Dianne Nyoni, who first began exhibiting symptoms of HIV infection, when she was pregnant with her son Izaiah (pictured).

“I saw my car keys and realised I was supposed to be driving somewhere but didn’t know where. I had tears down my face and I said to the lady next to me I’m scared. Then I had a seizure. When I woke up I was in the emergency department.”

Despite her fear, unexplained medical conditions weren’t unusual to Ms Nyoni, from Sydney. There were the rashes that came and went; lymph glands that became swollen but never went; fevers; muscle cramps and pneumonia with fits of coughing so debilitating “you would end up vomiting,” she said.

Doctors were at a loss for this regular suburban mum’s long list of ailments and explained it away as everything from pregnancy problems to whopping cough.

After her black out, the hospital diagnosed pneumocystis pneumonia while a subsequent CAT scan found what they thought were five tumours on her brain. Immediately, Ms Nyoni was sent into surgery to excise the cancers. But the lumps weren’t tumours at all. They were lesions and it was only when she was recovering she was asked about her encyclopaedia of illnesses and why she had lost so much weight.

‘PLEASE LET IT BE HIV’

“That’s when they suggested that maybe they should test for HIV,” she said. “I was sitting there for two days going ‘please let it be HIV’.

Around 20 per cent of new HIV cases in Australia are through heterosexual intercourse.Source:News Limited

“When the results came in, they had a grim look on their faces, I had basically no immune system,” she said. The pneumonia she had was a classic AIDS-defining illness which in the past people would have died from.

“But I surprised them by taking a big sigh and going ‘thank god’,” Ms Nyoni told news.com.au of her 2010 positive result.

“The doctors said that wasn’t the usual response to a positive test result and I said ‘what would you prefer — HIV or secondary brain cancer, at least you can survive HIV.’

“I asked then how long I had the virus and they said anywhere between eight to 10 years.” It was an extraordinary amount of time, dating back when she was still married to her previous husband, which meant her immune system had been so ravaged she had become one of the few Australians in recent years to progress to having AIDS — a disease largely banished to the history books in high income countries.

CHARLIE SHEEN

Charlie Sheen’s frankness about his HIV diagnosis earlier this week has thrown the spotlight on the relatively rare incidence of heterosexual people in first world countries infected with the virus.

Figures from the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW show 70 per cent of new transmissions in Australia are between men with fewer than one-in-five infections occurring through heterosexual sex. It’s estimated around 5500 straight people are living with HIV in Australia.

However, the lack of awareness of heterosexual HIV means it’s estimated more than 1000 straight people in Australia are harbouring the virus yet have no idea it’s in their system.

“For gay men there’s lots of promotion so many test often,” Associate Professor Rebecca Guy, the head of the surveillance program at the Kirby Institute, told news.com.au. “About a quarter of people diagnose late but it’s higher in the heterosexual population which highlights the importance of testing.”

Charlie Sheen, right, revealed this week that he tested HIV positive four years ago. (Peter Kramer/NBC via AP)Source:AP

In hindsight, Ms Nyoni says she can pinpoint the moment, a decade previously, when the virus began to attack her system, a process known as seroconversion (usually several weeks after a person is exposed to the virus).

“I remember feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. It was so bad that I had to go to bed for four days and rest up. It’s definitely not something you forget.”

There was also the time that Ms Nyoni noticed “really strange rashes” in the same places to those that had appeared on her then husband who she later realised she got the infection from, as she had a negative HIV test before her marriage.

However, as she seroconverted at the same time as she conceived her fourth child the soon-to-be mum put her fevers and aches down to the early pains of pregnancy.

UNBORN SON

When she received her diagnosis, she suddenly realised she could have passed on the virus onto her son Izaiah, who is now 13, while he was in the womb or as a newborn.

“I was terrified that I had hurt my little boy,” said Ms Nyoni who decided, as she waited for Izaiah’s test results, to explain as best she could what HIV was.

“I said to him, when you were in mummy’s tummy and drinking mummy’s milk, mummy had a sickness and maybe the sickness got in your blood.

“When the HIV paediatrician said he was negative, my son looked at me and said ‘good, now can we get mummy well?’”

It has been a long hard slog for Ms Nyoni, who works with the PozHet heterosexual HIV service, made worse by the amount of time the virus had to wreak its damage.

“Sadly, this is a common experience for heterosexuals because we get misdiagnosed. When I walked through the door of the doctors you see a mother, a wife, an educated person and we don’t fit the profile and we’re still falling through the cracks.”

At times, she was on 80 pills a day, “I was rattling as I walked” she said, but her perseverance has paid off, with the virus under control enabling her to take back control of her life.

HIV STIGMA

The stigma she felt when she opened up about her HIV status still stings. “People at my workplace were having candle lit vigils because I had cancer. Then when it was found out I had AIDS one woman actually left work because she thought she was at risk.”

Her insurance company also refused to pay out her income protection insurance, something that would not have happened if she actually did have cancer.

“The legislation is not up to speed with the fact we’re not dying anymore. It’s discrimination in it’s finest form.”

Ms Nyoni said she was “absolutely devastated” to hear of the extortion Sheen had faced before revealing he had HIV.

“Charlie’s got a history of doing silly things but so can anyone and it was awful he had this held over him. I hope it gets the conversation happening and that he finds some peace from coming out about his HIV.”

President of the National Association of People with HIV Australia, Cipriano Martinez, said it takes courage for a person with HIV to share their status, “but every time it happens another brick in the wall of stigma is taken down.”

Gay or straight, if people tested often and early and they did have HIV, said Mr Martinez, they could get on top of the virus in a way Ms Nyoni never had the opportunity too.

“An undetectable virus load is the new norm that means you are non-infectious and that’s something people need to understand,” he said.

“It’s just bad luck and it can happen to anyone,” said Ms Nyoni. “But if we have to hide, this virus is never going to be dealt with.”

More information can be found at www.pozhet.org.au or on the heterosexual HIV Information Line: 1800 812 404