It was a time when you were sent back out into the world and lived expecting to die, veiled in secrecy and shame. HIV and AIDS was and still is the singularly most stigmatised illness, condition or death of any on record. It was the illness whose name you dare not say, it was the time of unmarked graves, family shame and calls for criminalisation. For many diagnosed all those years ago, it was a terrifying and isolating time in which you were handed a death sentence and somehow had to make sense of what time you had, often completely alone until you started the descent, on a ward often staffed by some of the most caring people in the NHS. It was a time when many nurses and doctors refused to work near patients who had an HIV or AIDS diagnosis. Dentists were an absolute horror, then, slamming their doors in fear and ignorance – I have never forgiven the profession, very few stood honourably tall, most acquiesced to the rabid mass who demanded that we be shipped off to an island to die.