Backdated

I’m writing this post on December 1, 2024: World AIDS Day, and about 25 years or so since contracting HIV. I don’t know exactly when that happened. My doctor informed me of the situation on March 12, 2001, a week after I went in for a routine physical made possible by having a full-time job with health insurance for the first time in a few years. The initial battery of tests suggest I had seroconverted perhaps a year or two before that.

I also don’t know how it happened, specifically. Inferring from the timeline, some contextual cues, and my own recollection of the times when I let my guard down, I can at least guess with some accuracy who the vector of transmission had been.

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