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.
The first real bombshell dropped about six minutes into our chat, while talking about ARV drugs. Almost too casually, JTD said “I haven’t been on meds for going on 14 months now.” I had not yet publicized my own decision to start taking ARV drugs again, though I had dropped some pretty serious hints in our email exchange about “going over to the dark side”, and I was sure he knew I was planning to restart them. The irony of JTD’s comment hit me like a slap in the face. “I can’t believe that,” I told JTD, “you quit the drugs, and I’m getting ready to take them.”
This was probably the pivotal point in our conversation where my doubts and apprehensions about JTD started to soften.
Once again, the choice and the decisions are mine alone to make. I have an appointment to see a doctor I really liked at the Cancer Center of Kansas City, to get his opinion, and I will be having another blood draw for the confirmatory test.
Cancer risks aside, I am getting conflicting advice from various alternative healers about how I am dealing with chronic illness in general.
Most of us in his Internet online community knew Gos as a vocal advocate of the AIDS dissident community; a group of people who question and challenge the mainstream theory that the so-called Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the sole and sufficient cause of AIDS. Yes, Gos was HIV-positive, but he insisted that the available scientific evidence does not support the notion that it is a sexually transmitted pathogen, capable of causing disease. Gos believed his positive test was a “false positive,” and the result of his pre-existing illnesses.
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.
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.
“As he said hello I started to cry and cry. I could not believe it. I was given a second chance in life. This man is a great spiritual HIV/AIDS healer,his healing spell on aids healing is very powerfull. please brothers and sister, contact Dr HEROLD…” A new member of the […more]
One of the most vexing issues I’ve had to deal with since I started exploring alternatives to ART (antiretroviral therapy) for keeping my immune system as healthy as I can, is my inability to abide by some of the most basic rules of scientific research. I’m not beating myself up too much for this failure, […more]
Rarely a day goes by that I do not scan the headlines collected from various blogs and sources by Google Reader. Smashing a recent lull in AIDS news, some pretty outrageous headlines have been breaking through lately. Last week, it was Baby AZeTa, the little girl in Mississippi who researchers claimed was cured of AIDS […more]
As I spend time this week with one of my dearest friends, a man who has been HIV-positive since at least 1987, and who has been on ARVs almost continuously since 1990, I am reminded that Affecteds have always had the option to consider alternatives to conventional pharmaceutical treatment. Last night we recalled some of […more]