Woke up bright and early on Thursday and spoke to a class of nursing students at UVa, then Gwenn and I had lunch with our friend, Kristi, Miss Virginia 2005 and future nurse extraordinaire.

Kristi mentioned that a lot of our pageant friends were worried about me, they thought I looked pale. “You did look a little pastey,” Gwenn offered. But that has more to do with my aversion to direct sunlight and less to do with HIV. Still, it reminded me that people I know have concerns about my health, and strangers get the details of how well I’m doing more than friends because of the speaking thing.

It’s not that I’m less than forthcoming with friends, the topic of my health just doesn’t come up. And in that case, with an HIV diagnosis people sometimes take that as a sign that something’s wrong.

After lunch, it was off to see Dr. Greg about the most recent health concern: the bloody wee from a few weeks ago. One of my meds can cause kidney stones, but there’s no way I passed a kidney stone, unless it was a very small one. Since there’s been no sign of blood since, it seems I’m literally and figuratively in the clear.

Which is great; I have no desire to switch meds. From here, the next step is an ultrasound at hematology, just to make sure nothing funky is happening on the inside.

Today’s appointment was interesting because Gwenn was present. It reminded me of the early days, just after we started dating and shortly after I was diagnosed with AIDS. She came to a lot of those early appointments, because she asks more questions than I do; I just crack jokes.

It was a nice reunion. And the appointments these days are more of an ego-stroke- the receptionists love the book, they put me on the phone with a fellow positoid who reads this blog- than a nail-biting review of last visit’s labwork.

Dr. Greg mentioned that one of his son’s friends is doing a book report on me for his English class, and I’m still getting messages from people who are discovering the book, and probably will for many years to come since they are still billions of people whose lives have not been enriched by My Pet Virus.

And this week, I’ve re-sunk my teeth into the vampire book and diving into fictional bloodletting is much better than the reality of dealing with my own blood.

Positively Yours,
Shawn