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Matt Merry does not keep in his memory the exact words used by his mother to tell him that he had HIV
Just remember that he did not know how to react. At least not at first, in front of his mother.
He had sat at the table in the living room of his house in Rugby, England, to announce the news. Matt was 12 years old.
He had been living with the virus for four years, he explained to his mother
He had been infected with an injection that he had been given to treat his hemophilia, a blood disorder that had been diagnosed. A few years after birth
It was in 1986 and we were in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, and an HIV diagnosis was received as a death sentence
Once the first signs of Infection, I would probably live two years In addition, the doctors told his parents then.
That night, lying in bed with the lights off, the numbness that had been felt throughout the day began to fade and Matt started to feel the weight of They had just said it
One of the most difficult steps was the school, where he did not talk to anyone about his illness for fear of being sick. to be tried and rejected. COURTESY FAMILY MERRY
All I knew about HIV and AIDS was images of young skeletons, with bodies covered with wounds, losing their lives in the corridors of hospitals. And he started crying. "Since then and throughout my teenage years, I have felt that I had a clock in countdown mode and that at any time someone could press this countdown. for two years until his death, "he remembers
But his mother told him something else: he should not tell anyone .. No friends, no teachers … in the beginning, not even his little brother.
An indescribable secret
When he returned to school, he wore a secret that he could not share 19659003] In 1986, people living with HIV or AIDS were subject to perverse and visceral fear
In the media, the disease was associated with drug addicts and homosexual men, who were continually stigmatized.
Today, Matt believes that his parents did the right thing in deciding to keep the secret.
"In reality, it was not It's a real option to let people know, "he says.
[1919090]
In the 1980s, HIV was primarily associated with drugs and homosexuality | COURTESY FAMILY MERRY
Sometimes other classmates scoffed at him because of his hemophilia. So you can not imagine what it would be like if you knew about their HIV diagnosis.
He was already on the news that thousands of people had contracted HIV through tainted blood transfusion, and Matt had heard that school parents brought the children to know that there was a person with HIV. # 39; hemophilia in their class
but the weight of his secret was very large.
"You feel so alone in going through this alone, unable to speak or comment with anyone …"
"Why Exhaust?"
He was never offered any therapy or psychological support.
"I guess I could have talked to my mom or my dad or my brother, but it was so disturbing that I did not want to talk about it because I knew that I was going to cry, so I locked myself in and continued. "
Matt's notes at school reflect his d & # 39; 39, encouragement and lack of faith in the future | MERRY'S FAMILY MERRY
For his friends and classmates, everything seemed normal. Nobody knew what was going on in his head. But he was certain that he would have died before turning 20 years old. He could never have a girlfriend, get married or have children.
In time, he knew that he had also been infected with hepatitis C.
With this scenario, Matt stopped working at school. Total, what for?
"Why spend all this time reviewing and doing homework if I do not want to have a career or anything?", He thought.
Unwittingly, Matt had been involved in what is considered the biggest scandal in the history of the United Kingdom's Public Health System (NHS).
According to militant organizations, at least 2,800 people with hemophilia died from the use of medical articles with tainted blood, and other tens of thousands of non-hemophiliacs were infected with different virus.
Treatments with "factor VIII"
During the 70s and 80s a new treatment for hemophilia was popularized based on protein injections called factor concentrates, usually factor VIII, which helped blood clotting.
These products were made from donated blood plasma, and there was so much demand in the UK that the NHS started to import it from overseas, especially from the United States [19659003] 
When the United Kingdom imported donated blood from the United States during the 1980s, many samples were contaminated | But what Matt and his family did not know, was that much of the American imported Factor VIII was made from plasma donated by prisoners or drug addicts, considered high-risk groups. contracting diseases such as HIV or hepatitis C.
In many cases, they had been paid to make these donations. And since these products were made in large quantities from the plasma of tens of thousands of people, with whom only one donation was contaminated, the whole lot was.
As the AIDS crisis progressed in the 1980s, the UK Department of Health received written alerts that products from the United States needed to be recalled. But the measure was only put in place in 1986, years after the first warnings.
When Matt's mother learned that her son had been infected with HIV, he did not even know that he had been tested.
As there was no tomorrow
Nobody in Matt's school circle knew why he had made such bad grades.
The years before the university were spent "doing silly things, having fun with friends."
Despite the prognosis of two years of life, and not to mention his hemophilia, Matt was in good health.
described as a child with "a strong mechanism of psychological defense" | CHARLOTTE EDEY / BBC
In 1990, just after At the age of 16, a doctor gave him a psychiatric evaluation
"Try not to think about the future and, when you do, do not feel bad. They also described Matt as having "a strong psychological defense mechanism," but that "he could easily get through and when that happened he was clearly anxious"
. psychiatrist, the following years, it was likely that "Matt suffered from great emotional difficulties," whether or not he developed the AIDS disease.
During adolescence, one's way out of reality was the world of drugs | PHOTO OF FAMILY / BBC
"It will be difficult for him to establish satisfactory relations with the opposite sex given the real danger of transmission of the infection," he added. .
"He is already worried about the fact that he will not be able to have children."
Refuge on Drugs
C & # 39; is when Matt started smoking cannabis. Later, he consumed other synthetic drugs such as speed and ecstasy.
It was the early '90s and Matt turned full on the rave scene of parties and drugs until dawn.
When his parents finally found out, He told them, "And why not, I do not have much time left to live, I want to try to enjoy as much experience as possible before to die".
It was not easy to dismantle this argument. When he was 17 or 18 and after a night of drinking in the city, he went home with a friend and something encouraged him to tell him that he had HIV to someone outside. from his immediate family environment for the first time
he was shocked, but he was very understanding.
Matt was very relieved. For the next three or four years, he began talking to his closest friends individually. Over time, talking about it has become easier and it has never found a negative reaction from any of them.
Matt went to college just to continue to party friends But he began to get good grades | When he was 20, Matt saw how many of his friends went to study at the University of Birmingham, so he went to live there just to keep going out to party [19659003] Then he had the feeling that He was beginning to fall behind. His friends went on with their lives, graduating, forming couples … but he did not do it.
There was no specific moment when he had a revelation, but little by little he began to think, "I have this since I was 8 years old. and they always told me that I had two years to live. "
" And if it is not two years old and if it is longer? "
It never occurred to him that he could maybe reach 50 or 60 years old Then he realized that he had to do something in case he would end up living again ten years.
Getting out of the hole
He therefore enrolled in a course at the University of Birmingham and, the first time since his HIV diagnosis, he did efforts in his studies and got good grades.
During college, he cured hepatitis C after strong medical treatment | CHARLOTTE EDEY / BBC
"For me, it was a turning point," he says. "I thought," I can really do that. ""
And a first degree in the I & # 39; 39, took to the baccalaureate.
Meanwhile, medical examinations continued. Normally, HIV kills CD4 cells, but their blood levels have shown adequate levels.
What started to give him problems, was his hepatitis.
A biopsy revealed that his liver had scars and was damaged. Hard treatment with very potent drugs, ribavirin and interferon, to try to get rid of the virus.
After 12 months, the doctors had good news: he was free of hepatitis C.
He went to Australia, the furthest place of his life in Rugby and the people who have known him forever.
Matt Merry: "I think I went on a journey of myself" | "I think I made a trip to get me away from myself," he says.
"I wanted new people who did not know me, I could be someone different, everything that had happened in recent years and the emotional charge I was carrying."
Tell people that they had HIV seemed easier here.He only met them for a short time.
For the first time, he began to consider the idea of having a love relationship: her parents had always had the idea of talking about their health to potential partners and giving them the option to cut the relationship.
But it was a lot more scary than tell him some close friends
She met girls, but the relationship does not go beyond the little summer business.
2000: Back Home [19659003MattreturnedtoEnglandshortlybeforeChristmas2000AndbythattimehebegantothinkthathewouldendupMaybebylivingalongtime
"I think traveling has helped a lot." Among others, getting rid of prejudices about HIV
The arrival of antiretrovirals has changed the life expectancy of people infected with HIV. Matt was one of them | CHARLOTTE EDEY / BBC
And with the advent of antiretroviral therapy, people have stopped considering HIV as an automatic death sentence. This helped
In 2003, during a trip to a bachelor party boy, Matt met a girl with whom he exchanged phone numbers.
Soon they started going out together. Already at the beginning of the relationship, Matt mentioned that he had HIV and that he was ready to be rejected. But that "did not baffled her."
In 2008, they got married. "He did not care at all about it."
A New Life
Finding a partner was unimaginable for him, having children seemed totally unthinkable
"I thought
But one of his childhood friends, who was also hemophiliac, told him that he had been father through a technique called sperm washing, a form of assisted reproduction [19659025] Matt was interested in this technique but was surprised when an expert told him that, since his viral load was virtually undetectable, he would be sure that they had a baby naturally.
[19659003] Currently, Matt is in good health, he is married and had two children | "I could not believe what they were saying to me," he says. thought, "Do you know what I've lived for the last 15 or 20 years?" "
" But fearing the slightest possibility of transmitting the virus to my son, after my own experience, I did not want to try my luck "»
"So we did three cycles with this technique of sperm washing and we had a child, then we are returned repeat it for the second.
Being a father changed Matt's life.
Seeing that his children are approaching the age at which he was told that he was sick, he thinks about the magnitude of what has happened to him.
"It's the only time I'm excited," he says. "It makes me furious, it's like a misplaced anger, as if it were done to my children, not to me."
A Lottery
How would you react if you were told today that your children There are two years left? "God, I do not know what I would do, only God knows how my parents felt."
After decades of lobbying by activists, the British government is about to open a public inquiry into the scandal of the
It never stops being surprised when it looks on its own history. Of the 1250 patients estimated to have been infected with hepatitis C and HIV because of this scandal, fewer than 250 are still alive, according to the Tainted Blood Organization
"In terms of deaths, Is really like I had won the lottery "
Matt believes that despite the large number of casualties, the scandal has not attracted much attention because of the l & # 39; Inheritance of the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS and for that he wants to tell his story.
"I am happy in my life right now: I have a big family, with a woman and two wonderful children. "
" I have every reason to be grateful. But I should not have to feel grateful for that, "he concludes.
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