bearbandit

Tell me about it... I'm writing this from my hospital room where I'm being treated for Fanconi's syndrome caused by tenofovir. It's not pleasant: basically you end up pissing away vital minerals and vitamins instead of them being passed back into the bloodstream. Worst for me has been the lowered potassium levels. As well as the risk of heart arrhythmia, it prevents nerves and brain cells from functioning properly leading to severely distorted thinking. I have massive holes in my memory of the past few months, but I have managed some truly bizarre behaviour and thoughts like thinking that a small pot of yogurt and a litre of fruit juice per day is an adequate diet, buying a new television because I couldn't find the remote control for the TV I already had, accusing social services of stealing from me and so on. I've lost a quarter of my body weight and have to use a walking stick - even then I can't walk more than a couple of hundred yards. As a measure of the change back in March I had no trouble handling my Suzuki Bandit, not the lightest of bikes, at speed on rural Welsh roads. Atazanavir decided to join the party by having a go at my liver. I'm now on a less than ideal combination for HIV and take something like twenty other pills per day, mostly vitamins and minerals. My best guess is that it's going to take me till the end of the year to get back into shape, balancing eating for weight gain against exercising to rebuild the muscle that I've lost. Ironically throughout this my immune numbers have remained good, but the general debility I'm living with makes it even more essential that I maintain HIV therapy. Okay it's a pretty extreme example, especially given the rarity of Fanconi's syndrome, but if my HIV "doctor" (now history) had been paying attention to more than just immune numbers none of this need have happened...

The little fucker is constantly evolving - that's how drug resistance comes about. More work needs to be done with elite controllers: what have they got that the rest of us don't? Similiarly long term non-progressors, who I believe are now defined as needing a fairly basic combination which they can stay on for years without any trace of HIV damage.

Doctor, treatment. A lot of intestinal parasites are self limiting, but if you've any reason to suspect that your system is compromised, you're dangerous to people with lowered immune system, whether the cause is HIV, age, other co-morbidity or what. A person with an average immune system can shrug off cryptosporidiosis in a few days. Damn near killed me... You have a responsibility to yourself, and to those you come into contact with. Brotherhood: we look after one another, or am I being impossibly naive?

I don't care as long as I can see his face. My favourite for ease and simplicity and good views is the old fashioned ankles round his neck. I like sitting on his cock, but often feel that's more about the strength of my thighs: it's a way of putting on a show for a guy. Topping is more problematic: again eye contact, but probably the same positions except if he's sitting on my dick I want the cum to be running out of him (he can lick it up later, meanwhile I get to enjoy fucking in my predecessors' cum - how can you not love a cummy asshole?).

Hate is, unfortunately, a hydra...

Last time I stopped taking my anti-HIV drugs I dropped, on average 75 CD4 cells per month. I had good reason to stop in that the message from the clinics was that no adherence was better than poor adherency and having just had my partner die I couldn't see myself remembering to take each and every dose as prescribed. Five years later I still haven't recovered even half the "lost" CD4 cells. My "baseline" for this was also my all-time record high of 800+ and even I (with a chain of CD4 counts since the test was made available to the general public) was shocked at how my count plummetted.

That 32 year figure had better be wrong: in retrospect, I seroconverted in 1980!

Any minority group needs its hate figures, people who, though members of the same minority group, they can point at with an air of "we're okay, but what those guys do is gross". It's a desperate struggle on their part for acceptance, whereas I think most of us here have the guts to be ourselves and screw what other people think. When I attend meetings or do talks for THT (the UK's main aids service organisation), I deliberately wear my bike gear, partly because I'm too lazy to carry a change of clothes with me, but also because that's me. I tend to be unacceptable to the establishment, I call a spade a fuckin' shovel. I ask the questions that people would prefer weren't asked, and I answer the awkward questions people would sooner avoid. Life isn't all fluffy bunnie-wabbits. I've sat through Gay Switchboard meetings with the knees of my denims leaving no doubt what I'd been up to the night before, and if you were slow enough not to figure that one out then the fresh bruises elsewhere doubtless helped. I had a well-respected member of Switchboard tell me, in front of a room full of people, that she found my sexuality "ugly". That was 30 years ago and I doubt she's changed her mind. I think we've always had those who would sell out the rest in return for a bit of conventional respectability. We've always been out on a limb and some have always wanted to crawl back to the comfort of the main trunk of the tree. I look back at society as a whole and it isn't a pretty sight. Anyone who wants equality with that lot lacks ambition!

GermanFucker - you got my idiot "wow" grin, amazed laughter (did we really do that?) and gratitude for knowing that the prime reason for sex is fun.

If I'm getting fucked and end up pissing myself (especially in time with my tops rhythm) it ain't embarrassing: it's one of the highest compliments I can pay him.

One man's meat is another man's troll... there's a guy I used to be friendly with on another message boaund until he realised I was the same age as his dad. Not a peep from him since - his loss... For myself, I know I'd do me, but only because I met my near exact twin and he was extremely hot. Otherwise, it's a case ofget your ass over here and make up your own mind

Recycle guys! A few bottles of beer can keep you going all day as long as it's a closed system

Assume he's poz and base your decision on that. Just be aware that you're walking through a one way door. As the Germans say "Einmal is keinmal" - "once is nothing", but that doesn't apply here as it can only take once to get knocked up. Are you ready for it? Can you cope with it? Are you prepared for the idea you might be a fast progressor? I'm sorry to impugn your honesty guys, but, until you know a guy really well and feel you can trust him, doubt his honesty. Look after yourself, mate, even if it means missing out on stuff you really want to do. If you need to ask the question, you need to shut the door and do some serious thinking...

A doughnut style steel cockring looks good, but has to go one just before that action start and come off soon after, for an all-day compromise, there's always the stetrchy siicion ring abailable at perv shop woprld wide. My first reaction was "no fuckin way if that going to hold my cock and balls, but it does. and it could take more. They don't have to be worn singly, and are, as the British have unforunately fallen into saying,"cheap as chips". Certainly I could see myself building them into a stretching system...

As bottom I don't care... it's entirely up to the Boss's preferences and I'll be good and do as I'm told (mostly). On the other hand if I'm Top I want to see the look on my boy's face as he cums with my dick up his ass, knowing that within seconds I'm going to be coming right up there...

Just never on a bike in cold weather: you leave with a dick and arrive with a clit. There are few things more embarrassing than what was a nice snug fitting cockring falling our of your jock as you're about to get down to it! (voice of experience)...

If your Boss says you'll do it, you'll do it...

It's also worth getting your blood glucose levels checked out (in the UK most pharmacists will do it for you). Ideally, you need to do it around nine in the morning without having eaten or drunk anything since midnight: a result of between 4 and 7 would rule out diabetes. Diabetes has a nasty habit of destroying the nerves with control getting a hardon which is why the National Health Services will give men with the problem eight Viagra a month, but you have to ask for them. If you're +ve and taking atazanavir you'll probably only get half dose tablets, but there's an interaction between the two which means that the effect of the viagra last up to two days.

Barebacking, like most things in life has its risks: my favourite comparison is biking since I live on a country road that has a high incidence of biker casualties in the warmer months. You're sitting astride a machine that can equal most four wheeled vehicles, except you're not in half a tonne of steel cage: just your leathers to protect. You learn risk assessment pretty fast. I don't overtake on blind bends, nor do I stick my dick up an arse that I suspect might have stage 1 syphilis chancre in it. I might get lucky: I might not. All life is a gamble and if you don't feel confident in your bet, you're probably better off withdrawing it from the table and playing safe. Unless you're sure that you can cope with the downside of a decision you make, stay put...

There's something disappointing about licking down a hairy chest and belly only to encounter raw skin. Shaved balls I can cope with, pretty horny actually, but no more than that. Having both HIV and diabetes I've got a doulble whammy on fungal infections and occasionally it's proved easier just to shave the lot off so the cream can do its work, but I always try and talk my doctor into "overprescribing" pointing out the disadvantages of having to shave. Plus I've got red hair: a few guys have a definite fetish for true redheads, though others say that our crotches smell like (genuine quote) "rats' nests". I've always found more guys interested than put off...

Also, within a healthy mouth there's an enzyme in saliva that can render HIV inert if not dead, hence the paucity of "oral only" infections.

The holiday was several years ago, and besides I use www.myhiv.org.uk to keep track of my numbers now (much less chance of losing them that way.My current VL is consistent with my previous experience. I probably seroconverted in 1980: I was fucking with a number of dutch guys then, all of whom had recent holidays in NYC or SF. Also turned up the the clinic with what in restrospect was fuck flu in 1980, but of course wasn't identified at the time. Finally diagnosed in 87. I acknowledge that horrible mistakes were made in inititial dosings of both the first fournd and the second round of drugs, but at that point we were fighting to live, or to put it more crudely dying to live. I'm left with a number of disabilities from the early drugs, but at least I'm alive to bitch about them. My husband tried interferon as an immune modulator in the hope that an increased CD4 count would enable his own immne system to fight the MAI. Moderately successful. The we moved to another part of the UK where they weren't prepared to precribe interleukin and so got (after a great struggle we were prepared to take our rottweilers amd do a sit in protest at the Senedd in Cardiff to publicise John's case) Proleukin2 which was so hard on his liver that I believe that that's what killed him. I'm fortunate in being in touch with several guys who have done considerable work in pharmacology and know I can always ask them questions about drugs. Be assured that I'm long used to the vagaries of my virus...

Time and again we come back to the evidence that an undetectable viral load is at least the equal of condoms in HIV prevention. The pre-eminence of condoms in HIV prevention I believe dates back to the eighties when there was nothing to be done but to treat opportunistic infections. A different approach was taken with injecting drug users: harm limitation, hence the setting up of needle exchanges. A tacit admission that no HIV prevention campaign was going to keep an injecting user from their fix, so lets make it as safe as possible. I believe we're at a point in our knowledge of HIV drugs that it's time to drop the nanny-state "condoms on, boys, or else" to be dropped in favour of harm reduction. PrEP probably isn't going to be very effective if you're putting it about a lot as you're liable to come across guys whose HIV is resistant to the drugs used, so it's better used for guys in serodiscordant relationship where the +ve guy's viral mutations (if any) are known. In the UK it's reckoned of the 91k of us who have HIV a full 26% don't know that they have it. HIV + no treatment in the vast majority of cases means a high viral load and thus high infectivity. I'd advocate a strong "test and treat" campaign and a return to the days of the seventies when it was routine to have a full STI check-up every three months, except this time including HIV, now that we know it exists. Part of this would have to contain the probably unwelcome message that the only people who know their HIV status for sure are those who have it: a negative test result simply means that no antibodies were found on such-and-such a date (witness the number of guys on BBRT who have on their profiles HepC- as of <date> and want to stay that way). I know from personal experience that if I take a drug holiday my CD4 count will fall by about 75 a month while my viral load climbs. After my last drug holiday I ended up with a massive cryptosporidium infection: explosive diarrhoea four or five times a night is not only not pretty, it's expensive, exhausting and potentially fatal if you don't know how to rehydrate. Even with full adherence the body's response can be chaotic, but I'd still maintain that it's better than the alternative: at my last hospital visit my CD4 had dropped from 460 to 264, though my viral load remained undetectable. Think of the CD4 count as my vulnerability to opportunistic infections and my viral load as your vulnerability to catching HIV from you should I leave a load in your ass. Even though I'll sometimes use the language during sex, I have no wish to pass on my little passenger: the more HIV-unknown guys who test (doing so regularly) and go onto meds if their viral load is looking over the parapet, the safer we can keep barebacking. Don't forget: syphylis used to be a slow killer, now, should it turn up at your quarterly STI checkup it's just a rather painful injection in your glute.