Born That Way, With HIV

Clive was nine years old when he discovered he was HIV positive. The devastating news that his mother, doctors and support workers had spent years preparing to break to him in the gentlest manner possible, was blurted out by a careless receptionist at his local hospital.

"My mum had bought me to see the doctor because I had earache, and this woman just read it out loud from my notes as she was typing my details into the computer," says Clive, who celebrated his 18th birthday last week. "I remember standing there, with my mother's hand around mine, as these feelings of complete confusion and fear washed over me."

Clive credits the medication given to his mother during her pregnancy for protecting him then from her HIV infection. But, he says, something went catastrophically wrong at the point of delivery, and the infection was passed into his own bloodstream.

After that day at the hospital, however, Clive refused to take medication on his own behalf. "I suddenly realised that the pills my mum had been giving me every day – that I had thought were sweeties – were medicine," he says. "After that day at the hospital, I would lock myself in the bathroom when my mum took them out of the cupboard. Or I'd pretend to swallow them, then throw them away."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/11/hiv-youngsters-infected-birth-survivors?newsfeed=true