We leave no one hanging

Christian almost died because he didn't want to admit that he had Aids. Today, he is fully back in life - and wants to educate heterosexuals about HIV

I'll be dead soon anyway, thought Christian in 2007. He suspected that he was HIV-positive, and for him HIV was synonymous with Aids, Aids meant death. There was no escape from this equation for him.

Paralyzed inside, a year later Christian didn't even want to hear how an HIV specialist encouraged him. "With medication, you can lead a normal life for a good 20 to 30 years," said the doctor. "You're just trying to talk me out of my last days," Christian thought to himself.

Today, the 42-year-old is sitting on the sofa in his two-room apartment in Berlin-Reinickendorf, which he shares with his wife: a cheerful, tall man with a broad grin and a firm handshake. A guy who can get down to business, his bald head makes him look massive. He smiles a lot. It's obvious how much he enjoys life.

"Madness," says Christian and shakes himself. What a panic he caused himself back then! "If I could turn back the clock, I'd take the test much sooner.

"Today, I would take the HIV test much sooner."

Christian took the test at the last minute, back when he was so scared. He had long suspected that he was HIV-positive, but had suppressed it as much as he could and even beyond.

Christian was infected a good ten years ago in Thailand during a one-night stand. After that, he was married and faithful to his wife. He didn't notice anything until 2007, when he suddenly couldn't breathe during another vacation in Thailand. He also had a high fever and it all looked like pneumonia. He was given medication at a private clinic and quickly got better. After three days, a doctor came into Christian's hospital room with an X-ray of his lungs and said: "You have Aids."

Christian found this absurd. "I threw him out immediately! You can't see Aids on an X-ray!" He thought. Today he knows: the doctor was right. Christian was suffering from pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP), a type of pneumonia typical of Aids.

Christian ran out of air on vacation

His doctor in Berlin didn't know any better at the time and reassured him: it was absurd about Aids, it was simply a tropical disease. Christian wanted to believe him, but doubt nagged at him. Had the Thai doctor been right?

And the doubt grew. Nothing worked anymore in bed with his wife. He didn't want to frighten her and didn't say anything. He didn't want to take an HIV test because he was afraid of the result. The fear paralyzed him. He didn't tell anyone for a year, withdrew and organized his estate. Until he started to have the same problems again as he had in Thailand: weakness, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing. "I could hardly get up the stairs to my apartment."

He canceled a trip to Thailand with his wife and went to the doctor again, this time to a lung expert. He couldn't make sense of the symptoms, sent him for an X-ray and a CT scan, then referred him to a colleague. He put Christian on a bike to test the function of his lungs.

While Christian was pedaling, the doctor took a look at the CT images, puzzled - and picked up the phone. "Can't you see that the man has Aids?" he shouted into the line to his colleague. Christian, panting on his bike next to him, froze. And closed his mind to life.

"Better to die now, I thought"

He chased to the airport in a friend's car to see his wife off to Thailand. She was worried. "It's nothing serious," he said. She wanted to stay with him. "Nah, you'd better fly," he said. And drove straight from the airport to Behring Hospital in Berlin-Zehlendorf, a specialist clinic for lung diseases. As soon as the blood sample was taken, he said to the doctor: "I need a psychologist. I can't cope with this." The diagnosis confirmed that Christian was HIV-positive.

He had his pneumonia treated at the clinic.

And thought about suicide. Better to die now than vegetate, he thought, with the image of emaciated AIDS patients from the 80s in mind. It is precisely this prejudice that Christian himself encounters again and again today. "You can't have Aids with that belly!" he is told. He has to laugh when he talks about it.

"You can't have AIDS - with your stomach!"

Ignorance was often the main problem. If he could have believed the doctor who promised him a long and fulfilling life, he could have started earlier. The fact that he finally succeeded is thanks to the self-help movement for people with HIV, in which he is now actively involved.

Getting to know other HIV-positive people changed everything. "They all looked so normal. I thought: maybe I have a chance after all!" Christian visited a group at the Pluspunkt advice center in Berlin. "They picked me up," he says. And because he was often the only heterosexual, he began to get involved in the PositHIV & Hetero network, the nationwide association of heterosexual women and men living with the virus.

Christian says that ignorance and prejudice about HIV and Aids are still widespread among heterosexuals in particular. "The gay community is enlightened, but straights aren't, it's considered dirty. As a man you're gay or a junkie, as a woman you're a whore or a slut."

Christian is now fully back in the swing of things. Every morning he takes two pills to keep HIV in his body in check, and he regularly goes to the doctor to have his blood levels checked. "The pills are my constant companions," he says with a regretful grin. Otherwise, he has no restrictions; side effects such as nausea and diarrhea only occurred in the first six months.

Christian demonstrates that it is possible to lead a normal life as an HIV-positive person. He could have taken early retirement, but it was important to him to continue working - for financial reasons, but also "because I wanted to remain part of society". He now drives to a call center every morning, where he works for a major airline.

And his wife? She didn't get infected. She was afraid, but the two of them did some research together and she is now also coping better with the issue. However, things are still not going well in bed. Christian is too afraid that his wife could be infected. His medication makes it virtually impossible to transmit the virus, and they could also use condoms. But the fear remains. "I'm blocked," says Christian, looking very thoughtful for a moment.

"I take time to enjoy beautiful moments"

However, the infection also changed his life for the better: because he had death on his mind. "I used to take everything in my stride and a lot of things passed me by. I drank alcohol to get my head full." Today, he enjoys himself much more intensely, goes out into nature, to the nearby Schäfersee lake, sits on a bench there and switches off his cell phone. "I take time for beautiful moments."

He still can't quite believe that he still has a lot of life ahead of him. He doesn't know exactly what the virus has already done to his body and how the medication will work in the long term. "I'm totally terrified of death. Life is so beautiful!"