KC

“I’m KC. I’m in Melbourne. I’ve been in Melbourne all my life. I have an Italian background and I got married in 1994. I met my husband the same year and he said to me, “I’ve got something to tell you.” And he said he was HIV positive. And in 1994, I think we were all naïve. I didn’t know what it meant and I didn’t realise the risks or anything like that. But I decided to stay with him because I really liked him. And I sort of knew that one day I would get the same thing that he had. So yeah, in 1995 about, I think it was March, I became positive. We were trying to start a family. I also discovered I was pregnant at the same time that I got HIV. So the advice was to have an abortion. The doctor said, “Well, your child is going to die when it’s born.” It was just terrible advice in 1995. And in 1999, I became pregnant again, and I got ectopic pregnancy this time. So, none of the pregnancies worked out. My husband passed away last year he had PML (progressive multifocal leucoencephalopathy), which is a complication of HIV. And we never had anything to do with positive women or straight arrows or anything like that. So now because of isolation I needed to reach out to people like myself and here I am with all of you, in this workshop, which is good.”