Woman discovers she has HIV by googling her symptoms after doc refused blood test
Abby Landy, 28, went to her GP after a former lover sent a sinister text saying: 'I hope you remember me for ever'
A WOMAN has told how she realised she has HIV when she googling her symptoms — after her GP had refused her a blood test.
Abby Landy, 28, went to her doctor because she was feeling ill after a former lover sent her a sinister text saying: “I hope you remember me for ever.”
She had broken out in a rash of cold sores, had a fever and was physically sick — but a doctor said her chances of her contracting HIV were “slim” given she was a heterosexual woman living in Australia.
The Sydney legal assistant went home and jumped on the computer. That’s when she discovered the virus was probably replicating in her blood.
She told the : “I had recently started a new relationship so I got a sexual health screen.
“I was given some anti-viral for the cold sores and it came back all clear. Everything was negative.”
Her doctor, she says, told her “You’re an Australian woman” and she shouldn’t worry.
When she insisted on an HIV test, she remembers clearly the look on her doctor’s face.
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She : “I told her what the guy had said so she ordered the test and I got a call back about three days later asking me to come back in.
"I was still really crook at this point and the doctor was really visibly distressed. She said, ‘I’m so sorry but it looks like you’ve contracted HIV’.
“I saw a specialist and he laid down the facts. I said, ‘When am I dying? When does this mean?’
"I had no idea of what it meant to have HIV in 2012. I assumed it was game over.
“He said, ‘Look, it’s a really manageable chronic illness. You take a couple of pills a day. People live next to normal lives’. And that’s when I thought, ‘OK, life does continue’.”
Ms Landy is telling her story five years on to raise awareness because doctors' failure to diagnose HIV in women is so common.
Aids Action Council’s Philippa Moss .
She said: “Women are far too often silenced, and their experiences are unrecognised and unaddressed because women don’t meet the stereotype of the so-called typical person who’s going to contract HIV.
“HIV is seen to be a gay man’s disease, when in fact it’s not.”
It’s a message echoed by Ms Landy who says she knows of a number of women who are discriminated against because they contracted the virus.
She said: “People assume ‘If you’re not black or a gay man then you must be a slut’.
“But I think the reason I have avoided a lot of the discrimination a lot of people with HIV and Aids face is because I’m really open about it.
"I’m really unapologetic. I’m not ashamed. It is what it is. I think the way you present it goes a long way to how people will react to you.”
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