I faced stigma as an HIV-positive scientist. Now, I’m living my dream

From ScienceMag:

I was less than a year into my Ph.D. when I learned my scholarship had been canceled. I was heartbroken. Studying in Germany was meant to be a fresh start, a chance to escape the stigma I’d faced back home in Costa Rica since testing positive for HIV. After years of struggle, I finally felt my dream of a scientific career was back on track. But securing medical insurance for my treatment had proved difficult, which eventually led the scholarship organization to cancel my funding. I was forced to return home.

I’d always wanted to be a scientist. As a child, I spent hours catching insects in the garden and watching nature documentaries. I made it into a prestigious science-focused high school in the capital, and then into an undergraduate microbiology program.

But something else was unfolding beneath the surface. I’d long known I was gay, and at university I found a community and came out. I dated and explored my identity. But in my final year, I started to lose weight and developed a swollen lymph node. My doctor told me it could be cancer or HIV. I was terrified. A part of me even hoped it was cancer, because society tends to view cancer survivors as brave, whereas HIV-positive people are still heavily stigmatized.

Eventually, the diagnosis came: I was HIV positive.

The response from many of my colleagues was deeply hurtful. Some said that, as a microbiologist, I should have known how HIV spreads and been more careful. At the time, I was a student in a bacteriology lab located in the same hospital where I was receiving treatment. The infectious disease doctor managing my case regularly visited the lab, and to see him in that context was unsettling. One day, a colleague casually mentioned they had processed my laboratory samples. I felt exposed, unsafe, and overwhelmed.

Telling my family was excruciating. My relationship with my father fell apart. Some friends disappeared, too. One said I was a burden on the health care system; another called me a bad person. The stress led to a mental health crisis and a psychotic episode, and I had to take time off from my studies to recover.

But I didn’t give up. I completed my degree and began working as a research assistant, even as my mental health struggles continued. I was hospitalized again and eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. The stigma only deepened. Now, I wasn’t just HIV positive, I was “crazy,” too.

Eventually, I decided I needed to get away. In Costa Rica, most microbiologists work in hospitals, places I could no longer bear to be in. After years of trying, I was awarded the scholarship in Germany. It felt like a new beginning: It was a relief to simply exist, without having to talk about my diagnoses. But the private health insurance provided by the scholarship organization excluded HIV treatment—and I couldn’t get public insurance without a job, which was incompatible with my study program. The organization said it could not fund me without coverage. I was devastated. I thought I’d lost everything I had worked so hard for. I felt ashamed: ashamed to explain to my supervisor why my scholarship had ended, ashamed to tell others what had happened, ashamed of having to return home. At some point, I began to believe I was simply a failure.

Fortunately, I still had people to support me. My former supervisor connected me with researchers in Italy, who offered me a Ph.D. position—this time with full insurance. From the beginning, my new supervisors knew about my HIV status, and I soon told them about my mental health. They regularly checked on my well-being, even coming with me on an initial visit to a psychiatrist. It meant the world to know that some people believed in an HIV-positive scientist with a mental health condition. I began to believe that speaking about my scars might help, that it could foster understanding, and perhaps even awaken empathy in others. If we don’t talk about HIV or mental health, the stigma will never end.

I completed my Ph.D., and am now living my dream as a postdoc. My mental health is stable, and I have not had a crisis in a long time. I’ve been undetectable for nearly a decade. Living with stigma is hard—but life didn’t end. I’m still here.

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