World AIDS Day
Happy World AIDS Day?
Should you even be celebrating it? Or would you take it upon yourself to educate everyone around you about the disastrous thing called AIDS or HIV?
Do you know what is HIV and what is AIDS? I am not going into it, you can read all you can ever do online everywhere.
What I wanted to share today is to recap my journey of about 2 years into maybe 20 minutes of your time.
If you have come to my blog, you would have seen the big and bold header - I am HIV positive. You can read how I got it, not that many blog posts anyway. Before end of 2011, I was like many of you, perhaps the majority of the guys out there - "that it could only happen to other people and not me", or so I thought.
I was too careful not to have unprotected sex. All it took was just one chance and I not only got infected with HIV, I also got chlamydia, fortunately it was treatable with drugs, albeit very, very expensive.
The first few months of treatment was done in a private clinic and before I knew it, I busted my whole savings. Seriously.
It's never cheap to treat sexually transmitted diseases privately.
I broke down when I realized I could not afford any longer to get private care, that's when I decided to bite the bullet and go to the government hospitals. In and out I went, with lots of tests after, I finally settled with the care I'm now going.
Sometime this year, my immune system was compromised really badly and I was admitted to the hospital and my CD4 count dropped drastically to below desirable level, only double digit, or what they would call it, AIDS.
I stayed in hospital for a week, in a quarantined room and visitors have restricted access. I was put on drips, antibiotics, dozens of different drugs and many tests. Tubes of blood were drawn almost every day. It was hell.
I couldn't eat properly, I couldn't drink properly. I vomited and couldn't swallow pills, so they had to pump the drugs through my veins. It was painful but it had to be done. And I was having fever of over 40 degrees, forcing the doctors to make a decision that changed my situation.
They switched off the water heater and forced me to take a ice cold shower for 20 minutes under running water and expose to air conditioning. The Chinese believed that you should not shower when you are having fever.
A few days later, I was pretty much stronger and was discharged, but the drugs and tests did not stop there. I underwent follow up treatments and counseling, because the doctors told me I cannot wait any longer.
So after all the tests were done, I was given Combivir and Efavirenz. These two drugs are what's keeping me alive today. While I generally do not have any side effects from Combivir, I was having terrible initial side effects from efavirenz. While the effects has minimize over the months, I am still feeling it.
Apart from taking the HIV med, I am also taking bactrium. 2 pills a day. This keeps my lungs working, and I will need to continue taking it for as long as required.
It's not fun having to make sure medication are always on my side and that they are adequate. And it's open to question whenever you take the med in public or at work.
So there, 5 pills daily. At exactly the same time each day, morning and night. Drop everything you do or eat at that moment the alarm rang, and take med, the continue on whatever is it you are doing.
This post is not meant to scare but it's the reality of how having HIV changed my life. Forever.
Safe sex always. I hope your 20 minutes have been well spent learning how I got to this point today.
Peace out.
Should you even be celebrating it? Or would you take it upon yourself to educate everyone around you about the disastrous thing called AIDS or HIV?
Do you know what is HIV and what is AIDS? I am not going into it, you can read all you can ever do online everywhere.
What I wanted to share today is to recap my journey of about 2 years into maybe 20 minutes of your time.
If you have come to my blog, you would have seen the big and bold header - I am HIV positive. You can read how I got it, not that many blog posts anyway. Before end of 2011, I was like many of you, perhaps the majority of the guys out there - "that it could only happen to other people and not me", or so I thought.
I was too careful not to have unprotected sex. All it took was just one chance and I not only got infected with HIV, I also got chlamydia, fortunately it was treatable with drugs, albeit very, very expensive.
The first few months of treatment was done in a private clinic and before I knew it, I busted my whole savings. Seriously.
It's never cheap to treat sexually transmitted diseases privately.
I broke down when I realized I could not afford any longer to get private care, that's when I decided to bite the bullet and go to the government hospitals. In and out I went, with lots of tests after, I finally settled with the care I'm now going.
Sometime this year, my immune system was compromised really badly and I was admitted to the hospital and my CD4 count dropped drastically to below desirable level, only double digit, or what they would call it, AIDS.
I stayed in hospital for a week, in a quarantined room and visitors have restricted access. I was put on drips, antibiotics, dozens of different drugs and many tests. Tubes of blood were drawn almost every day. It was hell.
I couldn't eat properly, I couldn't drink properly. I vomited and couldn't swallow pills, so they had to pump the drugs through my veins. It was painful but it had to be done. And I was having fever of over 40 degrees, forcing the doctors to make a decision that changed my situation.
They switched off the water heater and forced me to take a ice cold shower for 20 minutes under running water and expose to air conditioning. The Chinese believed that you should not shower when you are having fever.
A few days later, I was pretty much stronger and was discharged, but the drugs and tests did not stop there. I underwent follow up treatments and counseling, because the doctors told me I cannot wait any longer.
So after all the tests were done, I was given Combivir and Efavirenz. These two drugs are what's keeping me alive today. While I generally do not have any side effects from Combivir, I was having terrible initial side effects from efavirenz. While the effects has minimize over the months, I am still feeling it.
Apart from taking the HIV med, I am also taking bactrium. 2 pills a day. This keeps my lungs working, and I will need to continue taking it for as long as required.
It's not fun having to make sure medication are always on my side and that they are adequate. And it's open to question whenever you take the med in public or at work.
So there, 5 pills daily. At exactly the same time each day, morning and night. Drop everything you do or eat at that moment the alarm rang, and take med, the continue on whatever is it you are doing.
This post is not meant to scare but it's the reality of how having HIV changed my life. Forever.
Safe sex always. I hope your 20 minutes have been well spent learning how I got to this point today.
Peace out.
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