spacemunkee3

To Bos and NiceHard1 and RawTop: Whoa! Bos, I was NOT judging you. YOU SAID, "as well as the opinions that agree and disagree with me." So were you seeking sympathy or truth? I admit I made an incorrect assumption about your HIV status, however your profile states that you're a "Don't Ask. Don't Tell" sort. Forgive me, but usually that response is indicative of dudes who are either HIV+, or don't know or care about their status, hence my assumption. “I choose to be proactive with my sexual health, and I do my best to keep myself and my partners safe.” As we all should be. Fantastic! I was only being “proactive” and offering some helpful advice about herpes, given that it is the most common STD in the United States. Glad you don’t have herpes. You said originally your nurse was "terse" (abrupt, concise and clipped), but now you say she was actually, “rude” (impolite, vulgar and disrespectful). So which is it, Bos? You admitted that, “The eyes at the clinic for treatment SEEMED more judgmental; the nurse was terse when administering my treatment; I FELT like every person I interacted with was disgusted by me, and I was disgusted by myself.” But now you say she was downright “rude” to you? Of course, no health provider has the right to treat you rudely and I would never condone such behavior. My only motive in responding to you the way I did was to be blatantly honest about the viewpoint from the clinical side; many times it’s the patient’s mis-perceptions of a health care worker's detached persona. Maybe, the nurse/tech had just come from interacting with a patient with Hep C and HIV, or HIV and neuro-Syphilis, who isn't responding to therapy and the prognosis is grim... that was the sum my point. You’re a very passive/aggressive person, but that is a common trait with guilt. I never called you an “idiot” or “stupid”. Those were your own words to describe how you perceived yourself. I’m an HIV+. I am not ashamed. I’ve had gonorrhea and chlamydia before myself. “I am tired and sore all the time, and I now realize that this is it for me. As much fun as barebacking is, this pain isn't worth it. It's not…. To anyone that disregards this, I understand. I'm not preaching, but I also figured this could open someone's eyes as to the real consequences of barebacking.” Bos, I think you’re totally wrong and overreacting, but hey, it’s your life. I Love to bareback. I hate condoms. I know the risks and I accept them. Hell, unlike you, I’m fixed with one of those STDs for life. Bos, you were “preaching” and I’m sorry, but you’re the one “judging”, not me. Bos, your post was personal, and I responded personally and honestly. I don’t need you to ‘open my eyes’, and perhaps you are the one requiring the education, given your shock, shame and dismay at catching "curable" ailments. “Why are you even on this site? Who are you, and why are you trolling around? You're rude, you're unprofessional, and you've clearly got some issues. Reconsider your life. I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm young, I'm smart, and I don't need internet trolls making blanket assumptions and being assholes. Do everyone a favor and sit and spin...bareback...on a poz dick.”(Bos’s email response to me) I regret that you feel that way, and you’ve taken everything I’ve said out of context, and forgive me, but you don’t sound, “happy”, you sound afraid. I hope that you can overcome that fear someday, and I truly do hope that you successfully recover from your ailments, as I stated previously... guess you missed that part. True, one of my many "issues" is that the painful and ugly side of STIs goes ignored by many barebackers, who prefer to remain ignorant, therefore creating greater risks to all of us who do bareback, especially the dangers and reality of STI coinfections with HIV. Depending on provider advice, geographical location, patient demographics and sexual behavior, many providers have advised sexually active gay men with multiple partners to be screened for STIs “every 3-6 months”. This was especially true at the height of the HIV pandemic. I applaud every sexually active gay man to be truly proactive about STI testing. Many metro areas (and more liberal states) offer easy and free access to STI testing, but in many areas of the country, the patient must go a private provider or a county health department, and still have to pay the country to get tested. Also, the ailing economy has caused many public health services to cut back on community outreach programs. But every 90-days?!!! WOW! Sorry, but in my opinion, that’s kind of too frequent. In my state, and many other states, HIV/syphilis/hepatitis carriers are monitored aggressively by the public health department, up to an including mandated interviews with the patient and their sexual partners, surveillance of their online activities, and workplace/home visits by infective disease investigators.

FROM THE HEALTH PROVIDER STANDPOINT: Bos, I take it that you are also HIV+, given that you seek medical attention for "routine" STD checkups "every three months"? As a former health care provider for many years, your perception that your nurse/tech is "disgusted" with you, may be your own shame displaced. Sorry, but having to get tested for STDs "every three months" as "routine" would cause me to be very disappointed and afraid with a patient's behavior, especially if the patient was already HIV+. What ends up happening is a very uncomfortable situation for the medical support staff, because we aren't physicians, we cannot give medical advice or opinions. Oftentimes, myself included, the nurse/tech will adopt a purely detached approach to the patient, which can be misinterpreted as meanness or non-empathetic behavior. What else can we do? Try not to judge the support staff too harshly; what you should be most concerned with is your medical doctor's opinions, bed-side manner and advice. That being said, if your physician, or a counselor where you receive treatment, has not been blatantly honest, directly warning you about the dangers of your sexual behavior, that would bother me most of all. In many HIV+ men (or others with compromised immune systems), Syphilis never clears the bloodstream, just waiting till your numbers drop low enough to enter your brain and kill you. Antibiotics work with our immune systems to treat bacterial infections, but without the support of a (semi) healthy immune system, antibiotic therapy becomes hopelessly noneffective. And EVERYTIME you get sick, your immune system kicks in to produce more T-cells, which is more factories for HIV to reproduce in, and your viral load skyrockets... it's literally a Catch-22. Hopefully, you're avoid IV meth users/slammers/people who fuck slammers bb/and don't slam yourself, or your chances of contracting Hepatitis C increase exponentially. If you think those antibiotic shots are painful with bad side effects, try PEG-interferon.... IF it works at all. :-( I'm not trying to scare you, but oftentimes the internet and online sex sites just don't show the reality of illnesses that can result from BB sex and HIV coinfections. As one dude above pointed out, he'd been carrying Syphilis for four months, but still had BB sex with other people, knowing he was possibly carrying the treponema and could possibly transmit it to others... even if the risk was slight (I'm just sayin'... no judgement... and hence why I don't do bath houses). Mitigating the risk, as advised above, is the best advice, and that is just some common sense looking before you leap, asking questions (especially about drug habits... methheads will brag!), and finding a select group of BB fuckbuds you trust. BTW... sounds like you might have some herpes going on there from the symptoms you describe. Ask your doc to perform an HSV I/II IgG/IgM blood test. And I hope you're feeling better soon.

Other hot, n-shape guys in my general area looking to give, take or swap loads?

Raleigh area here. ;-) Me and my m8s would enjoy hosting you on weekend.

Bobbie: there are some really top-notch and fantastic hospitals and doctors here in the United States. I might add to your statements that the United States is home to some of the very best schools of medicine and we are a very innovative leader in high-tech health care, pharma, medical R&D and medical machines. And there are some really generous hospitals, organizations, doctors and corporations who give away millions-of-dollars of free health care every year to people who couldn't afford it otherwise. BUT, the Canadians coming here to have elective procedures example is NOT an example of what we're doing right, but what American health care does wrong. Canada operates on a need-based, priority basis where non-life-threatening/non-acute/elective ailments are rationed secondary to more serious, life-threatening ailments. This does not mean that Canadians who have been deemed "elective" will never get care, but they will be placed on a waiting list. Now, IF certain Canadians have enough money, they can come to the United States and pay a doctor or hospital to treat them sooner at their convenience. Because here in the United States, health care is not a human right for all citizens, like in Canada. Health care in the USA is like any other product (car, house, boat) to be sold to any buyer, at whatever price the seller thinks is reasonable.The sad thing is that whereas Canada rations health care based on need, America rations health care based on the patient's ability to pay. So, in your example, there will always be a poor working American who is under-insured or uninsured, with the same ailment as the Canadian patient, and he/she will NEVER be eligible to have their elective suffering relieved, until they can pay for it. And also true, Americans enjoy some very advanced critical care expertise and high-tech life saving techniques, but they come with a very high price. We live in the only nation, where a patient can be severely injured, die, and be brought back to life and even have severed limbs replaced, only to lose their home, vehicles and any monetary savings... becoming homeless on the street... just to pay for that critical care. But plenty of rich foreigners come here to take advantage of our advanced health care system and even pay in advance. I've personally witnessed wealthy Middle Easterners rent (via sizable donation to the hospital) entire hospital floors for the care for one foreign person with a critical diagnosis. But what about all the Americans that had ailments, even serious conditions, that probably needed those hospital beds, you may ask? Tough. This is America. Money talks and bullshit walks.... even in health care. We can do better.

I don't think so. RomneyCare (that Mitt passed in MA) is exactly the same as ObamaCare, and Romney's denial of that is going to backlash. True, this will radicalize the GOP Tea Party base, but they were already radicalized and anti-Obama. The key deciders will be Independent voters in swing states, and if there's one thing that turns off Independent voters more than any health care mandate, it's radical extremists. And let's understand a fundamental point: Obamacare is nowhere near any kind of "socialist" ideology. It's just the opposite. It actually enhances and subsidizes corporate participation in health care, but makes those corporate entities more responsible to the patients and insureds that they cover. True, most Americans are opposed to the individual mandate contained in the AFA, but only because they have been misinformed with inflammatory rhetoric about how it will work. The majority of Americans fully support the more important and bigger parts of Obamacare: ending pre-existing condition clauses, kids covered until age 26 if in college, and Medicaid expansion for the working poor.... all of which Romney opposed, until just two days ago.

No country has the perfect health care system. Healthcare is human. It's going to be flawed just like all the people who participate in it, which is everyone, eventually. Waste and abuse is going to be common. Currently health care in America is profit driven. If you have lots of money and/or the best insurance, you get superior care. If not, you suffer, or worse, you die. The AFA is only a first step, designed to neuter just one dominating faction of the US health care cluster-fuck: Big Insurance (companies who are just as greedy and power-hungry as Big Oil). The "US Health Care System" is a myth. What we have is a conundrum of here-and-there regulations combined with Big Insurance dominating the US health care landscape with competing contracts with regional health care providers and doctors. Currently tens-of-thousands of US citizens (yes, full citizens) die every year due to preventable illnesses from lack of affordable access to health care. We have a system where uninsured Americans are charged full-price for services they could never afford, simply because they are not insured (remember those contracts... the "allowed amount" on your EOB). Americans pay more for health care than any other industrialized country and our custom of expensive, employer-based health plans make American products that much more expensive in the global marketplace. The AFA is the first comprehensive health care reform we've had in the US since Ronald Reagan legislated DRGs and CPT coding in the 1980s, effectively giving county-owned hospitals the authority to become their own little corporations. As for Barebacking and the AFA.... LOL... I don't know. What I do know is that back in 2004/2005, when President Bush attached renewal of the Ryan White Care Act (funding for HIV/AIDS meds and treatment for the poor and uninsured) to the Iraq War spending bill, the political debate in Congress delayed states getting funding, and people on HAART waiting lists died needlessly, not because they had reached the end of HAART regime possibilities, but simply because the money wasn't there to even put them on HAART to begin with. I applaud President Obama for actually "caring"... Obamacare, and I regret that Big Insurance spent billions of dollars flaming misinformation and fear about the Act and divisive partisan politics. Before you go assuming what's in the AFA, or believing chain email fear-mongering, I challenge people to read what's in it. It's not perfect and doesn't address all the issues (controlling costs), but it has the backing of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Association of Retired Persons, and every single HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention program in the United States... that says a lot.

Congrats! Nothing like fucking the way we were meant to fuck... raw!

Poz and proud here, but it's no cakewalk. My housemate is 25 and poz since 20 (not by choice), and it's affected his life in every way from not being able to move out-of-state (meds are Ryan White and funding doesn't transfer), finding a new job (health insurance... pre-existing condition), to being able to afford housing. Other than that, he's a hot otter-boy cum lovin slut that I love swappin cream with! But he pays his own way in life. If you're still living at home with your parents and you test poz and need meds, without insurance, the state/federal forms require you report ALL household income (ie... parents too) to assess your responsibility. You will have to tell your parents and then risk becoming an economic burden. You're young and your hot pig ass tendencies will always be there. Like the other dudes advised, be patient till you become independent and financially stable.