“Until antiretrovirals, we would have as many dead patients as live ones per shift”Flick “You always remember your first,” says Flick Thorley, with a sad smile. On the front line of the HIV/Aids crisis in London in the ’90s, Flick worked as an HIV specialist nurse at University College Hospital, London Lighthouse (the centre and hospice visited by Princess Diana) and, later, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, caring for swathes of patients, predominantly gay men, caught in the cruel grip of the disease. For many of them, Flick’s hands were the last they ever held.
Flick encountered her first HIV patient during her nursing training at a psychiatric hospital on the other side of the world, in Auckland, New Zealand. “It’s an awful story,” she warns, shaking her head.
“It must…
