
Image: Abby Landy
Abby Landy was diagnosed with HIV when she was 23.
Like many young people, she had no idea what life with the chronic illness would be like – nor did she realise it was a possibility for her.
“It felt like game over, that was the end. I was thinking, ‘When am I going to get sick, when am I going to die?’,” Abby, now 26, says. “As a woman I didn’t even realise I was at risk.”
Despite these initial fears, Abby’s daily life has scarcely changed three years on. Now, she wants other young people in her position to realise that being HIV positive doesn’t have to stop them living a normal life.
Abby, a Sydney-based legal assistant and part-time law student, was diagnosed with HIV in the wake of an abrupt breakup. “I was seeing a guy – it was a short relationship and he was the one who ended up infecting me,” she recalls. “I wasn’t comfortable with some of his [sexual] behaviour, so I ended things.”
Within a few weeks of the relationship ending, symptoms began to present. At first, Abby experienced an outbreak of cold sores - the first ones she'd ever had - which were followed by flu-like symptoms including nausea, aches and pains, rashes and a run-down feeling.
"I didn’t know you could feel that unwell without dying; it was the sickest I’ve ever been," she says.
Abby visited her GP for a sexual health screening, and decided to contact her ex to ask if he was aware of having any STIs. "Everything else had come back clear but I’d been doing some Googling and had those worst case scenario thoughts. He said he’d been tested and didn’t have any sexually transmitted infections or anything; I did actually bring up HIV and ask if that could be a possibility and he said ‘No way’."
Your cheatsheet to the HIV treatment you didn’t know existed
However, her suspicions were raised when after several attempts to contact her and 'catch up', the man sent Abby a text containing a somewhat ominous message: 'I hope you at least remember me forever.' That's when she realised HIV could be a possibility.
"I went back to the doctor and asked for the test," Abby says. "I was already feeling really unwell so it all just felt like that was a possibility in that moment, which it obviously was."