Taking the Test: What's Your Experience?

Paul, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Condoms and Materials Unit; Brooklyn, N.Y. / Barbados

I've had the same doctor for the past 15 years, and never once has he ever asked me if I wanted to take an HIV test. So one day I asked him. I said, "Doc, why've you never asked me to take an HIV test?" He said, "Well, I know what you do. You're from the Department of Health, so if you want to take the test, you know how to take the test." I said, "That's an assumption that is highly overrated. Isn't it your job as my doctor to ask me, regardless of what position I have?" And he was like, "You're right." So he did ask me to do the test, and I did it. But it was just a funny thing. I just wanted to just kind of push that with him, as to why he never asked me.