Aaron Aker

Up Close & Personal with Aaron

Hi my name is Aaron Aker. I'm a 35 year old Caucasian, heterosexual male living with HIV. I have been married twice; divorced once and widowed once. I have two wonderful teenage boys who are my life.

I am a self employed contractor who does windows and siding and whatever other construction needs are out there. I don't have a lot but what I do have is mine and I have worked since I was 15 and will continue to work as long as I can.

I was first diagnosed in November of 2009,  at that time. I had got it from my wife whom I had  known she was positive from the time I met her. For many years we were safe and practiced safer sex practices. I also was tested every six months prior to her ending up in the hospital for the last time. I ended up with HIV and am living well with it now.

I have never had much, but what I have I love and care for. I got my HIV from my second wife and am doing what I have to; to stay alive and raise my kids in a loving, caring home.

I am here to tell my story, show my face, to help fight the stigma and show we are human beings like each and every other person out there. We are not dangerous people and we all have feelings, just like the person next to us. I want to share my strength and experience with others to show there is hope even living with HIV.

A Day in the Life of My Body

I got involved with my first wife at seventeen, and I was married at 18 and also had my first child the same year. I had dropped out of school to get a full time job to raise my child. (BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE). Four yrs later I had another baby boy at 21. I don’t complain about my life; it hasn’t been that bad. I stayed married for 7 yrs and it was an argument about everyday, but I tried like hell to make it work. I stayed with her for 7 yrs, arguing just about everyday. I never got physical in our fights and was always trying to make things work. I couldn’t do it no more, so I decided it was time to move on.

I met a wonderful woman in a yahoo chat room. We talked for months before ever meeting. She was an amazing woman who changed the person I was. We finally met in “2000” and after being together for about three months, we decided to get a place together and started to make a life and a family. We had an amazing relationship, that was without arguing and fighting, with each other. Four yrs after we were together, she got extremely sick and kept ending up in the hospital. We found out she was infected with HIV . This wonderful angel I had begged me to leave her and let her be alone to deal with it. In my heart I couldn’t do it; I have more heart then that. At the time I didn’t have it and knew the chances that I was taking to stay with her. To me it’s love, to others they say I was stupid; but they don’t understand or know the concept of compassion or love.

She got deathly sick and ended up in the hospital with encephalopathy and multiple other infections. They had her on life support to keep her with us. I finally had to make the decision to take her off of the life support and just keep her out of pain. After this she kind of started to get better and was able to talk and eat. They moved her to a hospice so she had 24 hr watch over her. She stayed in the hospice for just over a month. Through out the whole thing I stayed working, going to stay with her, and keeping or home life together. I cared little about myself or my health. They let her come home in may of 2009 and had home hospice from there. I still kept working and doing as needed for our family.

My wife passed June 12, 2009 12:30A.M. She took her last breathe laying in my arms. After that I tried to go back to work and live a normal life, but shortly after I fell into a deep depression and started to miss a lot of work, and wasn’t capable of functioning to my full potential. I ended up in therapy and tried my best to keep my head and life together. I was pressed by my therapist to go get my self tested for HIV. They done both the swab test and a blood test. The swab test didn’t take the whole twenty minutes to read as it’s supposed to. After this my depression got worse and with my HIV I got sicker and sick to the point I couldn’t walk without a cane or something to keep my balance. This balance issue and tremors in my arms caused me to have to quit my job and lose everything I owned. I applied for disability in January 2010 and moved in with my parents along with my oldest son. I finally got my disability in October 2010 and started trying to put my life back together. January 2011 they changed my Medicaid to where I have a spend down and there for I have no extra money for me and my son to get our own place again.

You know we kept the fact that she had the HIV a secret from everyone including her own family and friends. I did to for the first seven or eight months of knowing I had it. I have seen the shunning, discrimination, and the stigma that comes with having a terminal illness that is transmittable to others. I see how uneducated, uncaring people are in this world these days. I am also seeing how rude, obnoxious, uncaring, and dispassionate people are to others in this world. I am also very open about me having this illness and enjoy educating others on the differences in HIV & AIDS. YES (THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO) YES (MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW THIS) So as we go about our everyday lives just trying to LIVE. Most think how are they going to survive without this or that. The rest of us out here are fighting for our LIVES by taking medicine that is poison and in itself can kill you. (NO I’M NOT COMPLAINING) I do what I have to do to take care of my kids and keep myself around for them. I have some friends and then I have some who have turned and walked out of my life (WHICH IS OK WITH ME) I look at it as they wasn’t my friends to begin with and was just looking for someone, or some shoulder to cry on. I have had the privilege of meeting some of the nicest people around since I come to have this illness. Ones who if I needed would be there for me when and if I needed them and I would be there for them.

I know I’m not perfect an and know we all make mistakes. I see people who judge others for what they have, what they look like and even their race. People also judge others by their nationality or even their spiritual beliefs. I hear a lot of the younger generation being racist, and discriminating I also know that everyone was made different for the simple fact how or what would this world be like if we was all the same and everyone was perfect, made no mistakes? Life would be dull and boring to not be-able to learn. We live in a generation that is capable of placing a man on the moon but yet people are dying everyday from illnesses that they say have no cure(THIS I DO NOT BELIEVE). Why because an illness isn’t cool it isn’t tabloid article material. OK now let’s also look at the time, money, and minds put into the wars we have. Yes I understand there will be conflicts of interest but for the most part we are all humans.

My life as of now. I am doing wonderful on my medication and I am getting back to work now. It’s been a long slow process but is well worth the fight in it. I see and hear of people giving up and giving into this illness all the time. Personally I don’t see how these people can do this. Recently I have had some confrontations with a few denialist over HIV. These people will try to get you to believe that it does not exist but I am here to tell you it does and is does not discriminate with whom it attacks. There are still people out there who will tell you there is nothing wrong with you because you don’t look sick but they don’t feel or see what is going on inside of us.

Wow I was sitting here thinking today. I have been using my illness against me for several months. I screwed up a few months back and walked away from one who I truly believe loved me for who I am. I think I finally figured out what it was I was doing to myself. We all with HIV tend to complain and bitch about other people who are discriminating against us. To be honest it’s not always the others who are doing it “IT’S US”, we are doing it to ourselves. This is why I want my face out in the open and why I am proud to stand up and tell everyone I am HIV+. I may not be the best looking guy but I never claimed to be. I have many friends that are women and they all know I have HIV but they don’t care. They will give me a hug or a kiss at anytime with no questions asked. Most are not too scared of me, but then you get some who do and are afraid of us. These are the ones we need to help educate and understand that we are not a poisonous bug that needs to be squashed. I have found me a woman whom it’s taken some time to help her understand all this but is still a bit shy bout wanting in it.

I have been talking to a couple people lately whom seem to not care that I have this and will ask me questions and really seem to know what it’s all about. What issues we have what medications we take and how it makes us feel. I have few issues with my medications so I myself don’t pay much attention to them. I can still do things that anyone else can do.

For over a year I was in hiding from it and would only talk to close family and or other HIV+ people. But “NO MORE” I will not hide it no more and I will not let people put me down because of it. I have been shunned and laughed at and belittled for having it. But guess what I am still here and I am actually loving life and living it to the fullest. I am living my life with HIV but I don’t live an HIV life. This disease has took more than a year of my life from being affected to infected and I wont let it have no more of without limitations but for the most part it’s easy but for some parts I don’t yet have the answers but I will find them and I will make it happen. This is it. My turn do what I want with no limitations; and take control of my life. You may ask me how to do it my life and I want to share it with you.

I’m a hunter and a fisherman and enjoy working on cars. I install windows and siding and or whatever the customer wants done. I had to quit when I first was diagnosed because I had not balance and I have tremors in my right hand. Look I am here to tell you there is life after HIV. We are all “HUMAN BEINGS”! I have feelings you have feelings and we all bleed the same color blood. The only difference in our blood is we have s minuscule bug within it. He is my partner in crime. If you ask me to go out somewhere with you my friend has to come along with me. If someone don’t like that then it’s just too bad because I can’t ask him to stay home without me. I don’t mind he doesn’t get in the way to much; he just likes to take my energy from me.

There are days when I feel as though my life couldn’t get no worse. I look back to what I seen while taking care of my wife and what she went through, and tell myself I will not let this illness win. I have trouble finding dates even as friends cause people are so uneducated about this and are afraid to even be out with you. This is why I am here now telling this story. If we could get more people to stand up and say we are just like anyone else we would be doing good and others wouldn’t be so scared of us.

There are people out there who do love us care for us as a human beings. I live my life as though I don’t have this and I get up everyday to the sunshine and hope we all have. I even try on a daily basis to find me a new girlfriend/wife some days I have better luck than others and then there are some days I have none. I don’t let these days get me down cause these are the days we HAVE to be strong and keep trying.

I have found a couple who didn’t mind or who was also positive, but why do I have to drop my standards for others when I am no different than I was before. This illness does not rule my life and I won’t let it any more. The only difference between you and me is I have a bug in my blood and you don’t.

I have fought for over a year about my medical insurance paying for my medications and doctor's visits. Just because I get a disability check that is more than our stated medicaid allows you to make. I make out OK and live my days as though I don’t have it but then there are times it stands in front of you and you got to step around and tell it to stay put. “Would be nice if we could tell it to stay home” but we just can not do that. We can dream and wonder what it would be like to do this but that is all we can do. Starting to mumble here and I think I am going to save for the next month and maybe I will have some more things going on then so I can be a bit more interesting.

MUCH LOVE AND HAPPINESS TO ALL!!!!!!!

We are all human and we are ALL THE SAME!!!!!!

HIV.

You can’t get it from me cooking you a meal.

You can’t get it from sitting on my toilet seat.

You can't get it from hugging me.

You can't get it from me  breathing on you.

Together we can fight this for all of us