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Checking in: quit ARV drugs again

What partI am very much aware that I have not blogged about anything significant for months, and it’s not for lack of things to write about. I am just not ready to start writing again yet, and my muse can be a stubborn cuss.

Gawd forbid this period of inactivity be mistaken as some sort of ill omen. What I can say is that I’m alive and doing well by most measures that matter. I am struggling with fatigue, and depression, which may help explain my absence online.

I quit the low-dose darunavir monotherapy on May 29, almost exactly one year after I had restarted ARVs. I am satisfied with, if not excited about the “numbers”, which I will update in a future post, along with additional news about my health and medical status.

It would be easy to try to explain away the Fatigue and Depression as withdrawal symptoms, because that is probably a contributing factor. But there are also too many other stressors going on in my life lately that are not helping. These unwelcome guests have become such familiar partners throughout my life, that I know what to do with them when they drop in to my life uninvited:  make life more miserable for them than they can for me, and wait them out. They WILL leave.

These ruts are often the times that some of life’s most important lessons reveal themselves, so I am spending more time walking, talking, biking and just being with and listening to myself.

I am reminded that one cannot truly know joy, without also knowing sorrow; we can not understand darkness without knowing light;  peace cannot be defined without comprehending conflict. Bear with me. This, too, shall pass, and I’ll be on a roll once again!

Wait... there's more!

  • 97

    97. That’s my latest CD4+ count, less than half the count from six weeks ago.

    That’s it. I have tried as many alternative treatments as I can think of to reverse the decline. I will be starting my third round of pharmaceutical ARVs as soon as I can get a prescription and fill it.

    This decision has been a long time coming, and in hindsight, I probably should have restarted a few months ago. There’s nothing magical about 97, or being below 100, but it’s as good a breaking point as any. I’ve long argued that there are two things to keep in mind about CD4 counts: one is the long-term trend; the other is single- or low double-digit counts.

  • Reduce AIDS drug toxicity and side effects

    I embarked on my third course of ARVs since 1998. For ten of the sixteen years I have been HIV-positive, I was able to manage well enough without ARVs and I continue to believe there is no reason for otherwise healthy HIV-positive—let alone negative—gay men to take these drugs. To those who want to wave a recent study about the benefits of early intervention in my face, I would ask them why they put so much faith in a science that has utterly failed us to date.

  • Retreat and Adventure — Midwest Men’s Festival

    When I received my HIV diagnosis in 1998, I withdrew from my community of gay men. I “went to ground”, thinking that isolation was the only safe place to avoid being criticized for seroconverting at such a late date, when we were all supposed to know better.

    This past week has been yet another bifurcation point in my life. I returned to a community I have known about, if not been a steady part of, for more than 30 years. A community of men whom I could touch and hug. Men whose tears might wet my face and whose body heat and life forces I could feel in ways that can only happen in person. It really did feel like coming home.

  • The truth about Truvada: PrEP won’t stop AIDS

    I’m willing to grant that gay men are entitled to use PrEP… provided they have access to all the information they need to make an informed decision. Informed consent has been a hallmark of the HIV and AIDS research and prevention efforts for three decades, and that shouldn’t be waived for the campaign favoring PrEP.

    Gay men deserve to know that all the claims for Truvada reducing the risk of acquiring HIV-positivity  are based on trials—funded by Gilead—that emphasized the importance of using condoms…

2 Comments

  1. I also find the fatigue and depression are fast friends. I struggled for years to make sense of it until I realized that they are, at least in part, like the weather. Glad you are out and about. Best cure! So glad you are just doing what you need to do.

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