shocked a quite vulnerable” immediately after his diagnosis, he’s keenly aware that the fact he had been getting testing regularly before his diagnosis minimised any potential wider fall-out. “I thought I was being careful, but there were times when I guess I wasn’t, but I was testing regularly so I found out I was positive in Easter 2010.” I was aware of HIV and felt like I knew how to protect myself – to use condoms and test regularly… “I guess I was lucky, my mum was quite forward-thinking and gave me some extra sex education about condoms and things. We were told it was OK to be gay but not to have gay sex.” We were taught, in terms of heterosexual sex, not to use condoms. “Our sexual health education in school was taught through religious education and was very limited.
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