Jonathan van Ness had been "very fearful" of contracting HIV from being a "small child".
The ‘Queer Eye’ star found out he had the virus – which damages the cells in the immune system and weakens the body’s ability to fight everyday infections and disease – seven years ago after he fainted while working as a hairstylist in Missouri and he admitted receiving his diagnosis was something he had "dreaded".
He said: "I was trying to push through. I had not been feeling amazing. I was doing a very good client’s hair … She was one of the three or four faithful loyal clients I had in St. Louis — it was kind of a rough go. And I was like, ‘Let me just pull this partial highlight together and be about my day.’
"The next thing I knew I was on my back on the ground and I was like, ‘Where am I? This doesn’t feel good.’ So I went home and went to bed and then the next day I went to Planned Parenthood and that was where I found out that I had HIV.
"It was the moment that you dread hearing. It’s the thing that I had feared, which I also talk about in the book, it was something that I had been very fearful of as a small child. I was born in 1987, so growing up in the midst of the HIV-AIDS crisis and having two parents who were at the age of seeing people just — we lost an entire generation of people."
Despite his diagnosis, the 32-year-old star feels he is "thriving" as the virus is under control.
He explained on ‘Today’: "So there’s a thing called a viral load and that’s how much copies of the virus is in you.
"And you take a pill every day and it basically kills all the copies of the virus in your blood and that means you can achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load. There’s been a lot of studies … that basically, undetectable equals un-transmittable.
"So as long as you’re adhering to your medication and seeing your doctor every three months — I mean, I’ve picked up figure skating, I’ve done nothing but get cuter and be able to work longer and harder hours. I feel like I’m thriving!"
Jonathan van Ness feared HIV
