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The Day I Learned my AIDS Test was Inaccurate
And had to go through it all over again
It’s 2008 and I’m sitting in a small consultation room with a Peace Corps nurse. Together, we wait for the results of a quick AIDS test.
She looks at me with kind eyes. I can’t stand it. The thought that a past, bad relationship could mean a future filled with doctors and illness is torture. All I can think is, “I’m positive. I know it.”
I ask her, “What do I do if I have it?”
She takes a deep breath. “Then we deal with it.”
We fall silent again. One minute to go.
Test #1
My first test happened in Majunga, Madagascar during my Peace Corps service in that part of the country. There, in a sunny, beautiful beach town where I was in demand as a teacher and a friend to the locals, I told my then-boyfriend, Sachmo, (not his real name), that I needed to get tested.
“You need a test, too,” I informed my Malagasy partner. He looked away. He and I both knew that AIDS was rampant on the island and spreading all over Africa. However, like a lot of his peers, he doubted if AIDS really existed. The locals even made up a new set of words for the French version of the acronym, SIDA. They insisted it stood for, “Syndrome imaginaire pour…
