Transcript

Viviendo en positivo | Mauricio Artiñano | TEDxPuraVidaJoven

2 [Music] Good afternoon. Well, as I said, it's a huge honor for me, it fills me with tenderness and nostalgia to be here with you because 7 years ago, along with Melissa and Pablo, as a team of friends, we did the first TDX Youth Pura Vida. Since then, a lot of things have happened to me, I've lived a lot, and today I'm going to tell you about a particular experience that gave my life a positive turn. It was November 2015 and I was living in Mogadishu, Somalia. I was working with the United Nations and I had been having an incredible year of growth, living in a country emerging from 20 years of conflict. I was living in an area protected by military forces under the constant threat of terrorist attacks like the one that forced me to spend December 25, 2014, in a bunker. It had been an incredible experience, but I had already made the decision that I wanted to look for new opportunities, and it was precisely on the last day that I was in Somalia that I received a call in the afternoon from the doctor at the clinic. He called me to say goodbye and that he also had The results of the medical exams I had done the previous afternoon were presented to me. When I arrived, I sat on the examination table and began reviewing all the tests, which had come back normal: cholesterol, kidney function, but "we have a small problem," they told me with a nervous smile. Before they could say anything, I glanced at the paper I was holding and saw "H positive." I looked up, and the doctor confirmed it: I had tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV. I called my friend Brian to come to the clinic, and as soon as he arrived, I gave him a very tight hug. Two tears escaped me, and then I wiped my face and told Brian and the doctor, "You two are going to be the only two people who ever see me cry about this." The truth is, at that time, I didn't have the luxury of crying. It was four in the afternoon, and I had to pack my office and my room. I had to finish several work tasks, and I even had to attend my farewell party. Besides, I felt the responsibility to immediately call the partners I had had in the last year so they could also get tested. It was this afternoon that I discovered how much they had helped me. In the crisis situation training I received before leaving for Somalia—although in this case it wasn't due to a terrorist attack but a medical diagnosis—I don't know where I found the strength and composure to finish everything I had to do, even to enjoy myself, my forgiveness, my farewell party. There's a photo with my friends. And the next day I boarded the United Nations plane for the last time— from Mogadishu to Nairobi. Twenty-four hours later I crossed half the planet from Kenya to Costa Rica, and I remember very little of that trip. But what I do remember is that every time I woke up, there was a microsecond where I thought it had all been a nightmare, only to immediately realize that it wasn't. It was a new reality, and it was through that succession of waking up and realizing that the news gradually settled in my consciousness. The adrenaline of those first hours faded, replaced by a strange nostalgia and a bit of fear. But even so, in those moments I felt the determination that somehow, one way or another, I was going to overcome this challenge. I was going to find the positive in being HIV positive. So what does it mean to be HIV positive? There's so much. There's a lot of ignorance and misinformation about this topic, so I want to clarify a few things with you. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that attacks the body's defense system, the immune system. It's generally transmitted through sexual contact, through the use of contaminated needles or syringes, or through contact with bodily fluids, specifically blood, semen, breast milk, and vaginal fluids. Note that saliva is not transmitted through HIV; this is very important. HIV is not the same as AIDS. AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is a series of symptoms that can occur if a person has an advanced stage of HIV infection that is not treated. A person with access to the appropriate medications today does not necessarily develop AIDS. One of the complicated things about HIV is that it often doesn't show external symptoms. There are even people in whom the virus can go undetected for years until a serious condition arises. I, for example, never had symptoms. I realized I had the virus because I made a habit of getting tested every three or four months. According to UNAIDS, 30 percent of people worldwide who have HIV don't know their status, and this is a... This is a huge problem because this is where most transmissions happen. A person who has the virus and doesn't know it isn't under control, they aren't receiving treatment, and so the chances of transmitting it are higher. That's one of the main messages I want to leave you with today: you have to get tested, especially for sexually transmitted infections, if you have an active sex life because accidents can happen, things can go wrong. Besides practicing safe sex, getting tested is one of the most important ways to protect yourself and help end the epidemic. So, let's get to it. Well, first, many people also ask me how I acquired the virus, or maybe they wonder but are embarrassed to tell me. The answer is that I don't know, and also that it doesn't matter. As I said, I did the responsible thing, and that same afternoon, despite having received two negative tests, I called my partners from the last year with whom I had had high-risk sexual relations in the following days. Each of those people told me they tested negative. So, thankfully, despite everything that has happened to me since the diagnosis, I haven't tortured myself about how it was. Acquiring the virus isn't something that only happened to me; the truth is, it can happen to anyone: women and men, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transgender people, people who received it from their mothers as babies, doctors who suffered accidents. There are many ways the virus can be transmitted, and no one is immune. That's why it's important not to make any moral judgments or jump to conclusions about a person just because they have HIV. Let's move on to the topic of treatment. The treatment for HIV is antiretroviral therapy. It's a series of medications that I take once a day, which aim to achieve an undetectable viral load, meaning that the amount of virus in the blood is imperceptible to a standard HIV test. These medications are increasingly used in more advanced cases and have fewer and fewer side effects. What these medications do is prevent the virus from replicating; they don't kill it or cure it, but by preventing replication, they act as a buffer, giving the immune system a chance to recover. So, this issue of having an undetectable viral load has two very important implications. The first is that there is no harm in any of the medications. Antiretrovirals mean the virus doesn't cause any harm to my health or a person's health in the vast majority of cases. Secondly, being undetectable means you can't transmit the virus. Even last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highest epidemiological authority in the US, published a report stating that a person with an undetectable viral load who takes their antiretroviral therapy daily has no risk of transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner. I repeat, no risk of transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner. Even so, that doesn't mean a license to misbehave or have unprotected sex. I can be undetectable with HIV, but I'm still vulnerable to other sexually transmitted infections, so you always have to be careful. As I was saying, another thing I'd like to clarify is that I'm not sick, nor do I have an illness. I remember the day I took my dad to the doctor to give him the news, my dad asked if the virus was going to lower my life expectancy. The doctor told him no, thanks to the medication, but I turned around and said, "No, Dad, you're going to..." Well, it's actually going to raise my status because now I'm going to take better care of myself, I'm going to take better care of my health. And in fact, many people who have HIV tell me the same thing: that after discovering they have the virus, they feel healthier because they are taking better care of themselves. In my case, I practice all kinds of sports; I really like climbing, skiing, flying, and paragliding. The virus hasn't stopped me from doing any of these things; rather, in a way, it has made me do these activities with greater enthusiasm. Actually, the health issue isn't the main issue for people who live with HIV and are undetectable. What's harder, what's more difficult, is the stigma and discrimination that exists against people who live with the virus, largely because many of us grew up during the AIDS crisis and we know very sad stories of what happens with AIDS and HIV that isn't treated. So, with this issue of stigma, of how you're going to be perceived, I spent about a year where I was absolutely sure that I was never going to be able to find a romantic relationship because, well, I was already infected. Remember I told you that On the day of my diagnosis, I made a promise that no one would ever see me cry about it. I only broke that promise once, and it was the morning after someone reacted with fear and disgust when I told them. We had only kissed the night before. I told them, I explained all the science, and even then, they felt a lot of indignation that I hadn't told them anything. I felt like a bacterium. I told them, "Look, it can't be transmitted through saliva. I'm undetectable." I even asked them, "Do you think that after what I've been through, I would put someone else at risk of the same thing happening to them?" [Music] I felt horrible and made my friend Alonso cry uncontrollably. But in my experience, that kind of reaction is the exception, not the rule. More people react with empathy and understanding. Then, about a year or a year and a half after my diagnosis, when I was starting a relationship, I saw this young woman who eventually became my first girlfriend after the diagnosis. I couldn't find a way to tell her. Finally, the night I decided to tell her... I kept talking about how nervous I was, I couldn't stop talking until she took my hand, told me to calm down, and gave me a kiss. For someone who at that moment feels like a germ, you can imagine how special that kiss was. I still wasn't prepared for such a positive reaction, so I asked her, "Why? How did you react the same way?" And she turned to me and confronted me with a question that, in one fell swoop, shattered all the ideas I'd convinced myself with over the past year. "How would you have reacted if I'd told you the same thing?" she asked. " How powerful!" I mean, she was absolutely right because I'd spent a whole year expecting bad reactions from other people when I wouldn't react that way. I think it's that sometimes we're harder on ourselves than on others, and it's very easy to convince ourselves of negative things. But well, thanks to that experience, I realized that no, of course I 'm a person who can be loved, who can be cherished. And well, that topic of how to tell a partner is one of the most difficult topics for women. People who live with HIV, you see, it's not easy to come together here in public and talk about such a taboo subject, but I've chosen to speak about it, I've chosen to say it because I want to recruit you as allies for two important fights. First, the fight against the HIV epidemic: use safe sex practices, be careful, and get tested regularly. And second, I ask you to please help me fight against the discrimination and ignorance that exists about the virus. I know many people who suffer in silence because they do n't know how to share this news with their parents, their family, their partners, their friends, and that's a very heavy burden, and they shouldn't have to. There's no need to be ashamed. As I said, it's something that can happen to anyone. Besides, as I already told you, an undetectable person cannot transmit the virus. In fact, I think that, at least in my case, the people who love me, the people close to me, have realized the same thing I have. They do n't consider this virus as something negative that happened to me, but rather they recognize that this experience of living with HIV has made me a more humane, more empathetic, stronger person. It has helped me reflect, grow, and mature a lot, and when I say I'm a positive person, I'm not referring to the virus but to my attitude. Thank you so much for listening. [Applause] [Music] no no no [Music]