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.
You might not know it from reading the comments left here on my blog, but there are more than a few AIDS dissidents who really don’t like how I think or what I write about.
There’s a whole thread on a very popular Facebook page called “Rethinking AIDS”, discussing my open letter to Dora. Last I looked, that thread had nearly 100 comments, and very few of those comments were about Dora, Ruggiero or the defense of academic freedom.
No, the gist of the thread was whether or not I am in “the AIDS Zone.” It seems that because I did not use “air quotes” around the term “HIV disease”, I’m not really an AIDS dissident. Others took issue with my post for daring to publish that some AIDS Rethinkers hold a very narrow view about “HIV” and “AIDS”, while others of us are merely “questioning” the whole affair. None of them chose to comment directly to me here.
Some of the most visible and vocal Rethinkers seem intent on imposing their own “beliefs” (another loaded term that deserves quotes) on the entire movement. There has long been a tendency to try to impose a sort of litmus test to determine whether or not one is a true “AIDS dissident”.
Since I first met the AIDS dissident community via the AIDS Myth Exposed forums—since renamed Questioning AIDS—several years ago, I’ve become aware of several of the various factions, distinctive personalities and divisions within that broad group. Now I’m finding it ironic just how guilty some of these people are at their own version of “bone-pointing”.
I’ve fallen behind on sharing quite a bit of information about my recent medical adventures. I don’t know where to begin, or how much to divulge publicly. Not out of concerns for privacy—I’ve chosen to be an open book about my experiences—but because I don’t want to bore folks with the myriad of details. If […more]
Courtesy Library of Congress I pledged a few months ago that I wasn’t going to give him any more attention, but AIDS drug cheerleader J Todd DeShong has outdone himself recently by declaring that intravenous vitamin C is more toxic and dangerous than the antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat “HIV”. I can’t resist exposing […more]
I remember little else, until I was in post-op, waiting to wake up enough for them to allow Michael to join me. I wrote off the look in his face as general concern and my own grogginess. Only later did I learn that he had just had his own, first encounter with Doctor, who told him that “it didn’t look good”, that I “probably had lymphoma”, and that I “would probably need chemo”. He was so distraught that he wasn’t even able to relate this news to me until after I had left the hospital the next day.
I just got the call from the infectious disease clinic informing me that the chest x-ray showed my lungs are “extended and clear”, with no sign of tuberculosis. Now it’s time to settle down and get back to our regular programming: just being healthy. No more tests, no more fearmongering.
In a previous post, I focused on the good news about learning that I do not have cancer. After several weeks of being increasing led to believe that because they were unable to explain the cause for the lumps in my parotid gland, doctors thought I must have lymphoma. Once that possibility was ruled out, […more]
I got the very good news this afternoon that the lumps in my jowl are not cancerous. I do not have words to describe the relief, and in fact, I’m not sure it has really sunk in yet. That’s how convincingly the doctors had led Michael and me to believe that I had some form […more]
Kali and Bella are not impressed with the ER doctor’s compression bandage on my neck. I call it my hijab. I have sure been having second thoughts lately about publicly revealing so much about what’s going on with my health. It was pretty easy to write and blog when my health was improving and things […more]
I had my first parotid cyst at least 25 years ago, long before I ever tested “positive”. I blogged in March about being diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, presumably caused by “HIV”, simply because I tested positive. About that same time I began to experience what I thought were “swollen glands”, a condition I frequently had […more]