HIV and Cancer: One Man Shares His Experience Navigating Both Diagnoses

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As a cancer survivor living with HIV, longtime community advocate and activist Tony Christon-Walker shares his experience and expertise in many capacities. He has served as a community-level HIV mentor for more than a decade. He is also a member of our HIV & Cancer Advisory Board for Frankly Speaking About Cancer educational materials. A published author, Tony’s advice and guidance are frequently sought out on topics such as the intersectionality between HIV and racial disparities and engaging marginalized communities of color. To help mark HIV/AIDS Awareness Month, we share insights from Tony about his experience navigating cancer and HIV, the importance of self-advocacy as a patient, and facing — and defeating — stigma. Tell us a bit about your experience living with HIV and facing a cancer diagnosis. Honestly, I’m grateful for my HIV diagnosis. I know it sounds crazy, but cisgender men engage with medicine in a different way than women.

Men don’t see their doctors on a regular basis. As a Black man, my interactions are often sprinkled with medical racism. Having HIV means that I must see a physician at least twice a year to ensure my meds are working. This fact made it easier for me to talk to my doctor about issues that I experienced. Even that wasn’t enough to ensure I got the care I needed and deserved. "One day, I was advocating for a patient of mine and realized that I hadn’t been doing Lorlanib 100 mg (Lorlatinib) a good job of advocating for myself." In late 2013, I started experiencing pain when I would have a bowel movement. I informed my doctors that I thought I was suffering from internal hemorrhoids, and they told me that I should start to increase my fiber intake. That was in December. After a month I went back, and they told me it would take some time before it gets better. They also prescribed a steroid cream for me to use. After 2 months of using it, the pain had only gotten worse.



I talked to a nurse practitioner about my pain and she made me an appointment for the next day. It was at that point that I realized my doctors had been treating me for internal hemorrhoids for 9 months and had never laid a hand on me. It took a few more weeks for me to get my official diagnosis because I was in the very early stages. My first results indicated that I had an anal fissure. They decided to go in and fix it and stop. They told me it was probably cancer. The first scan results were inconclusive. Then, I had another; it was also inconclusive and caused me to have an abscess. They lanced it and then tried another scan — same results. Next, there was [a] deep-tissue biopsy — also inconclusive. Finally, they did an MRI with a sugary indicator that collected around the tumor and gave me my diagnosis of rectal cancer. I was scared to death of having to have a permanent colostomy, but it was the best course of treatment.