This will be a post different from regular game design-related content. It’s merely a tale that spans over the course of a few weeks, but I hope anyone who’s reading this can find a little bit of inspiration, or even a little bit of hope and light into your life.
Also, this post is originally written in a mixture of English and Chinese. That’s just how I speak I guess.
The Day the Earth Stood Still
If you didn’t know already — I am currently in the process of applying a Canadian working visa. To do so I must complete a health exam, and therefore I took a blood test on Christmas Eve, 2020. Staff there says that if the report comes through and nothing appears to be wrong, they will submit the report into the system on January 4th.
January 4th came, and I’ve received no call.
On January 12th, I got a call from the hospital. The lady over the phone said that my blood test had shown abnormal results. Of course, I had to inquire for the specific details.
She said, “you’ve tested positive for HIV”.
My surroundings suddenly has gone dead silent. The world stopped moving. She was still on the phone. I had to say something, but I couldn’t. My mind stopped working.
The only question I could ask was, “what are my values, what’s considered as ‘negative'”.
The cut-off value is 1. Anything below is considered negative.
You have a value of 2.47.
That’s 1 times more than the threshold. My world continued to freeze.
“We are now required to book you an appointment with the doctor, and set up a Western Blot test. The only dates the doctor is available are Friday and next Tuesday.”
Friday is the day I am supposed to be on an onsen trip with my girlfriend that day. I couldn’t ruin it — oh wait, how am I going to tell her?
I’m free Tuesday, but Tuesday is a special day for me. Nevertheless, I chose Tuesday.
After I hung up the phone, I immediately went to bed. I didn’t care if it was in the middle of the day — I just needed a place to calm down. How could this have happened? I never did anything dangerous. Sexually speaking of course. Then how could I have ever been contacted with the virus?
I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t fall asleep. My brain was running faster than the world. Thinking about all the possibilities.
Every day at around 5pm is the time I head to the gym. Today was no exception — at least that’s what I told my mom. Instead, I took the subway. In Taiwan they have these vending machines that sell HIV testing kits, sponsored by the government. Covering my face in case someone recognizes me, I quickly got one from the machine and since I couldn’t just take it back home with me, I hid myself in the toilet of a random department store.
The test returned negative results. Now I am completely confused. Both of these tests are said to be highly accurate, but one of them says positive while the other says negative. I didn’t know what to expect afterwards, but I couldn’t deny that I might have the possibility of getting it. In other words, this test granted me no comfort.
Your Life Is Not Your Life
I couldn’t sleep that night.
The first questions that came to my mind was:
How am I going to tell my girlfriend?
How am I going to tell my parents?
How am I going to tell my friends?
There is a particular order here. Being the closest person to my life, my girlfriend deserves to know first. Given that in just a few days we will be embarking on a 2-day trip, I need to tell her right away.
Then my parents. Being my parents, it’s just natural that they have every right to know what’s wrong with me.
Then my friends. Who should I tell? Who CAN I tell?
But I soon realized that all of these questions can’t be answered until the greater question is solved:
“How will they take the news?”
I honestly didn’t know. Rainbow might think I’m tainted and dirty. My parents will be ashamed of me. My friends, well, they might think differently about me to say the least. All of which I couldn’t bear, and most importantly: I couldn’t bear the fact that I broke their hearts.
I started thinking about
git reset --hard
The easy way out. The ultimate solution to unsolvable pain. I always believe that when a person dies — whether they are considered to be sinful or not — they will be brought to their own version of heaven. And so will I.
The problem with hard reset is I needed to choose a way that’s painless and doesn’t bring trouble to anyone, especially the people I care. I thought about cutting my arm and slowly bleed to my death in a bathtub, John Wick style. Or I can sleep off in carbon monoxide. But a place with suicide history could result in a steep drop of its value, which my family would have to be responsible for. Plus the clean up will have to deal with my infected blood, which is very very troublesome.
My life is not my life — I couldn’t even choose how to die.
I eventually slept that night. I dreamed of my late grandfather. He did nothing but smiled at me.
The Great Confession
The day of the onsen trip has arrived. I didn’t know what to expect, but I tried to be very careful with my girlfriend. I Googled a lot about what I could do and what I couldn’t do. Turns out I can actually do a lot of things without infecting her, including kissing and being together in a swimming pool (which is pretty close to being in an onsen?).
*For the record, I actually know already that I could do all these things, it’s just that I needed to make sure that my memory served correctly.
So we ate together, and enjoyed hot springs together. Night fell soon after.
I looked at my watch and it was 7:40pm. There are still buses that carry people off the mountain. I decided to tell her right now. I had probably rehearsed a million times, but somehow I went with my guts.
I hugged her. Then I started crying. Like raining tears. Of course, she was surprised, or even more, terrified. I tried to calm myself down and said something along the lines of the following:
You need to listen to me very carefully, and take all the time you need to process before you give me an answer. I was tested positive HIV but I do not know how I got the virus. I took another test and that one showed negative results.
Getting HIV does not mean I have AIDS. AIDS is the final form of HIV, where my body is completely incapable of fighting viruses.
I’ve searched for HIV treatment and in the case of me getting infected, I will probably not be able to go to Canada anymore. We will have to be more careful about our future.
Also, I will begin medication. This includes possibility of heavy side-effects, like vomiting, nausea, headache, suicidal thoughts and redistribution of fat*. I will be going through a lot of pain, but I cannot miss medication, not even for a single day. If I miss medication, the virus will become drug-resistant and it’ll be harder for me to control it and easier to turn into AIDS. If you decide to stay with me, you must make sure that I take medicine every day, even if you have to force it down my throat.
In the end, I wish you think over very carefully. I will not blame you if you decide to leave me.
Please don’t leave me.
There, I’ve said it. The door’s right there. Leave please.
But instead, she hugged me even tighter.
I’ll stay with you, always.
That’s basically her answer, only after a second or so. At that moment, I felt like suddenly there was a resolution to all my questions. Like snow falling on Sahara. I don’t think I’ll ever deserve a person like her, but I’m eternally thankful of her embrace.
Also surprisingly, she was very calm and reasonable enough to decide that she should get tested as well.
Faith
For those who know me better, this following part may sound pretty unlike me, but this is what I’ve experienced.
My girlfriend is a Christian. I need spiritual comfort right now. So I naturally asked if we could pray together. For the record, I never thought of myself as a person with religion, but I don’t see myself as an atheist either. I just think of them — Jesus and Buddha — as friends I can talk to from time to time.
So we prayed together. The way how my girlfriend’s church prays is quite different from popular knowledge, so it took me quite some time to get used to it.
But I never stopped.
Birthday Meeting
On the bus en route to the hospital, I kept looking at pedestrians. I wonder if any of them has HIV? Do they know they have HIV? What is it like to have no HIV? The common daily life was so easy to miss that I couldn’t remember what it was like after I got the virus.
Most of all, today is my 26th birthday, and I’m on my way to the hospital to meet my doctor, and get a confirmation test. How hideous. How many more years will I be able to live? Will I never live to the day I become successful as a game designer? Where will my friends be when I move on? Will I be able to watch over them on the other side?
With a concerned state of mind, I entered the doctor’s office and took a seat. I didn’t even want to admit that I was tested positive, so I just said “well, we both know why I’m here.”
“Well, why are you here?” said the doctor. Then he checked my results. Turns out he was very surprised of my number of 2.47. He claimed that he “had never seen such a low number in his 30 years of career”, and that he believed the result was a false positive.
I wasn’t really comforted though, since a logic hole exists in his statement. If he hasn’t seen this number before, how could he be so sure that it wasn’t an edge-case-true-positive? We talked briefly about my history (especially my sexual history, of course), and with no risks identified, he was even more convinced that the results were in fact erroneous.
That being said, the law still required me to do a confirmation test, which is the test the lady on the phone told me before, Western Blot*.
*Turns out there are also Northern Blot, Southern Blot and Eastern Blot.
So two more tubes of my blood were taken, before I head off to meet my parents at the restaurant, where we’d celebrate my birthday. But I really wasn’t in the mood of celebrating. All I could think was, “for how much longer will these days exist?” Every day when I looked into my mom’s smile and listened to dad jokes (he has a very different sense of humor, by the way), I felt shame and regret. And the fact that I couldn’t protect them anymore and become a burden of them really made me desperate.
We had a cake after we got home. The only wish I could wish for was my health. If I could, I would forfeit all my wishes for my health.
Then I decided that I should tell my mom. At least she should know before my dad does.
Family
So the next day, I broke the news to my mom. It was pretty much the same when I told my girlfriend, except I cried even harder and I told her the updates from the doctor. I decided to tell her first not just because she is my mom, but also she used to be a nurse in the ICU. She knows better on how to deal with medical situations.
She patted me on the head, and said to me,
Oh, you should’ve let me know long before, so you don’t have to suffer and be sad all alone.
Mom is also a Christian, except of a church different from my girlfriend’s. She probably didn’t know that I was already praying, so she told me to pray more. She also didn’t know that I was already thanking the Lord for blessing with such a loving girlfriend and mother.
I believe she was also holding in her emotions, from the way she talked to me. She exited my room to do chores, but with footsteps heavier than usual. That really broke my heart.
But at the same time I’ve come to the conclusion, that if I really have it, I will accept my fate, and stay strong for my loved ones.
For my dad — I’ve decided to keep it in until the second results are in.
Second Life
Today (the day I’m writing this) is the day I’m supposed to head back to the hospital for my test results. I had to leave late because my dad was still having his lunch, and I didn’t want him to suspect anything.
In Taiwan, usually a printed list of visitors that day (with their names partially censored) will be posted outside the doctor’s office. My name was on there too, except there was a strange “TB” marking.
I panicked. TB? Tuberculosis? Did I get tuberculosis? I immediately asked the nurse and I completely embarrassed myself: that’s just my family name (“TENG”) being partially printed out.
It wasn’t over yet. I got called into the office. I sat down heavily and sighed, “well, I’m back, doc.”
“Wait, why are you back?” It’d seem that this doctor could never remember why his patients are paying him visits. After hinting him with a few keywords, he quickly recalled my visit last week and started searching for my records on the computer.
“Hmm… why is it missing?” He asked himself. Apparently my results were missing in the system. It’s not a positive, not a negative, not an “indeterminant”, but “missing”.
My angst creeped up on me again. I started to act nervous and kept asking the doctor about my previous results. I could also see that they took my blood for a second screening test, and the results were 2.26, still above the cut-off value. The doctor was very nice, as he tried to calm me down and re-assuring me that nothing was wrong with my health. He called immediately to whoever was responsible for delivering the results, and accidentally dropped the telephone machine while doing so.
It was a long wait, but there were more patients waiting behind me. Therefore he had to ask me to wait outside so he could take care of other people first.
I didn’t stop praying outside. Until the nurse called me back into the office again.
I sat down and waited for the final judgement.
It’s a negative. You’re okay.
I immediately stood up and held my arms up high. I let out a loud cheer in the office.
“Please don’t do that in the hospital.” said the doctor, smiling behind the mask.
I basked in the sun, and thanked the universe for this day.
Reprisal
You can now probably understand that not many people will get the opportunity to through this unique experience. I once read an article wrote by a fellow Taiwanese who experienced similar events, except that in his case, his blood sample was mistaken with another person’s, while in this story. it was just me.
Thus I’m writing this post. I wanted to keep it as a reminder of all the emotions that I’ve felt, of all the lessons I’ve learned along the way, the blessings I’ve got, and truly cherish the life I was blessed with.
Hard Facts
- HIV is not AIDS. HIV is the virus that starts breaking down a person’s immune system, but most people will have little (flu-like) to no symptoms after being contracted. AIDS is the ultimate form of the virus, where your body is completely incapable of defending any infection.
- HIV is incurable. There are only 2 cured cases (+1 disputable) recorded ever in human history. Both of these cases were also suffering from cancer and needed to accept a stem cell transplant (which is painful), and both of them are extremely lucky to receive donors that carry mutated stem cells that helped them defeat the virus.
- HIV is no longer untreatable, and can be treated as a chronic disease. With continued and uninterrupted medication, HIV is controllable and patients can be expected to lead healthy lives as normal people would. But continued medication is extremely important or else the virus will develop drug-resistance.
- U=U is the accepted opinion on HIV, meaning Undetectable=Untransmissible. By keeping the virus at an undetectable number for more than 6 months, the virus is believed to be untransmissible through body fluids.
- That being said, use protection. It is important to protect yourself and your partner.
Soft Lessons
- Life is more important than I had thought. I used to make a lot of jokes about how I wanted to kill myself, but I never really thought hard on it. It was only a week after when I was told to be HIV+ that I started to realize how important having a life is. With life, so much stuff can be accomplished. As a game designer, I can make more games, play more games, and continue to pursue my dreams.
Before the onsen trip my girlfriend used to complain a lot on how tiring grad school was — writing thesis and all that. After learning my circumstances, she said all her problems sounded so trivial. - Your life is not your life. The society in which we live in has bonded us — regardless of our will — to certain contracts. Therefore it is sometimes not possible to decide for one’s own actions, including the case of suicide.
This sounds pretty harsh and cruel, but hey, I accept family as a bond. I didn’t choose to become the son of my parents, neither did I choose my girlfriend to be my girlfriend (wait actually I did). But I love my parents. I love my girlfriend. And I love my friends.
Once I was afraid, and I was petrified. I thought ending it all would make things easier, but that’s just going to break everyone’s hearts. And that’s just not my way. - I keep thinking about myself, my life, and the purpose of having a religion. I like to think a lot, and ask a lot of questions — even ones that’d be dismissed by the general public.
I think that’s just my way of understanding religion. Through questioning and reasoning, and trying to understand the world with more of those. But no matter how much I inquire, there are times like these where questions without answers just generate angst and desperation.
I think this is where religion steps in and catch us on our fall. You know, to know that someone out there really cares about you, and you can share some of the pain with them.
So I think, having a little religion does help.
Epilogue
So that’s the end of the story. I was HIV+ for two weeks. It was definitely an rollercoaster ride of emotions — being sentenced to death of illness, being uncertain of the future, then getting back on foot and eventually, being reborn.
I was watching Cast Away last night, and I quote Chuck Noland:
So… I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself… and the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I – , I couldn’t even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*.
And that’s when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing.
I thank my parents for their unconditional support. They gave me unconditional support during the darkest moments of my life.
I thank my girlfriend for her unconditional love and commitment. I really don’t know if I’m worthy of such a great human being.
I thank my friends for reading this. Again, I hope this long blog post will bring a little bit of hope to anyone who’s reading.
And in the end, thank you Lord for staying with me. If this is a birthday gift, this is probably the best one I’ve ever received.
If your hopes scatter like the dust across your track
I’ll be the moon that shines on your path
The sun may blind our eyes, I’ll pray the skies above
For snow to fall on the sahara
“Snow On the Sahara”, Anggun, 1992
Brian Teng Has An Idea! 
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