A Life With HIV

 Today's very personal post comes from wenatcheeworld.com (see link below) and is one man's view of his life living with HIV and including neuropathy as one of the by-products. It shows that for many people, it's not just a question of taking a number of pills every day and living nomally but sometimes a real struggle to deal with both the side effects of the medication and the diseases that HIV can bring on. His final sentence shows a strength of mind that is an example to us all.


HIV-infected Wenatchee man stays optimistic despite many obstacles
By Dee Riggs World staff writer Saturday, November 19, 2011

WENATCHEE — HIV disease and its life-saving medications have taken a toll on Dan.

The 51-year-old Wenatchee man is gaunt in the face and is constantly scratching his arms and upper body. The itching is a side effect of one of the antiretroviral medications he takes to keep HIV at bay.

The medication also makes him extremely tired and gives him daily diarrhea. He also has memory problems, peripheral neuropathy and bipolar disorder. He thinks the latter is the result of either the HIV or the many medications he’s on, not only for the disease itself but to combat side effects of the HIV medications.

Adding to his troubles: He’s suffered bouts of pneumonia and sinus infections that are too numerous to count.

“With HIV, you can age real quick,” said Dan.

Dan is one of the 120 people in Chelan, Douglas, Okanogan and Grant counties being treated by Dr. Brent Barber, who handles infectious diseases at the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center.

The first case of HIV was reported in Washington state in 1982, and the first cases in Wenatchee were about the same time.

Dan was diagnosed in 1985, while living in St. Paul, Minn. He said doctors there determined that he was probably infected in 1981 or 1982.

The sigma of the disease, he said, has lessened, but hasn’t gone away. That’s why he didn’t want his last name used.

“There are people out there with radical views and I’m not going to wave a flag to them,” he said. “I have no desire to be a martyr.”

Dan, who moved to Wenatchee in 1989, said he learned that lesson in 1991. Shortly after he told a few acquaintances that he had the disease, he was assaulted by three men while walking across the Columbia River pedestrian bridge. The assault sent him to the hospital with head injuries.

Before his HIV diagnosis, Dan said, he was a certified medical assistant. He was a healthy guy, he said, and he was “driving a gold Cadillac Coupe de Ville and living in St. Paul in a nice place.”

Today, Dan lives in a small rental home in South Wenatchee with his two pitbull terriers, Mya and Apollo. He survives on Social Security disability and Medicaid.

He spends his days, he said, “close to the restroom” with diarrhea and, sometimes, vomiting. He also must nap to recover his strength. When he’s feeling up to it, he walks his dogs.

Dan calls himself bisexual and said doctors traced his disease to a time in his life when he was having multiple sex partners. “I was very promiscuous in my youth,” he said.

Dan called the ‘80s “a rough time. .... I went to five funerals in seven years.” Those were funerals of friends who died from HIV disease.

Dan thinks he didn’t die because he has a strong constitution and, before he got sick, he was very athletic.

In St. Paul, because of its proximity to the Mayo Clinic, Dan said he got excellent medical care, and did not experience prejudice among health-care workers. He also did not suffer ostracism from his family.

“My parents were very open and loving,” he said. “I got this disease from homosexual sex. I had fought being gay for several years, then my parents sat me down and said, ‘We love you and it’s OK with us.”

Ostracism came, however, from others in the gay community.

“I went from being a fun figure in the community to being an outcast,” he said.

He attributes the ostracism to fear from others of contracting the disease. He said that ostracism has lessened over the years as people have realized the importance of using protection during sex.

He said he has experienced some discrimination from people in the straight community, mostly from older people who did not grow up with the disease in their midst. He notes that radicals in church communities have been the most hurtful while caring church communities have been the most helpful.

“Churches have been some of the best people behind me,” he said. “They put me up in motel rooms those times when I was too sick to live in my car.”

After his diagnosis, Dan said, he tried to continue working but frequent illnesses kept him out of the workforce and burned up his savings. He came to Wenatchee to work as a picker in the orchards.

Dan said he has strong feelings for people who call HIV-infected people sinners.

“AIDS is not an abomination sent to kill faggots,” he said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have 20 million children dying of it in Africa. People should stop hating people with AIDS because you’re hating children too.”

Dan said he feels fairly safe in Wenatchee today, compared with the early days in St. Paul.

“I remember when I would walk up one-way streets, just to make sure no one was following me,” he said. “I was living with fear and paranoia. I don’t have that kind of fear anymore; people are much more accepting. AIDS is an everyday word today — it’s in everybody’s language.”

His biggest fears are medical. “I worry about my lungs, getting pneumonia; that, and losing my ability to think and to reason.”

Still, he battles on. Dan, who calls himself an optimist, said he’s currently on five to six of medications and, despite the side effects, feels fortunate to have the drugs because they are keeping him alive.

He offers this advice for others suffering from HIV disease: “Don’t ever give up. When they tell you you’re going to die, don’t roll over and die; just fight that much harder, and love life every day.”

http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2011/nov/19/hiv-infected-wenatchee-man-stays-optimistic/