The day I died
For me this day was devastating, to say the least. The horror of it will be with me until the day I leave this earth. Each and every minute was as if in a slow-playing horror movie, so vivid yet so impossible. I was looking in on it all from a distance, devoid of any feeling. I was there in person but I could not surely have been a part of what was going on. That was from my perspective. As for my husband, I cannot even begin to contemplate his turmoil. He was the subject of the whole ‘movie’. He was the subject of this diagnosis namely an AIDS-related cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was the patient named to undergo treatment and the one to whom the prognosis would apply. I did not and could not share his feelings. I had an insurmountable situation of my own to face up to. He needed support but how could I give this when, to that date, he had kept the door firmly shut to me? He had been living a double life for many of our thirty-nine years of marriage. Appearing to the world outside to be a hard-working and happy family man, he was a closet homosexual living two lives, only acknowledged as such by the chosen of his friends. The day was Friday 25th January 2008. My husband had an appointment at 11.30am with the professor in the clinic at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. I had arranged for a taxi to take us there as I did not know the route and the weather and traffic were uncertain. The patient was far from strong having been hospitalized earlier in the month with pneumonia 56 Winter 2012
and septicaemia. Both of us trying to ‘put on a brave face’ we climbed the stairs from the basement car park to the ground floor- it was all he could do to walk. We had a twenty-minute wait for our appointment. We didn’t speak a word. We were shown into a side consulting room. I can still see every detail in there –the exact places where we sat, the consultation couch, the projection screen on the wall. We were introduced to the professor; his medical students followed him. My husband had to confirm his details and was then asked the question ‘Is it four or five years since you were diagnosed with HIV?’ I heard only the answer ‘about four years’ nothing else. I did not feel that I was in that room or indeed a part of the meeting being held. How dry my mouth felt. Had I really heard this? Never! My ears must be deceiving me! It must be a pack of lies! But it wasn’t, it was true. My husband was then asked the name of the doctor who had made the diagnosis. I heard his reply and his added comment that he had been having regular three-monthly check-ups ever since. Never have I ever experienced such shock, indeed I had never before been aware of the true meaning of ‘shock’. It still astounds me how it was that I was not completely overcome for I felt so ill with disbelief and amazement. The fact that he was HIV positive, I had only known this for nine days and now to learn that he had been diagnosed HIV positive some four years previously utterly overwhelmed me. He had attended other