New Year, Same Old AIDS.

It's the time of year when everyone's talking about their amazing plans to radically change their lives - I thought I'd have a nosey through some other HIV-related blogs on the internet and came across this curious article about people who, through willpower alone, "beat" HIV. It struck me as a little bit sad. Not that I'm denying that remaining upbeat and trying not to allow HIV to make you its bitch can't help with your prognosis, it's just the sense that it's clutching at straws to say things like, "Well done!" to a guy in Berlin who stopped medicating for HIV and has seemingly remained healthy with a barely-detectable viral load. The patient seems to attribute his luck to his will, the doctors are less optimistic, saying that it looks more likely to be something to do with early intervention and experimental drugs if his spontaneous recovery proves to last at all.

The science of it is beyond me, but what interested me about it was the way that it was presented, offering a glimmer of hope to some people who are often quite desperate. I guess I'm pretty well-adjusted about the whole HIV thing - I can get on with life now without thinking about it all the time, I don't seem to be going through the depression or substance abuse that seems to be rife among other people with the virus and I'm pretty sanguine about the whole thing.

It sounds like what gets a lot of people with the virus is a very understandable fear. For my part, if a few people have had the good fortune to have tested HIV positive and now test negative - good luck to them, I say, but I've got plenty to be getting on with without spending half my time on my knees praying for a one in a million shot at divine intervention.

Inexorable

A few guys I've spoken to have said that the thought of infection turns them on. Specifically not just the thought of flesh-to-flesh contact without the barrier of a condom, but the prospect of contracting HIV. While I think there's a bit of urban mythology about bugchasing, I think there's some slight truth in it for some people I've spoken to. What they talk about is an end to the fear and uncertainty of being "negative at my last test" and the ongoing dread that accompanies each of those tests. There's also the way that HIV positive people have had to go through a challenging period of self-evaluation and some of us come out of that chewing our own faces off in clubs, getting fucked by strangers, while others have used that crisis as a springboard into a position where we value our health and our lives a lot more than we used to.

Neither's any more appropriate a response than the other to the acquisition of a potentially life-threatening disease, but to willingly choose a slow, inexorable suicide seems like an interesting choice. Personally, I've not attempted suicide or been anywhere near it since my diagnosis, but had been previously. On one level or another I think I acknowledged that the matter taken out of my hands now so there was no merit in trying to hurry it along. Far from being nihilistic, knowing that death swam with me gave me a lot more to find good about life.

I wonder if that low-level creeping nihilism that underpins the ennui that many people feel these days drives some of us to situations where the matter could be taken out of our hands and we'd seek out, consciously or otherwise, an end to the fear and uncertainty that comes with being negative to replace it with the inexorable certainty of being HIV positive.

I don't for a moment think that the majority of people feel this way, but I have had conversations with more than a few guys who have said that they fantasise about it and secretly wish for situations where it could happen.

I don't plan on granting anyone's wish this Christmas.

How to do a CD4 Count

Still here. Here, still.

Sorry that this blog's been offline for a little while; I was trying to work out some better ways of keeping it anonymous, which hasn't worked brilliantly so far, but I've now got it working from a new email address that's specifically for this blog, so I'm feeling a little more able to talk here again.

I'm glad that I've got that sorted out, although I'm sure that my identity is the worst kept secret in the world, as is my status. It comes through in so many subtle little things, and I'm generally open about it, just not to people I work with, for the main part, and not with people I think will be stupid about it.

I got my latest blood test results through. My cd4 count is 351 and my viral load is 3,150 or something like that. While it's obviously heartening that the viral load is coming down, the wave of anxiety I felt while waiting for the results broke onto the shores of, well, sadness when the results came through. My numbers have been all over the place, to the extent that I've run sweepstakes on what my scores will be, but I've got to accept that they're unlikely to get better and I have to resign myself that while I'm not on medication, I do have a progressive and life-threatening condition. Of course, medication changes that and makes it manageable, but there's still a sense of bereavement for a chapter of my life that has passed and can never quite be regained.

I still struggle with the dilemma about how open I should be about my status - I mean, I shouldn't feel like it's something I have to hide from people, but I still feel that it's a failure on my part that I got infected. I mean, we all know how to avoid it, don't we? I still don't know how I caught it, who I got it from or much like that - there's a few times when I took moderate risks, but I didn't do any of the high risk stuff you're always warned about, so there's, I guess, a sense of anger as well as the sadness about this whole thing. A desire to make sense of stuff that never will.

My boyfriend continues to be amazing about all of this and is hugely supportive and sensitive about my status, saying that if he gets infected, then we've got to remember that it's a shared responsibility. Intellectually, I know this, but it would have passed from me to him, so I'd blame myself, not necessarily for the act that infected him but for the fact I got infected in the first place and therefore bring an extra complication to a relationship.

Drawing In

Got a letter through today, telling me I should make an appointment for a flu/pneumonia jab because I'm on the list of people who need that kind of thing. That's nice to know - apparently I'm frail. I won't complain, though - the thought of a winter without the flu is a nice one and not to be sniffed at (sorry). Still, I think it kinda highlights how the GP and the specialists give me totally different takes on HIV. The GP gives me antibiotics every time I go, "just in case" even when it's obvious that it's just something that everyone's getting and thinks I need a flu jab because my immune system is compromised.

It's not; not yet, at least. I've got a CD4 count of 444 and a viral load of 22,691 - according to received wisdom, it's unlikely I'll have an immune system that's compromised for another five to ten years. I don't have a co-infection of hepatitis or anything else. When the GP's so twitchy about my HIV status, it makes me wonder what it must feel like to be someone who doesn't have good specialist care at their disposal and is only given that concerned look every time they go to complain about a bad back or anything.

It's funny - I'm also being encouraged to apply for a grant that I am only entitled to ask for if I'm prepared to say that I'm disabled, which I think the DDA says I am, kinda, now. Doesn't make it terribly comfortable, though, to be ticking a box and wondering what questions they'll ask and what they'll do with that information. It's funny, before, when I was ill with PTSD and had a psychiatric diagnosis and was on medication and the like, I was quite happy to be disabled, but this, which is clearly not my fault, I'm ashamed of.

I wonder if there's still some issues to work through about the whole thing. I'm sure I can understand how people wind up saying things like that they're Poz and Proud and all that, but I don't want that, nor do I want people's sympathy when I say I'm positive. There is still that odd dissonance about the distinction between the friends who know and the friends who don't know. Sometimes it's just not come up in conversation, so it's tricky, thinking that they might feel left out by not knowing.

The headfuck of HIV is more of a disability than having fewer white blood cells of a particular variety than I used to.