My name is Octavian, and I’m 37 years old.
My story began in 1990, in a Romanian hospital, where my mother abandoned me as a baby, just after the Revolution. I don’t remember those days, but I know I was left alone in a cold hospital ward  until an NGO from Cluj took me in.

I grew up in a family-style home with eight other children my brothers and sisters, though not by blood. We shared everything: food, clothes, even the same pillow. It wasn’t an easy childhood, but I learned early that hope can survive anywhere.

When I was 14, I learned the truth I was living with HIV. Doctors and psychologists told me during a workshop. Until then, I thought the pills were “for my liver.”
When I opened my medical file, my whole world collapsed. I didn’t know whom to ask, or whom to trust.
Most likely, I contracted HIV in 1989, as a child, through unsterile syringes used during vaccinations.

At school, life became a battlefield. Children pointed fingers, laughed, called me “the boy with AIDS.” I was hit, humiliated, even stoned once  simply for being different. But I never gave up. An association helped me rebuild my confidence and reminded me that my life still had value.

I’ve known love and rejection. Every time I told the truth, people walked away. That hurts deeply. But I never stopped believing in love. One day, I met her a girl from the same organisation, living with HIV like me. When our eyes met, we just knew. Now we’ve been married for six years, and we have a healthy, HIV-negative son our miracle.

The first time I held him, I understood that all my suffering had meaning. I try to give him what I never had: love, safety, family. He doesn’t yet know about our illness. With the help of a psychologist, we’re preparing to tell him one day, gently. For him, we’re simply Mum and Dad and that’s the greatest gift of all.

Today I take one pill a day a miracle of modern science. In the 1990s, kids like me took dozens. Many didn’t make it this far. I still remember their faces children who died in hospital wards, too young to understand why. I carry them with me. They are the reason I keep going.

Now, standing here in Paris at the EACS conference, surrounded by scientists, doctors, and advocates, I realise: I’m no longer that abandoned child in a hospital bed.
I am living proof that life can win.
That love, treatment, and dignity can rewrite even the hardest stories.

I live with gratitude.
With one pill a day.
With a full heart.
And with the hope that my son will grow up in a world that doesn’t judge but embraces.