My Photo

Recent Comments

Blog powered by TypePad
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Your email address:


Powered by FeedBlitz

HIV and AIDS

April 17, 2007

Around the blogosphere: HIV positive bloggers rise up

I think the formula for helping women rise above HIV is simple. We can borrow from the old Breck shampoo commerical from the '70s (the young women at UPenn will have no idea what I'm talking about). It goes like this: A woman with luxuriously shiny hair (she just washed it with Breck) flips her cascading mane around while claiming that she "told two friends, who told two friends, who told two friends and so on and so on" until the whole world of women with access to a grocery store knew about the wonderous nature of Breck shampoo.

Return of the Living Dead not only entertained the most morbid corner of my humanity, the movie also inspired my first post-diagnosis inner-dialogue of resurrection. Maybe, just maybe, if AIDS struck me down I too could come back from beyond the grave to extract a little revenge on those who were free to live a life of debauchery. As my teenaged peers dreamt of making sweet love to the Playmate of the Year after a hot date, I fantasized about eating her brains after a brisk chase through an eerie, decrepit cemetery.

Adding a fourth drug to the existing three drug antiretroviral treatment, for the initial stages of HIV has not shown any benefits, according to a U.S. study that covered some 765 patients for three years.

Until you really take a hard look, you will not know just how much you are already sacrificing. Once you slow down, you will be amazed at how much energy you expend in dealing with day-to-day living, add to that dealing with your infection and you can be on verge of mental meltdown. If you think you can ignore major issues and not pay a price for that, you are sadly mistaken. Stress can and does kill and its effect on pozzies health is well known.