Barry McCluskey was the first known Australian nurse to contract HIV, but he never let his illness define him.
"A young Warrnambool homosexual is the first member of the nursing profession in Australia to be identified as an AIDS suspect," the story read.
"The fact he became a nurse, I think, talks to his caring nature and the kind of person that he was."Barry's parents knew about and accepted that their son was gay, but Warrnambool was still a small, conservative place. Yet there was an undercurrent of fear. It had been three years since the first reported cases of HIV in the US and case numbers had already reached 130,000 there.
"We knew nothing about it, and then suddenly this rumour spread around the hospital: 'Barry's got HIV'," she says."It got to a point where Barry was almost ostracised from the hospital. Certain surgeons demanded, 'He is not to be in our theatre, we do not want him near any of our patients'. And what they said, they got.
"He was very brave. But once he realised he was talking to another male nurse who knew how hospitals could be so nasty — and I knew enough to know what happened to him was very unethical — we laughed a lot, we cried a lot." "When we saw that happening, we actually took our little wipes and we wiped our chairs too. We raised our finger to say, 'Hey, look, we did it for you.'"The AIDS crisis arrived in Australia in 1982 and triggered an enormous and successful public health response, largely driven by volunteers.With this support, Barry was able to complete his nursing training.
"To truly look after these people well, you had to become involved in all those aspects of their life."In the early 1990s, six years after his HIV diagnosis, Barry's body began to break down."They moved him to a job in the nurses' library , which in reality meant he laid in a comfortable beanbag and just drowsed for most of the day."
Aids Crisis Epidemic Regional Rural Australia Usa Us Nurse Hospital Barry Mccluskey Gay Queer Lgbtqia Lgbt
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