Cathedral City, California
Positive since 1987

For a guy not exactly genetically blessed, raised humbly in a cloud of secondhand cigarette smoke, a lofty goal like being muscular seemed totally impossible, nothing more than a pipe dream. At age 50, a devastating HIV-related health crisis nearly clinched the deal forever.

I was Indiana-born, corn-fed and raised and schooled in everything but physical fitness or nutrition. My passion for bodybuilding was there all along; the actual process just got a late start. Weight-training and smart fueling eventually turned into a career tool and a motivating, life-sustaining, life-affirming force. I call weight-training “my visceral glue.”

In the late ’90s I stubbornly refused the new nuke modality of HIV treatments. I lacked confidence in their efficacy while trying every other alternative to no avail. Personal losses heaped upon professional misfortunes. I had three eye surgeries, my hearing was failing and I was having problems with vertigo—plus my usual keen rationality lost its edge. The talons of depression sank in and took their toll. I’m not proud to admit it, but at one point I really just gave up.

I wasn’t answering emails or the phone or knocks on the door. A buddy sat me up and tried to get me to drink or eat. I kept falling back, unable to sit up on my own. Wow. Then my friend scooped me into an ambulance, semi-conscious, emaciated, blurry-eyed and dehydrated. Death was in the crosshairs. I was not cognizant but I was cooperative—not that I remember any of it.

Two hospitals and four months later, I began to gradually resurface. My mind was a dense fog with only sound bytes and a few flash frames of visuals about where I’d been with nothing to cement them together. A sweet swishy nurse was watching my progress and gave me the lowdown. It was a painful truth but it got my head in gear. I read my medical records as inflight entertainment en route to Denver to live with my Mom. Per my advance directives, I was put on an HIV two-drug protocol plus Neurontin via California’s MediCal convalescent care; they saved my butt!

Eating was my favorite thing back then in the convalescent home—and the only thing I was good for. I craved hot cereal and seconds if I could get it. In between chatting ineptly with a few regular chums, someone always delivered medication doses in-person; nursing interns periodically lifted me out my wheelchair to change my dirty diapers and towel-bathe me. I was so out of it. I grew a big ol’ mustache because they wouldn’t allow harmful things like razors.

Things progressed pedantically through the summer. I learned new dimensions of patience as I slowly regained more memory bytes and more cognitive synapses firing in the right sequences. I hated all of it—how I let this happen, where I’d wound up—but I had few options.

I was offered very little physical exercise unless I asked; drugs were the main treatment modality. I knew drugs alone would stall real physical and mental repair so I helped things along in the nursing home by asking for extra physical therapy (PT). I also read everything in sight and helped other “inmates,” which earned the staff’s trust so I could stretch and train unattended in the PT room. In the room were hip-high parallel bars, a rusty cable machine and a raised padded platform for yoga and stretching.

When I realized it was available, I insisted on regular morning walks around the block (staff-attended, per the rules), upgraded to a walker. I knew I should ramp up my program a bit more so I schemed scenarios where I could shamelessly demonstrate my mental progress, making sure a staffer was within earshot. I tried to grease the lethargic wheels of the eventual release process. It was such a depressing place to be. I needed out of there as soon as humanly possible if I was going to have any chance of fully recuperating, of getting back into the real world and on with my new self.

If I was aware of anything remotely life-altering in the convalescent home, it was that I was reincarnated. I was actually given a chance to start over. I got what I asked for. Wow!

Flash forward: I owe my recovery to several factors. First and foremost, the support of family and friends, even strangers when they heard my story. It was also due to the fact that I ate well before, during and after my health trauma and largely because I was proactive in my healthcare throughout the experience. Part of the latter came about serendipitously—I found a book called Built to Survive, by Michael Mooney and Nelson Vergel, which delineated complementary treatments for HIV/AIDS. It included information on judicious, monitored, prescribed use of anabolic steroids to prevent AIDS wasting and facial wasting, as well other alternative treatments and a lot of savvy nutritional advice.

For decades I weighed 155 pounds—nothing I tried or did changed that by more than a few pounds one way or the other. I certainly wasn’t able to lift anything heavy or begin to think of physique competing.

When I returned to California, I settled into the healthcare system and found a doctor who was HIV-savvy and also a bodybuilder. He was HIV-positive too; I knew somehow all this was meant to transpire.

I asked him specifically about combing low-dose anabolics with the HIV medications du jour. The anabolics were part of my prescription plan. The right steroids used properly, cycled and regularly monitored, can be very helpful for some HIV-positive people. I am one of them and have no regrets whatsoever.

Within a month of weekly injections of testosterone and nandrolone decanoate, I gained 15 pounds, mostly muscle. I trained harder and ate even smarter. I approved of what I saw in the mirror; I felt amazingly better, more vital, and my self-esteem soared. My spirit rectified. I felt healthy and happy and sexual again. My HIV lab results confirmed that these often-abused controlled substances were helping my general health and stability as well.

I continue the regimen. I weigh generally 180 pounds and train for five or six days and then rest for one or two days. I get told I look better than a lot of 30-year-olds. That’s scary, but of course, very flattering. I must be doing something right, huh?

It took five years of focus, resolve, big attitude shifts, hard work, and lots of patience and diplomacy, but I willed myself stronger, more vital and more muscular. If I am a medical-miracle personage, I hope at the very least that I testify to self-advocacy and aggressive proactive nutrition. I just want to share my zeal with the world.

There is hope if you study unfiltered resources, keep active mentally and physically, and fuel right!

What three adjectives best describe you?
Resilient (I bounce back whenever a sky full of crap lands in my lap). Patient (Though I’m really very impatient when it comes to ineptitude). Proactive (Carry the whole you heap onto your shoulder).

What is your greatest achievement?
Developing an HIV nutrition program

What is your greatest regret?
Not believing my self-worth until midlife

What keeps you up at night?
It used be Sustiva nightmares, but now it’s my bladder. I’ve totally mastered the art of cat-napping though.

If you could change one thing about living with HIV, what would it be?
The subtle but insidious toll the medications take on the body. That’s why I eat and supplement as smart as I can.

What is the best advice you ever received?
Trust your gut. If you venture forth with a pure heart and humane spirit, the universe will show you avenues your never imagined.

What person in the HIV/AIDS community do you most admire?
Almost anyone who survived the early years of AZT-laden treatments. I’m still saddened by all the loss, but heartened by our sheer longevity now. Don’t get me started on side effects.

What drives you to do what you do?
I’ve been a late bloomer in almost everything. So it’s not surprise I still hope for another Mr. Right.

What is your motto?
To thine own self be true.

If you had to evacuate your house immediately, what is the one thing you would grab on the way out?
Living in Palm Springs, I rehearse the answer often: I’d grab the nearest cat and head into the garage and car.

If you could be any animal, what would you be? And why?
A lion. They have it made. All these felines do all the hunting and birthing. Rex just lazed around until he has to defend his pride.