AIDS Comes to my house, the beginning of my 'real' journey.

Let's talk about good ol HIV today. I was thrown quite  a curve ball a while back when, after several months of ignoring the pains in my joints, it became almost impossible for me to walk. I have been an athlete since high school - everything from a college tennis player to a bodybuilding competitor in my mid and late 20s - to a mtn bike racer in my 40s - always hitting the gym and maintaining my weight along the way. Losing weight when one is not trying to can send any serious bodybuilder into a fit - if you want to try it out- just innocently mosey up to a big guy in the gym - whether you know him or not - when he is checking himself out in the walls of mirrors. Then, with the intonation of a complement, say 'Wow, you're really trimming down, it looks great.' If after his initial reaction is whatever it is passes, he starts examining himself even closer and heads to the scale for a weigh-in, you will see what I mean. I had gotten past that phase in my life, but when someone told me I looked like I was losing weight, until the last 14 years, I couldn't help thinking 'Oh no, I have AIDS wasting syndrome'. I was still 240 lbs, which may as well have been 340 lbs, but I couldn't see the lunacy that my thoughts portrayed. I went into that awful PTSD moment of being in any one of a number of my friends' hospital rooms, gazing at what was left of them just before they died and being terrified and convinced that I was next.

I wasn't expecting to see 30, now I am 58, and in my 39th year of HIV infection. So, back to when I was no longer able to walk without excruciating pain. I went to have a CT Scan with contrast at - you guessed it - good old reliable Cedars Sinai. I was in the waiting room after my scan when an older man whom I had never before seen came into the waiting room and after looking around and not finding what he was looking for, said 'did anyone see an older man with severe back problems - probably in a wheel chair, leave recently? No answer. Is there anyone here that just had a spine CT with contrast? I said - 'Uh, that would be me.'

'No, these are not your films, this person would not be able to walk at all.' he responded. Then he said 'Is there anyone here whose phone number ends in 7557? Once again I replied,
'uh, gulp that would be me.' as I felt the blood rushing to my face which became fiery hot and I started pouring sweat.
'are you okay to come with me for a minute?' He asked gently. I nodded and we went back to a consultation room. On the way, he introduced himself as the on-call radiologist, and that he was in the process of writing the report for the films.

Next, he apologized for having jumped to conclusions, and then he showed my my images. I almost fainted - he went to get me some cold juice and a cool, wet cloth to put on my forehead.

I was shocked and a bit puzzled by what I saw as there were so many things going on that I intrinsically knew were not normal, to wit he told me that what I have been told many time before, that I am not a doctor, and not to jump to conclusions. 'OKAY, I AM NOT A DOCTOR, NOR AM I BLIND, DOCTOR, I said in the most balanced voice that I could muster at that moment.

He then told me that 'this is the kind of result I might expect to find in an older person, say someone of 80 years or so, with severe osteoporosis who had taken a fall. He advised me to see my spine doctor asap and that he would post the report within the hour.

This is when I went into 'detached mode'. I compartmentalized all of my emotions like fear, sadness, anger, frustration, etc., and put them somewhere deep in my psyche. I do not recommend this approach to dealing with one's feelings, but it was what I knew and how I had always proceeded. to be continued......

AIDS Hits Home, another piece of my personal journey with AIDS.

Before I continue in the story of how what happened to me happened to me, I feel the obligation to say that it took me many years and many failed attempts to find my purpose on this earth. In the early days of the epidemic, I was merely a bystander, a scared one - but I did nothing about my feelings or those of my fellows. It was in 1986, when I lived in DC and was planning a visit to my first lover back in San Francisco that the magnitude of what was happening to my adopted community finally hit me.
I called George, whom I assumed would outlive me and all of our mutual friends, and he asked me what I would like to do while I was there. He suggested having some people over for a reunion dinner. I thought that sounded great. Then he asked me who I'd like to see so that he could extend invitations to them. The first five people I named were all dead. DEAD. Suddenly I was out of ideas and not so sure I wanted to do any planning at all. I wasn't even sure I wanted to make the trip, and as it turned out, I had to postpone that trip for 2 years because George had been hospitalized with Pneumocystis three days before I was to travel.

Part of me wanted to run to his bedside, and part of me was too scared to do so. I knew, empirically, that I could not 'catch' Pneumocystis from him, but my emotions took control, making me not want to get near him on the one hand, and jump in his bed attempting to contract his illness and suffer with him on the other. I had very grandiose visions of martyrdom, in a glorified way that upon investigation showed how sad and scared I was.

AIDS had finally hit home and sooner than I would have liked, my best friend Joe would be in NIH, with his brain gradually being devoured by the bug that causes Toxoplasmosis. I had started to include Joe less and less in my life because of his constant denial and dismissal of what science and his doctors were telling him was going on in his body. I found that the more I tried to reason with him about the possibility that he, like myself, might be HIV positive, the more resolute he became about the contrary. To be truthful, he was pulling away from me as much if not more than I pulled away from him over this disagreement. Either way, that fateful day that he failed to show-up for a buying trip in New York, trips he professed to love, I knew that something had happened. I didn't come close to imagining the seriousness of his travail.

I, along with his secretary, and his other good friend Jeff, whom I had not yet met, had been calling repeatedly with no result. Jeff went one step further and called the police with whom he broke in to Joe's apartment. There was Joe, lying on the floor at the foot of the stairway that led to his loft and roof deck. The wall, the stairs, and Joe, all were coated with his own feces as he apparently had a seizure at the top of his stairs, and as it typical in that situation, his bowels emptied during the event. He was alive, yet unconscious, and in the best hands imaginable. When I think about it - I feel like I was there - as I did see the aftermath during one of the cleaning sessions. This is one of the scenes that haunts me during my PTSD moments. Prior to starting my writing again, PTSD had almost faded away. It's okay. I am prepared for it this time around and don't want to ever forget what it was like since if I do I won't be able to tell youngsters about what happened.

I feel so numb writing this, I wish I could accurately describe just how disconnected from everything around me these brief visits to the past make me feel. Emotions affect me so strongly, which really puzzles me. I don't think I am supposed to figure this one out. I just have to stop writing now and honor these feelings whether I want to stop or not. Bye for now.