I’m feeling… something. Older, perhaps? I fear I have so many things I want to accomplish so I can “retire” with some degree of comfort; a bathtub I can actually stretch out and soak in, for example.
I am still recovering from the sudden loss of Gos Blank and watching from a distance as other friends struggle with their own forms of bizarre and crippling health. It makes me feel I have no right or business to complain about my own symptoms and signs.
Each patient fell into one of three groups: <350 CD4 cells/muL; 351-499; and >500. This last group would be considered “normal” according to AIDS.gov, which lists the range for CD4 counts as 500-1000. Yet, according to this study, this group of so-called “healthy” patients were almost one and a half times more likely to experience a drug-related adverse effect.
The report reinforces another point that I find I must continue to drive home over and over again, and that is the definition of “low CD4 counts”.
Nearly four months after his death, and a couple of months after the “final” autopsy report was released, Gos Blank’s wife, Lisa, receive additional information in the form of a letter with the subject: “Supplemental Final Diagnoses”. According to this update, dated February 11, 2014, a stain revealed the “presence of multiple cup and/or boat shaped fungal cysts located within foamy amorphous matériai within the alveolar spaces which were characteristic of Pneumocystis jirovecii microorganisms.
The latest round of OAT, stool and conventional “HIV” surrogate test markers are in, and the news is mostly good. Regardless of which angle one looks at these laboratory test results from, there is evidence to support an evolving thesis that a multi-faceted approach to immune dysfunction might be as efficacious as the current pharmaceutical-based guidelines for treating “HIV/AIDS”, minus the worst of the adverse effects. The not-so-good news is that the continuation of this seven year long experience (experiment?) is being jeopardized by the lack of financial resources. There, I said it, and I won’t mention it again until the end of this post.
So, did Gos Blank die of AIDS? That was the original question, was it not? That is what both AIDS dissidents and the AIDS apologist trolls are waiting to hear, isn’t it?
I don’t know how it is possible to come to any conclusion that would satisfy both sides. Any answer given would only raise more questions, though not many new ones, really. Before anyone starts dancing on Gos’ grave, let’s examine some of these questions… in Gos’ own words as much as possible. (Unless noted otherwise, all blockquotes from this point on are from Gos’ book)
Janine Roberts may well be my favorite investigative reporter on the topic of AIDS and HIV. She has published several books and produced documentary films, on topics ranging from Aboriginal resistance to British colonialism in Australia, to the shame of deBeers’ diamond mining operations in Africa.
Janine has also written the much more personal story about her life as a transgendered person—The Seven Days of My Creation: Tales of Magic and Gender.
The book that has most helped me form an alternative view about what the heck HIV might really be, and its role in the disease most people call AIDS is titled Fear of the Invisible.
As the winter solstice approaches, I am aware of what a noteworthy month this December is for me, in ways that have nothing to do with the holidays. Fifteen years ago this month I was informed that I was “HIV-positive”. Five years ago, I started this blog, primarily to share my experiences with both the diagnosis, as well as previous and new health issues. I will be sharing some exciting news about some changes that will be happening to resistance is fruitful a bit later in this post.
In nearly every conversation I’ve had with Affecteds who are experimenting with ways to reduce the toxicity of antiretroviral (ARV) regimens, questions about “AIDS drug resistance” comes up. Resistance is often raised as a boogeyman in research trials of monotherapy and intermittent treatment options. While drug resistance—especially bacterial antibiotic resistance to staphylococcus or tuberculosis, for example—is increasingly a problem in modern medicine, one is unlikely to hear drug resistance discussed quite the way it is with AIDS. No other pathogen is described as “sneaky”, “clever”, or more mutable than HIV, despite the fact that retroviruses do not even meet most definitions for being a living entity, let alone have a brain.
Stop the nukes! No, not nuclear weapons. Well, yes, those too, but today I’m writing about the increase in reports I’m seeing from the AIDS drug medical literature calling for an end to the use of nucleoside(tide) reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), not-so-ironically referred to as “nukes”. As I have written previously, there have been rumblings from clinicians and researchers in the medical literature since at least 2010 to get rid of the NRTI class of antiretroviral drugs entirely from treatment guidelines.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this change will occur at anything comparable to the speed with which AZT and other poison pills were “fast-tracked” to market more than 25 years ago.
Very good news: I just received the results of the confirmatory AMAS cancer screen, and it was “normal”, or negative. In fact, the results were in the lowest possible range provided on the test. The result from my first AMAS test a couple of months ago was “elevated”, which required a confirmatory test. For obvious reasons, I have very mixed feelings about this test, but I am ready to put it behind me.