life and spirituality

  • WAD marks the beginning of SAD

    Meanwhile, I have been fighting severe fatigue again, and that has led me back into that dark place called depression. I don’t want to write about that, of course. I want to write only about successes and victories. Twice last month I felt the onset of shingles in my left eye. The first time I was able to send it into remission quickly and with no evidence of an outbreak. The second time, the inflammation persisted for nearly two weeks, and I am only now feeling as if I might have kept it from erupting into a serious and disfiguring outbreak, like the one that hospitalized me in September, 2012.

  • On darunavir again

    I am dumping a lot of summary information here, without getting into details, but I need to start somewhere. When I zoom out and look at the big picture, it is clear that I am still a long way from being a “healthy” person, and frankly, I no longer expect to become one. The goal now is to mange chronic disease and maintain as good a quality of life as I possibly can.

  • Checking in: quit ARV drugs again

    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.

  • Just another tease

    Here’s another short outtake from the pre-show walkthrough that John Grosso and I had in a G+ Hangout On Air (HOA) earlier this week for tomorrow evening’s Rainbow Show. Live stream begins at 7 pm CST.     Please drop in to view the show live, and ask questions via the comment stream on YouTube or Google+….

  • Hang out with me on Friday

    Remember when Google+ was launched more than a year ago to compete in the social networking arena with giants like Facebook? You don’t?  Well, you’re not alone. Despite our love/hate relationship with Facebook, few of us who had grown accustomed to that place could find the time and energy to embrace yet another site…

  • Dear Momma

    Dear Momma,

    I’ve been thinking about you so much since you’ve been here. Yes, I thought about you a lot when you were in Colorado, too. Or in a pickup truck and travel trailer with Poppa. Or living in that incredible home you and he built “on the hill”—El Shadmir. I’m even recalling memories from Colby and the farm.

    You know, when Poppa was dying, I remember promising him that we would do everything possible to make sure you were ok. That you would live as good, happy and healthy life as we could possibly manage, and that if you ran out of money, we’d even make sure you get through that. I don’t know how many of the other sibs had a similar conversation and/or commitment, but I think it was most of us. He was just sure no one else knew you well enough—like him—to be up to the job.

  • The F word

    Enough already with the critics and detractors. I haven’t been doing a very good job lately of keeping current with documenting my personal story, which was and is one of the primary purposes of this blog.

    Despite the gruesome pictures from an earlier post, I am not currently experiencing any horribly disfiguring outbreaks, lumps or other obvious manifestations of poor health. The skin on my left leg has healed nicely and is completely intact, with no breaks, scabs or sores, for the first time in more than a year. The mystery lump on the right side of my face, under my jaw, has shrunk considerably, though I can still detect it. My smile is still crooked, due to what I assume is now permanent facial nerve damage resulting from Bell’s palsy. I also have a few persistent skin sores on my shoulders and back that are resisting healing.

    I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

    Other than these minor nuisances, my body seems fine, for the most part, and people who have known me for some time, assure me that I “look good”. What is not so obvious is the extreme fatigue (the F-word),