Trisha Goddard appeared on Loose Women on Thursday where she spoke about her terrifying AIDs scare after her husband died from the illness but lied and said he had cancer.
Her first husband, Australian politician Robert Nestdale, died from AIDs in 1989, and Trisha discovered the truth at the funeral and was left terrified she and her baby Billie, with new husband Mark Grieve, may have the illness too.
Trisha, who is starring on Piers Morgan's Life Stories on Thursday night, told the Loose Women panel: "We were divorced and I was in another relationship and had a baby.
"I knew my ex husband had cancer, I had heard through the grapevine, I phoned him up and commiserated him and asked him about it, and he said the prognosis didn't look very good.
"Then I had Billie, and a mutual friend called me sand said that he had passed away, and I went to the funeral.
"It was sad but I wasn't shocked because I knew he had become increasingly unwell, and then it was afterwards that, he was a politician and one of his colleagues told me that it wasn't cancer, it was AIDs.
"And of course, I had just given birth."
Host Charlene White asked: "Can you remember what was going through your head at that moment when you're holding your baby and the thought that you may well have been given something that you may well have given your child?"
Trisha replied: "This is 1989, so you have to put your head back in those days, when information was patchy about it.
"But as a journalist I had covered the babies in Ceausescu's orphanages who had HIV and AIDs, so I probably knew a little bit more than others.
"This guy he was attorney general at the time and he arranged for me and my newborn baby to go straight to St Vincent's hospital in Sydney, Australia, to have an AIDs test.
"The doctor came and at that those times, they were dressed in a full PPE outfit, and I remember them saying they were going to take blood.
"And I said, 'You don't have to take blood from my baby do you?' And she said, 'No, if you have it then your baby has it.'
"I remember Billie crying and wanted to breastfeed her, but at the same time thinking, I am killing her, it was pretty vile."
Trisha had to wait for three weeks for the results, and was overwhelmed with relief when she found out she did not have AIDs or HIV.
"I had to just not think otherwise I would have gone mad," she said. "But after all of that I never hated Robert, because he had to live that lie.
"And I ended up working with LGBTQI+ groups, I got involved in gay and lesbian Mardi Gras and things like that."
"HIV is not a death sentence," she reminded viewers, explaining if you think you may have HIV, contact your GP and support and tests are available.
Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis - or PrEP - is a once-a-day drug that has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection by more than 90%. You can find out more here.
* Loose Women airs weekdays on ITV at 12:30pm
