WASHINGTON (NNPA) ? Intellectually, Phill Wilson had it all figured out. As a Black, gay man living in Los Angeles during the 1980s, he presumed that he had contracted AIDS. Wilson and other anti-AIDS activists glossed over the issue by telling one another: Assume you have AIDS and behave accordingly.
But Wilson, an AIDS counselor with several government agencies, would learn for sure that he had contracted HIV when, at the age of 27, he decided to get tested.
"I thought I should take the test so that when I talked to people, I could tell them what it was like to take the test," recounts Wilson, now executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. "I took the test, I assumed that I was positive, and I thought I would go on the way I had been going and I would be a better counselor or advocate for having taken the test."
In real life, it wouldn't be that simple. He would be right about being HIV-positive, but wrong about how he would react to the news.
"I remember leaving the testing facility and just being stunned, not quite knowing why I was stunned," Wilson says. "I remember getting into my car and having a panic attack, just thinking: 'I am going to die.' And it felt like I was going to die then and there. I sat there in the parking lot for a half-hour, crying."
http://blackvoices.aol.com/black_ne...st-phill-wilson-turns-50/20060426093009990001
But Wilson, an AIDS counselor with several government agencies, would learn for sure that he had contracted HIV when, at the age of 27, he decided to get tested.
"I thought I should take the test so that when I talked to people, I could tell them what it was like to take the test," recounts Wilson, now executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. "I took the test, I assumed that I was positive, and I thought I would go on the way I had been going and I would be a better counselor or advocate for having taken the test."
In real life, it wouldn't be that simple. He would be right about being HIV-positive, but wrong about how he would react to the news.
"I remember leaving the testing facility and just being stunned, not quite knowing why I was stunned," Wilson says. "I remember getting into my car and having a panic attack, just thinking: 'I am going to die.' And it felt like I was going to die then and there. I sat there in the parking lot for a half-hour, crying."
http://blackvoices.aol.com/black_ne...st-phill-wilson-turns-50/20060426093009990001
