I'm 48 now - he he! - and actually it's easier now to have HIV because there's a lot of medical breakthroughs, and I think that's made my life a lot easier and made everybody else's who is now positive a lot more easy to cope with the situation.
Oh, surviving this long with HIV really has changed my outlook a lot. I can appreciate things a lot more. I can walk down the street and everybody I meet is a gift, a gift that you will always remember. The joy of a flower means a lot now. Every moment when you wake up Ð Ah! Ð it's a present.
The first thing I usually tell students is how long I've been positive, and they always just drop their jaw and all their hands go up in the air. And they all want to know 'How can that be? How can that be?' I explain for quite a long time, why I'm still here. Nobody seems to believe that the power of the mind can do great things.
The advice I'd share with the HIV+ community is I think they all should be positive, their outlooks really need to be positive. They need to look forward to every single day. My belief is that 'woe is me' syndrome will kill you. If you wake up in the morning and you say 'Oh, woe is me, I have AIDS,' well, you will not make it to the next day. If you wake up everyday and you go 'Woo Hoo! I made it! I'm going on!' you will. And that's how I think I have. And that's the advice I give everybody I know who is newly diagnosed. Don't look down. Look positive. Look at the good part. Look at what you can learn from your mistakes and look at how you can change your life in the future.