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10- PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, March 14, 1995 "Scugog's Community Newspaper of Choice" Living with HIV: By Jeff Mitchell SPECIAL TO THE PORT PERRY STAR TIAN MAHAFFY is one of Port Perry's native sons. | He was born here, and raised here, and he spent the long, sunny summer- time afternoon of his boyhood here, play- ing with friends in the fields and forests that ran up to his back door. Here he went to elementary school, and high school. He worked at part-time jobs, washing dishes and stocking shelves and pressing keys on a cash reg- ister. He played in the school band and got his driver's licence and fell in love and grew up and moved away. He is the kid next door, your brother and cousin and uncle and son. And he has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Now 30 and living in Toronto, he has come back home to tell his story, with the hope that by coming forward he can make people think about something they'd rather not, and confront their own feelings. He wants to let the community know that he and others with HIV and AIDS need the love and compassion and understanding of those around them as they attempt to cope with the monumen- tal challenge of living with dignity and courage in the face of terminal illness. "I'm the same person," he said during a lengthy interview recently. "I still hurt. I still bleed, I still cry. Ido everything they do and I think that sometimes, they lose sight of that. "When you're diagnosed with a termi- nal illness, the way you look at life changes immensely... I have a very strong faith in God, that he is in control. I can do as much as I can to look after myself, but the rest is in his hands. "And I really do believe that." THE RAPID spread of HIV and AIDS throughout the world has to be the story of the century. And although the news stories filed, papers written and pamphlets distribut- ed in the past couple of decades number in the millions, the phenomenon remains one of the most feared and least under- stood in our time, Loathing, fear and shame are rampant, as is misinforma- tion. It's easy to fear what we do not understand, and hate what we cannot control. When AIDS appeared on our horizon, it was considered a gay plague, or a man- ifestation of poverty and ignorance in third world jungles. Then stories about tainted blood appeared, and transmis- sion among heterosexuals, and then it started to come closer to home. We worried for our sons and our daughters, and even ourselves, but never really ima- gined it intruding upon our lives. We pushed AIDS aside, designated it a drawer in the dark reaches of our col- lective consciousness, and tried to forget about it. When it is mentioned we shud- der or shrug, or even laugh: Not here; not us "Not 80. "This isn't a gay disease anymore; it 3 AIDS. never was." lan Mahaffy said. "The pro- blem was when this first came out that it was stigmatized as a gay disease, a gay cancer. It's not. As a matter of fact, the fastest growing numbers right now in the world are heterosexual women, who are getting it from unprotected sex with their boyfriends or their husbands. "...There are people here in town that have the virus. And there are people in town that are dying of AIDS. And their families and these people... are terrified because of the whole stigma attached. "My hope is that by doing this, some of the barriers will be broken down." IAN 'S OWN drama began three years ago. A young man in his 20's, he had finally settled in Toronto after a long search for adventure and fulfillment. Growing up in Port Perry and Prince Albert was good. The oldest of two kids, Ian fared well at school, not excelling academically but enjoying many friends and, particularly, music. He played piano and, in the school band, the French horn, and was a member of the highly-regard- ed Jazzmerize vocal ensemble which still enlists students at Port Perry High School. Music always came easily. "I'm gifted," he said. "I can play by ear. "I could go to church and come home lan Mahaffy, a 30-year-old native of Port Perry, has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In an exclusive interview with The Star, he talks about living with the disease, and his hopes of changing attitudes toward people with HIV and and I could probably play some of the stuff in church just from memory. And I could pick up songs on the radio and start to plunk them out, and if somebody was playing the piano and I could watch them play for a minute and kind of listen to the tune, I could usually pick it up pretty quickly." Ian's youth was disrupted forever when his father died of a heart i | attack at just | 47. lan was 18, | in Grade 12. | Suddenly he was the man of the house. It was, | obviously, and | huge adjust- | ment for the | young man and | his family to i | make. But they {| persevered, and ' | animportant lesson was learned: Life | deals you {| curves, and * | sometimes | knock-out i blows. When | they occur you | pick yourself | up, and carry | on. And the family discov- ered the value of living each day in apprecia- tion of life, and one another. "The words I love you are always said at the end of every phone call with my family," he said. "Actually, it's something I say to every- - body. It's something I didn't get to say to my Dad; even though I knew he knew, I didn't get to say Iloved him before he died, and it was something that hurt a lot and something that took a little time to get over." After another year at home Ian had completed Grade 13, and applied to George Brown College in Toronto, where he was one of more than 2,000 applicants selected to fill a handful of positions open in the piano technician course. He did well in college, but a motorcycle accident in his second year left him badly injured, and he had to withdraw. After his convalescence he took a course in travel and tourism at the Toronto School of Business and racked up a 90 per cent grade average upon his "This isn't a gay disease anymore; it never was." graduation. He had found his niche. He set about applying to tour compa- nies while working back in Port Perry and eventually landed a job as assistant cruise director on a Caribbean tour shi line. He did one tour, then came home for a while, and was booked for another. It was eight months straight, seven 16-hour days a week, cruising from Boston to the Caribbean and back. It was rewarding work, but exhausting. And it was eye-opening. "It taught me to stand on my own," he said. "It taught me that if there's anyone in charge of my life, it was me." After his stint with the tour line, Ian started working in Toronto hotels. He had worked his way from desk clerk to night manager at a venerable downtown hotel and was accumulating experience and seniority when HIV entered his life. IN THE SPRING 1992 Ian was getting set to visit his mother in Florida. He was looking for- ward to the trip, but bothered by a nag- ging case of bronchitis. He went to a walk-in clinic to get a prescription for antibiotics and, as a matter of course, was asked if he would consider an AIDS test. He'd been tested before, a means of keeping up his "comfort level"; a young man dating in the city, he said he always practiced safe sex, but took the extra step of testing just to be sure. He went to Florida and three weeks later, upon his return, got a call from the doctor's office. Once again, that's routine: Results of the tests, positive or negative, aren't given over the phone. Ian expected to be told his test results were fine, and given a refresher in safe sex by the doctor. "That's what I was expecting," he said. "She came out and told me I had tested positive. I went into shock, cried a little bit. We sat and talked for about four hours. "My initial reaction, of course, was: This is it. I'm going to die. That's it. It's over. Ill die. I'll die alone. Nobody needs Ww. The date was March 6, 1992. He was 27 years old. "HIV and AIDS isa er. minal illness. There is no cure," he said. "It was like somebody telling me, you're going to die. It would be like somebody telling you you have liver cancer or breast cancer or something; you have a short time to live... you have been infec- ted or you have a disease that will kill you. "Put yourself in that spot for two minutes and think about it: Your entire life flashes in front of you; you come to a dead stop. Your life comes to a dead stop, and all of a sudden you take a look at who you are, at where you're going, at where you've come from... and in that second, your whole perspective on life changes; the way you look at life, and the way you feel with things. "You all of a sudden realize how pre- cious life is, and how quickly it can be taken from you. "You can lose this life."