The irony of life - Cornwall Women of Achievement Awards 2006

I have not written on here for a while............... just trying to enjoy my summer as best I can and try to come to terms with my status as a HIV positive older woman, a situation that will now last he rest of my life!

But I thought someone may appreciate the irony of this.....

That I was shortlisted for the Cornwall Women of Achievement Awards 2006 for my youth work and my charity work and I have only just realized that one of the other two shortlisted for the same category as me was my consultant Frances Keane - the head HIV consultant in Cornwall!!

I wonder now if she realized?

The official website listing the finalists for the Cornwall Women of Achievement Awards 2006 for my category has been taken down now but here is one where it is mentioned I was a shortlisted for my voluntary and youth work endeavors.

http://www.antonylordfoundation.org.uk/pages/updates.htm


If you scroll down you will find that my category is listed and I am shortlisted with one other along with my first HIV consultant, Frances Keane, who is the head consultant of the GU clinic where we both ( my husband and I ) now get treated and while I now tend to see one of the other consultants, she was the first one I saw and the one I saw when first diagnosed in January and when VERY upset and is still my husbands HIV consultant.
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Community and public service sponsored by Cornwall County Council

Francis Keane, Consultant at the Department of GU Medicine, RCHT
Nancy Morris, Child & Family Centre, Bodmin (formerly Sure Start).
Veritee Reed Hall
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I find this fact so very ironic especially as the reason I did not get to the award ceremony that night and therefore had no chance of winning even though I had been told beforehand that it was likely, was that I had at that time been suffering bouts of crippling unexplained sickness and diarrhea and tiredness and was just too ill that evening of the presentations to go - and in retrospect I believe this illness to be due to my HIV that I had indeed been suffering by then for some years from HIV that I did not at that point know I had!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So perhaps it is fate - and a good thing - that Frances Keane and myself did not meet that night before my diagnosis? As had we met at the Achievement Cornwall Women of Achievement Awards 2006 - it would truly be more embarrassing than I already found it.

Frances Keane won the award for that category............and all I got was HIV!!!!! and all that goes with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life it truly ironic sometimes