Debra's husband gave her HIV. But she still nursed him until he died.

Think about the person you trust the most.

They’re most likely a person that you’ve devoted your life to; the person who knows the passwords to your online bank account page and the traces of veins on the back of your hands.

Imagine being with that person for 10 years, building the perfect ‘white picket fence’ suburban life complete with a dog, kids, and maybe a built-in barbeque.

Then imagine having this life completely ripped from under you.

I want you to imagine this, so you can understand Debra’s story.

Because what I’ve described above is exactly what happened to Debra almost 20 years ago.

“We were a married suburban couple with three kids, doing everything a normal suburban couple was,” Debra says.

“I had no inkling at the time at all.”

Debra recently told SBS’s The Feed about the day she found out her husband of 10 years had been lying to her for the entirety of their marriage.

Her husband Gary had been living with HIV – but had never let even a whimper out about it.

Debra, who was a mother of three at the time, had no idea about her husband’s condition until Gary was diagnosed with acute pneumonia in 1995.

When Gary became sick doctors ran multiple tests – including one for HIV.

“They were testing for lots of things and stuff and HIV was one of the things that they were testing for,” Debra said.

“He came back positive and I got tested and the children got tested.”

The children were fine but Gary had passed the disease onto Debra too.

The revelation led Gary to admit that he had been having unsafe sex with men for years and had also used intravenous drugs – but had never mentioned anything to his wife.

Debra told SBS, “I still call him a bastard for doing it, a bastard who put us at risk, not only me but his children.”

In a situation like this, it would be easy for a person like Debra to crawl under the bedsheets and pretend it was all a horrific nightmare.

But life altering situations like this also push us forward and identify strengths in ourselves that we never knew of before.

Debra ended up nursing her husband for the 11 months before he died.

Despite everything Gary put her though, Debra was the one holding his hand towards the end, telling him things were going to be okay.

“I needed my kids to know so that they could never turn around and say to me ‘well why didn’t you look after Daddy?'”

Debra has been living with HIV for 20 years now, and she’s sharing her story for the first time, because she wants to remove the stigma that’s associated with the disease.

She told SBS that she’s, “sick of being ashamed of what [she] has.”

Debra told SBS, “I’m a normal woman and I’m just getting on with my life and HIV is just a small part of my life.”

Debra has moved on. She found a new partner, Paul, a year after she lost Gary. Paul is HIV negative.

She had a fourth healthy child with Paul, and is letting the world know that she is living a normal, healthy life with her HIV treatments.

Take a look at Debra’s story here:

What would you have done in the same situation?