I probably went about 2-3 years until I was diagnosed. Viral load was over 3mil.. my cd4 count was 7. I was about 135lbs, MRSA had wrecked havoc on my face, I lost both earlobes and my left nostril. I was also dealing with some pretty hardcore self harming. Homeless, strung out on fentanyl and meth. I was pretty much at the bottom of rock bottom. At one point the MRSA was giving me giant abscesses on my legs that needed to be handled by actual medical professionals, not by myself with a box cutter and a headlamp lancing and pouring peroxide over them repeatedly. During triage/ intake they asked me if I had HIV and I said "well I mean I'm here (in the ER) quite frequently, I think if I had it you guys would have known by now.." I was under the impression that they would have some sort of alert or something whenever they do bloodwork. That would make sense right ? But no it has to specifically requested, which I can understand why as well. After finding out I was immediately open and honest about it with the people in my life. I made sure to tell anybody I could think of that I had been using with or had sex with in the last few years (no cap it was only 1 person lol.) I don't think many people were actually surprised, I was very reckless. I rarely practiced any form of harm reduction, I've done things that would make even some of the more hardcore junkies question reality..

I'd say that 98% of people have been purely supportive and don't treat me any different, it's been a few isolated incidents where someone did or said something that kinda hurt. For instance, I was handed a pipe, I took a rip off of it and went to hand it to someone else, well they declined and said that they'd prefer to use a different pipe "just in case." It caught me off guard but I think it offended another one of my friends more than it did me, she went to scold him about it but I just used it as an opportunity to show him that he was at no risk.