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Sorry to hear you are going through such a rough time. Hang in there!
Thanks for the comment on my bod. Yes, even I know, it is hot (and therefore by some magical extension so am I....hope that satisfies everyone taking pot shots at me the past few blogs or (at the very least) provides them with more ammo.) But I feel like a magician about to reveal how a trick is done. Sometimes when I write about me it is really a way for me to write about the disease. I try to normalize it by personalizing it. Also, by way up of update my blood pressure is a swimmingly 120/68 on three antihypertensives. So the message may be it does not matter how "hot" or good you look or how much muscle you have diseases lurk in the hidden spaces of our bodies and minds. I will be 55 next birthday and look 40. BUT I have to be mindful that clock ticks and impact of age takes its toll no matter what the external package looks like. It is a concept I try like hell to get across to patients. I mean, think about it. How many of us refused any notion of antiretroviral therapy because we looked and felt good despite knowing our numbers were shit? I know did. I imagine many of my poz brothers and sisters have (and are) done the same.
I forgot to say, "DOOOOD, 190 over 130 is very dangerous." I know you know that but the provider inside me had to come back and write that. One more thing. I downloaded the picture of you, Richard, in overalls, with the commando glimpse of naked inguinum peaking out. That is a hot, hot picture. Fuck the lipoatrophy, I am amazed you can still look that good for all the griping you do about your deteriorating looks (smiling). Bette Davis said (after the stroke) on the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson asked her a question: "getting old ain't for no sissies".
“Remember writing is easy all you do is "open a vein" and bleed on paper.” I recently told a writer’s blog that I write to find out what is inside, or what what-is-inside means after I get it out, and sometimes I find out what I know, or learn what I should know, get at or get out. I am working on my first book also, ‘Missing Bliss’. But it IS a little like bleeding without applying pressure to the wound when sutures are required and I have been taking coumadin. Roman patricians used to open their veins the “right” way and submerse themselves into a tub of warm water, with a glass of WINE (okay okay, I am in recovery toooo, my name is Renzo and I am an addict, my clean date is ...) to make the blood flow faster. It was a peaceful death in a very very cruel world of almost unlimited violence, warfare and disease. I have a sixteen year old afghan hound bitch named L.G. [for “little girl”]. She has been with me almost every day for fifteen years. She was the mother of my puppies, has multiple medical problems, but won’t lay down and die, in spite of her very advanced age. The puppies she whelped, nursed and trained were the number one joy of my life so far... I also live with my mother who at eighty four just lost her third husband last year, and she was with him at his last as she was with the first two. Then I diagnosed her Parkinson’s (and waited a year for her primary care doc to catch up – after I told him the diagnosis). The Parkinson’s causes such stiffness and difficulty moving that without the meds she becomes a statue. She had to discontinue the most helpful med (sinemet) because of vomiting (with a capital V). While she was off it, she didn’t leave the dining room table for two weeks (except to pee, sleep and get more scotch, which she sipped, constantly, out of a teacup with ice) crying on and off. Finally, I sat down at the table with her after trying to hide from the obvious problem in my wing of the house. She told me how miserable she felt. She didn’t want to go on. She couldn’t “do” anything, and life was awful. She had pain, stiffness, couldn’t move, didn’t have any more hope at all, no friends left....... Many of you who read this blog could probably fill in the dots. I spoke, maybe too matter of factly, or too bluntly for it to sound therapeutic here and to this crowd of sympathy junkies (lighten up, I am a professional at this)(besides – it’s a joke). I said, I know you are miserable, but look at L.G. – she has arthritis of the spine, she is deaf (completely), partly blind, demented, anxious, in pain, hypothyroid (and HATES taking the pills), losing weight in spite of being very hungry and can’t remember what she is doing while she is trying to eat her food (which I cook fresh every day). But, mom, she climbs up the stairs every morning without fail. Every morning. Without fail. Sometimes she falls, sometimes it takes her half an hour at the bottom to think it over. She climbs the stairs every morning. So, mom, the important think is to climb the stairs every morning. Accept the pain and stiffness. Breath deep. Think of something else. But climb the stairs every morning. We went back to the the neurologist, and now she is back on meds, drinking less and being somewhat normal. I suggest mindfulness. Thich Nhat Hanh and one hundred and seventy others have written books about it. It is the basis of Buddha’s message from three thousand years ago (it is that simple). Type it into Amazon, and buy one book (a good one is best). It changes my life a little more each day. Finally, I named the puppies after ten major Sanskrit (Hindu) virtues, and the puppy who stayed with LG and me is named Bliss (Aananda Devashunii or Bliss of the Heavenly Hounds). She is the star of “Missing Bliss”.
Sean, I remain humbled by your comments and the very fact that you read my blog. So many people read, but fail to let me know they feel - good, bad, or indifferent. You have been a pioneer in HIV journalism and your comment (and those of many others) keeps me writing...even when it is hard and I have to duck a few (sometimes more than a few) bricks. I mean what the hell really. My next door neighbor for many years use to lob snowballs at my head when he read my pieces whether he liked them or not. So if I can take a ball of cold ice on my noggin by Norman Mailer a few rotten tomatoes aiming at me is just fine. After all this is life with HIV...like it or not. R
Richard, I hope some of that unwanted pressure gets relieved by both your posts, which are moving, and the responses, many of which are incredibly eloquent. You have described a feeling that is familiar to many of us who have survived with this disease for so long. I hope some of the supportive comments posted remind you of the hope and inspiration people with HIV have gotten from each other since the first days of the epidemic. Hang in there, pal.
Richard, I will pray for you to find love and a love that is real, trust worry and everlasting to heal your heart. I pray for your heart to be open to find that perfect healer and engery givier in your life were you can keep giving and recieving the energy of life.
Mulberry Bayswater
Sorry to hear about that.Hope everything will be fine.
January 17, 2011