340

Seems I'm not yet off the CD4 rollercoaster. Results line again this morning, nice little chat to a doctor there, not sure who it was, I don't think I've spoken to her before. The result came back as 340 or somewhere in that region, which means that we can safely discount the result of 85. The doctor I spoke to said that over Christmas they had some trouble with their testing equipment, so the slight panic was for nothing. Nevertheless, even discounting that result, it's still annoying that there's no real steady result that I can look at. The doctor said that fluctuations like this happen for everyone, irrespective of their HIV status, plus I know that over-sleeping can knock your CD4 count, or at least that's what the internet told me, so I suppose we can attribute the 90 point fall to that.

A friend who has been positive for a while said that this kind of fluctuation is common in the early stages, but I can't really see the literature to support it, just that it takes a while to establish a trend in CD4 count, rather than try to extrapolate from a limited number of results, which is what I've probably been guilty of trying to do. In the end, CD4 count and such like don't actually matter nearly as much as how I feel and while, yeah, there's bound to be a downward trend, it's only really an issue if I'm actually getting ill more often than I used to, which certainly isn't the case so far.

So long as it's over 200, there really isn't an issue, and even then, there's not that much of an issue anyway. If I didn't take drugs, I'd start to get ill at some point, sure, but the drugs are there. It's not as though I would consider taking them lightly, but there's not really another option, and once the side-effects are something you have a handle on, then you're cool. I guess it's a question of trusting the system on one hand and taking responsibility for your own health at the same time. I'm probably going to the gym a little too often at the moment, might try to cut back to three fixed mornings a week instead of five, which is excessive, but probably to do with my urge to "be healthy" in the wake of diagnosis.

Still, I'm sure a sudden rekindling of an interest in alternative health is probably a better response than the "Fuck it, I'm dying anyway" approach I've seen in a lot of people, and I've been guilty of edging a bit too close to sometimes, too.

340, 430, you say tomato. I say I'm healthy and not worried.