Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Thrown.

Dear Going Gentle,

Hope things are going well with you.

Your blood results from 7/2/08 were fine. They show that starting HIV treatment can be delayed for the time being as your count is above 350.

The CD4 count was 433 and the viral load was 17273 indicating low viral activity.

I would advise you to keep your appointment with Dr McAids next week to discuss these latest results and where to go from here.

Regards,

Dr Death

Your Friendly Local Clinic for HIV and Sexual Health

Names changed to cast a vague haze of anonymity over the whole thing. It's an odd spanner in the works. I'd been expecting the result to be like my last 2, hovering around the mark where I'd need to talk about starting treatment. Now, I'm not so sure. It's a tricky one - do I keep playing this lucky numbers game or do I think about how my health has been as more of a barometer? I've been ill quite a lot this last six months with various niggling and not so niggling infections and now I just don't know. Well, I'm still seeing the doctor on Monday, I guess we'll have a serious talk then. I guess I'd kind of been so prepared for my system to be in freefall, having a healthier result's a bit of a surprise.

2 comments:

Mark said...

I see you get your blood sucked in the evening.

Have they bothered to tell you that any blood scavenged late in the day doesn't actually get processed until close to noon the next day – by which time a significant number of your precious little CD4 cells have self-destructed themselves.

Your numbers are probably considerably higher than even this latest set a numbers would indicate. Going early enough in the day, to make sure that my blood is processed the same day, generally adds a good 150-200 CD4s to my counts.

I only found out when they were explaining why I shouldn't be at all concerned about a set of numbers which SEEMED (at first glance) to reverse a whole year's worth of treatment and leave me with an even weaker immune system than I had when I started treatment.

Ken Monteith said...

Now that we've waited a respecful two weeks, can I ask: How did the appointment go?