We assumed all our patients were straight.
via Huffington Post, by Dr. Paul Semugoma
It was early evening when he slouched into my office. Medium height, thin, brown, he had lost some weight recently. There was a nervousness to his eye, a lack of comfort intimating the visit was not to his liking.
Slight hesitation, then the plunge. He had been advised to take the HIV test. It had come back positive. The unvoiced fright in his face was palpable. HIV was a death diagnosis at the time. Drugs had just been discovered, but ours was one of the few clinics prescribing them. He would never be able to afford them.
But I was his doctor. We talked, for a long while, trying to ease his fear. We talked prevention, diet, exercise. We talked doctors, medicines. Then he dropped the bombshell.
He was gay. How would he protect his boyfriends?
His being homosexual didn't faze me. But, I didn't know the answer. What was safer sex for a gay man?
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