A man who has been diagnosed with HIV after a one-night stand claims he didn't know the virus was 'still around'.
Jay Hawkridge, 29, from Leeds, thought HIV 'was a thing of the past', but that was before he contracted the virus after having sex with a guy he had been chatting to in 2019. The 29-year-old became seriously unwell a few days after having sex.
His body begun to break down, he caught a fever and started feeling nauseous. Jay took himself to A&E where a blood test came back negative for HIV.
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Over a month later Jay felt suspicion he had contracted an STI from his one night stand and went for a test in October 2019, where he was told he was HIV positive. He claims he 'didn’t know what his future would look like' when he was told the news.
Jay, who is a content creator from Leeds, said: “I barely had any knowledge of HIV before I was diagnosed. I was diagnosed back in September 2019, before It's A Sin, before I’d watched Pose, and before a few of the big cultural events that have happened in the last couple of years.
“I come from a really rural upbringing, and I didn’t have many friends in the LGBTQ+ community. I had no real reason to believe that HIV was something I needed to be thinking about or protecting myself from.
“So, when I was diagnosed, it was a massive shock. I thought, ‘wait, what, this is still around?’ I’d never heard anyone in my life mention it so it was really hard for me to grasp at first.”
Jay added: “In all honesty, it was more confusing than it was scary because I was so unequipped to what it was. I had no information as to what it was – especially having been to the hospital.
"Through lockdown, I was able to take time for myself and research HIV to the point where I understood the facts and the reality of the situation. I was able go back and tell the people in my life about this in the sense that I had lived through it, and I am able to tell the tale. With the Covid pandemic, it was one of those things that became easier to talk about.”
Jay now takes medication to manage his condition. He said: “In all honestly, it doesn’t impact my life. It is lovely to know there are no prohibitions to my life.
“I take two pills a day to manage my condition and I am unable to transmit it to a partner for the rest of my life. I have been a relationship for the last couple of months, it has been a slow solidly building thing, it has been really nice."
Jay said before his diagnosis, he had no real knowledge at all of the disease and didn’t feel educated enough about the condition. He said: “I think it is an honourable thing, people try and shy away from things that aren’t family-friendly.
“I think it is a turning point in the discussion about HIV and erasing the stigma. It’s A Sin was monumental; it was an important show for me as it was a really nice resource to turn people to so I wouldn’t have to explain constantly about living with HIV.”
Jay has also praised TV soap Eastenders, who is due to feature a storyline about a character, Zack Hudson, who finds out he is HIV positive in coming weeks, for highlighting the condition. Jay has praised the 'monumental' storyline for educating young people about the virus.
He said: “It is important for people living with the condition to feel represented, but also in terms of educating people. There is still more that can be done but education has skyrocketed in the past couple of years.
“I think it is really nice when I have conversations with people that I meet and I don’t have to explain anymore. I think the new age of media is doing an awful lot of good for representation.”
In EastEnders, Zack is set to find out that he too is HIV positive, and the show will show what it is like when you are adjusting to life with HIV. Jay uses his platform and knowledge of the disease to educate others after it took him months to start opening up to people.
He said: “Most of the groundwork that I do at the minute is one-to-one; talking to people online and signposting people to the places where they can get informed.
“I didn’t feel like I was prepared with the knowledge myself, it was intimidating and to let people into an issue I didn’t have much confidence with was scary. It took me a few months before I opened up to people, I was really vulnerable at the time and it was something new to me – it was daunting and scary.”
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