Another Potential Cure

Seems like every couple of months at the moment, there's some potential cure or another advertised. Since I've been diagnosed, I think some of the best examples are crocodile blood and epilepsy pills, but there's another one in the offing that sounds like it's currently getting a whole load of spin from its company, being advertised as a cure for HIV while still very far from actually being able to do that, other than hypothetically. While, obviously, I'm in favour of enormous amounts of research being done into finding a cure, I'm not wildly keen on the amount of flag waving and ticker tape parades going on for early stage research and results that are only hypothetical. This drug, like the sodium valproate option sounds like it breaks down the virus in the system but not in the brain, so I'm not sure if that means it would replace antiretroviral dependency with another "drugs or death" option.

If there was a single pill that would completely cure HIV, I'm not sure it would make economic sense for drugs companies to release it, when a lifetime dependency to HAART drugs earns them over £15k per patient per annum. What does make sense for them is to allow incremental advances to be released, but not major leaps forward. They have to keep ahead of the opposition, but not too far ahead, or then the whole industry collapses. The HIV drugs industry is worth an awful lot of money and they depend on people being seropositive just as much as we depend on them for the drugs. It's a symbiotic economy. HIV disappears, all those wealthy doctors and researchers (and their investors) suddenly have to find other avenues for gaining obscene individual wealth while Africans die in their hundreds of thousands.

And would we, the HIV+ people of the world, take that pill? There's a culture built up around HIV now because of the abject fear instilled in mainstream society around the virus, so we're subtly nudged into a ghetto subculture of gays, junkies and hookers and suddenly we've got our own argot of serodiscordance and protease inhibitors, our own artists, poets and writers, we've got our own magazines, our own ad campaigns, our charities, our doctors - a whole fucking world of seropositivity. What the hell happens to that when a cure comes out?

Essentially, would the men and women who've been positive since Diff'rent Strokes was still new and fresh and funny actually want to take that pill? Culturally, we're encouraged to define our identity around the virus - sorry, the disability - we have, are we really going to be able to abandon all of that? Look at the resistance to cochlear implants among the Deaf community - would the pozzee possee really want to give up everything we've clawed together around us in order to cushion the fact that we've been living with cheeks like autobots, running around in the shadow of death for a very long time.

In Sweden, a woman who was an active member of the HIV+ campaigning community seemed to have miraculously recovered from the virus. It transpired that she'd been misdiagnosed, then threw herself into health campaigning, into pushing for improved rights for HIV+ people in a country with quite draconian legislation around disclosure and transmission. Within a few months, she tested positive again, and without misdiagnosis being to blame. The doctors said she was reckless and stupid for exposing herself to risk of infection, but the more astute commentators observed that it was probably inevitable that the darling of the campaigning movement, telling everyone how to live healthily with HIV had become, psychologically, so HIV+ that to take away her seropositivity would be like taking away her gender, her language or her ethnicity.

In our current cultural melieu, being diagnosed positive forces a massive change in psychological identification on those infected by the virus - I don't know how readily those who have lived with HIV for ten, twenty years would be prepared to go through another massive paradigmatic shift in self-definition. How many people who have gone through the struggle of coming out as lesbian, gay or bisexual would take a pill which would, "make them straight"? There'd always be that lingering sense of not being who you were meant to be, of masking your true identity.

I've had this virus for about a year, if my maths are right, been diagnosed for six months and it's changed my life. Saved my life, my mother says. Since diagnosis, I've lost 10kg, gone to the gym very regularly, improved my fitness immensely, moved to living by myself, sadly ended a long-term relationship, stopped taking drugs, taken a more responsible view towards my finances, started writing professionally, regained my artistic side and, yes, did I mention, stopping taking drugs?

Sure, many people go the other way and see HIV as a path towards the Dark Side, hurling themselves into a vortex of drug abuse and masked depression, but there are plenty of people for whom it's been an immensely powerful wake-up call. How many of us would give up that thing to struggle against? The reminder of the frailty of life that, like a Dutch Vanitas painting, speaks of the need to consider our true priorities.

Tags:
HIV,Living with HIV,HIV cure,

Talking with your mouth full

Went in to have blood taken again yesterday, will get results on the 30th. As always, I stressed out about it beforehand, but the appointment itself was quite enjoyable. Was nice to chat to the nurse who's taken my blood a few times in the past and making jokes like,

"Hello, it's been a while since we've seen you here!"
"No offence, but surely that's a good thing!"

Going every week over Christmas really wasn't a good look, so I'm very glad to be done with that. Hopefully, I won't get that trigger-level phone call telling me to come in urgently next week because I've dipped below 200, but I doubt that's likely.

While I was there, though, I did book in an appointment with a health advisor so my boyfriend and I can sit down with someone and get advice on how to make sure we remain a serodiscordant couple. I know they'll not tell either of us anything we couldn't work out for ourselves, but sometimes it's good to dedicate a little time to talking it through with a third party.

Temptation is to do a list and ask for an "Ok" or "Not ok" answer, like a ticklist.

"Can I cum in his ear?"
"Can I wank off with his blood all over my cock?"
"Can I cut him with a knife and fuck the hole?"

and so on. However, I've got a feeling it'd be like asking how much stuff costs in poundland, which is, of course, the funniest thing ever, but might spoil the gravitas of the situation. I'm a plague dog and should ever be reminded of that.

Tags:
HIV,
Serodiscordance,

His Blood On My Hands

Well, it looks like it's on. I am lucky enough to have a new boyfriend. He's agreed it's okay that I mention him and his status on here and, yes, as discussed before, he's not infected. It's weird to have that sense of the danger my blood and fluids present to him even though we both feel that urge to be totally close to one another. It's slightly odd that the issue isn't that I am HIV+ at all, that is so easily managed, but the issue is that he is not positive, and we both, obviously, want it to stay that way.

It's funny playing games around the idea, and leads to some very creative things, like playing with fake blood for photos bound to wind people up and we're finding some very fun ways to enjoy sex with that same sense of physical closeness without actual fluid tranfer through penetrative sex. We both know there are gambles we're taking here, and it really moves me enormously that he admits that itfrightens him (it frightens me, too) but that he's prepared to take that risk.

Of course, we minimise the risk, safe sex, not doing body fluid transfer, but still, every time I have la petite morte, there's a danger, however minimal, for those few moments before the virus dies outside of my body.

I have always minimised risk to negative partners since knowing my status and, apart from two possible moments where I took a moderate risk by fucking someone and not using a condom, I've not done the fluid sharing thing for many years now. Nevertheless, it's not felt so important to avoid fucking up as it feels now I so vehemently want to avoid infecting him. The sex is amazing, and I'm sure it's much helped by the months it's been since I've used recreational drugs other than nicotine and alcohol that I can feel so intensely with him, but I want to be so damned careful with him.

Logically, I know what risky behaviour consists of, but then I knew that before I caught it, so I'm clearly either not as well-informed as I thought or as disciplined about avoiding risk, which frightens me. I'll try to get an appointment with a health advisor when I go in to get my blood taken next week, perhaps, although they'll tell me nothing that the internet won't tell me, so perhaps I'll call THT and ask about information stuff to do with relationships with differential HIV statuses, but ultimately, I doubt a little booklet is going to be the prime mover for change.

Advice from anyone in a similar situation, on either side of the coin (heads or tails, got it or ain't) would be welcome, as I am finding this quite a strange experience and I don't want it to taint the situation.

Tags:
serodiscordance

There's This Guy...

It's interesting how you can tell yourself that HIV is just one of those things about which you shrug and get on with life, knowing that you've got it and, chances are, you always will have it, but the thought of passing it on terrifies me. I know a couple where one has it, one doesn't, and they don't use condoms most of the time. We had a threesome, you see, and it really disturbed me to watch them taking risks, but ultimately it's not my business to intervene. Or was it? I honestly don't know what the right thing to have done would have been.

Nothing I can do about it now, and I can't live other people's lives for them. Still, it was odd to see someone wanting to expose themselves to an illness just to show they cared for someone, or for whatever logic he wanted to apply. Either way, I wouldn't want to be the one who placed him at risk.

Serodiscordance in a relationship is something that would be a challenge for me. There's some way in which fluid exchange is considered a mark of trust and intimacy, that after a while of being together you make a joint decision to stop using condoms. That seems to be the pattern in gay relationships - and others - that I've had and have heard talk of. It's a way of showing your partner that you trust that they're not taking risks with anyone else; a way of building a degree of physical proximity without the barrier of a condom. I hadn't really thought about it until now it looks like I'm dating again. There's not any way I can really hope for that kind of symbolic act with someone who doesn't share my status, and even then, medical advice would be that I shouldn't bareback unless I know I have the same strain of HIV as my hypothetical partner.

This is assuming that monogamy is sought in a new relationship, which I would want.

When I have had sex with guys and not known their status since I've known mine, there've been a few times where I get a psychological block and can't reach orgasm if I'm doing something that is penetrative, particularly in the couple of instances where they and I've not had a conversation about status first. Of course, they then think I'm an amazing lay, going for hours, but it's fear that stops me from enjoying it, stops me from letting go.

I can only assume that the fear of transmission would be more acute within a relationship. My viral load's not insignificant and that plays on my mind. I'd be frightened for the health of a partner who wasn't infected and I'd also worry that there would be an element of pity in their attitude towards me. I'd hate to get ill and need looking after, but it's a very real prospect (for anyone, mind you) and I'd rather there wasn't that worry.

But, of course, love doesn't come with an antibody detector built in, and I would like to think I couldn't stop myself from falling for someone just because of differential HIV statuses.


Tags:
Serodiscordance, Romance,HIV,Safer Sex

You Either Got It Or You Ain't

Had another good realisation yesterday while talking to a friend of mine. The people I'm closest to at the moment and to whom I feel the most affinity aren't HIV+ men. I'm spending wonderfully good quality time with friends from the last few years, rather than gravitating towards the seroconverted. That I'm not needing that sense of fraternity, that consipiracy of sinners can only be a good thing.

Although I keep this blog and I write elsewhere about HIV issues, I am relieved that I'm not feeling like the virus in me has turned me into some other species any more, that I'm an alien among men when I go outside, that I don't feel it is something for which I have to apologise. It's certainly a reckless injury from which I will forever carry a scar, but the face I see in the mirror naturally now includes that cicatrix, that keloid. It's something I have in my life, but it is not my life and I'm hoping never will be.

I realise, though, that when I want to, I still use HIV as a mask for other issues in my life. I come home exhausted and upset after a long day at work. It's not the AIDS, it's the workload. I get nervous and frightened about the effect my HIV status might have on a new potential romance. It's not the AIDS, it's the butterflies in your stomach. Silly boy, blaming the AIDS. Whatever next?

Time to try to stop using this as an excuse to avoid tacking more immediate issues. Blaming everything on the AIDS is like spending money to tackle climate change that's coming in a hundred years rather than looking after poor people today. You may well feel worthy for being green, but if you want a better world, get your hands dirty now and tackle the more immediate problems.