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- Wednesday, 30 September 2009
living with HIV
I agree with David Menadue’s observations (Southern Star 051) about the need for a serious reality check regarding HIV.
It wasn’t until I was diagnosed positive with the dreaded demon earlier this year that I really appreciated what a totally naive, wilful dweeb I had been regarding the possibility of contracting and living with HIV.
HIV?? Yeah right, that’s just something tired old ’70s disco queens get, isn’t it? In any case, if you’re that unlucky just take a pill and all will be well. I’m just too young to have to worry about HIV!
Bullshit.
I was that unlucky and after finding out, it was a crash course into a living nightmare, a living hell. Such as, becoming a slave and hostage to antiviral medications, where if you miss even just one dose because of a late night, say, your virus population will build resistance until you are staring AIDS in the face again. Or the fact that you can get non-AIDS HIV complications as well, which medication doesn’t inoculate you against, such as HIV-related dementia, or excruciating nerve pain, or incurable itching and so on.
Not to mention the totally hilarious situation that statistically some 80 percent of gay guys expect you to voluntarily disclose your status, while 65 percent of them would, upon being informed thus, say no to sex or a relationship, making you feel like total dirt (source: AFAO site), or the fact that those same medicines that defer (not stop, just defer) you getting AIDS can also cause facial wasting, cause you to get a humpback or pot belly where there was none before (very sexy!) as well playing havoc with your cholesterol and trigliceryde levels so that you may very well find yourself dead of heart disease before you get to die of AIDS.
Or just the annoyingly banal but emotionally devastating reality of having to get blood counts every three months, just being paralyzed, hoping and praying that your cell counts haven’t suddenly ditched for no reason. And that’s just the start of it!
HIV positive people need to be treated with respect and acceptance as is becoming of our community. However, we also need to see the human immuno-deficiency virus for the reality it is — a killer virus that causes chronic disease that will devastate you emotionally and physically and will probably cut your life short by some 15 – 20 years, instead of pretending that we are all like Magic Johnson climbing mountains.
We need to hear the truth about living with HIV, not the pleasant politically correct version. If I’d known the reality I may well have been a whole lot more careful.
— Daniel
HUMAN RIGHTS
What hypocrisy.
While John Brumby is India touting Victoria as a safe, egalitarian destination for Indian students, his Govenment has announced it is going to pass laws that will allow major employer, education and welfare bodies in this state to legally vilify citizens on the basis of who they love, who they worship, whether they are married or not, how many children they have, or whether they were born with a penis or a vagina (The Sunday Age, 27/9).
Many enlightened countries threw out such misogynistic, homophobic and “absurd” (Prof Margaret Thornton, The Sunday Age 27/9) laws decades ago and, in fact, legislated the other way, making these acts of discrimination illegal, and a denial of basic human rights.
Such draconian laws cast serious doubt on whether Victoria is still “On The Move”, as recent number plates claimed, and reveal it will definitely not be “The Place To Be” for many who might otherwise choose to make Victoria their home.
— Benjamin
Tags: Letters, letters to the editor
October 1st, 2009 @ 9:16 am
Re, the letter from Daniel “living with HIV”. It would seem that if the Vic Health Dept did a survey, they would find that the majority of long term HIV infected would agree to some hard hitting advertising to encourage safer sex. I have come to the conclusion that vested interests (HIV drug companies, support organisations etc) would like to keep the infection rate growing. The share holders of Merk, Pfizer etc and the employed State support funded support agencies have nice incomes. It is bullshit that we poofs and dykes are different to the cigarette smokers and bad car drivers who are targetted with graphic cautionary images.