ErosWired

I got AIDS from barebacking. Not just HIV - AIDS. As in, I didn't just get the unstoppable, irremovable virus in my body, it actually had time to eat me alive. HIV destroyed my body's ability to defend itself from disease, an ability that it had developed over the course of my entire life. By the time the doctors diagnosed me, every random bacterium, virus, and fungal spore had an odds-on chance of killing me. Some of them tried. Pneumonia, fungal meningitis. The latter almost finished me off by causing two small strokes in my brain. I would have died, too, if I hadn't been lucky enough to have a complete Circle of Willis - a circular path of blood vessels in the brain - that kept enough blood flowing to the blocked area to keep me alive. Even after I pulled through and started ART, I got an onset of molluscum contagiosum around my cock and balls - normally this is easily resisted, but it took months to clear. Then an old friend returned from childhood: chicken pox, in the form of shingles, activated because my immune system started to recover. That was misery squared for about three weeks. My CD4 count inched up slooooooowly, and I had to take prophylactic doses of antifungals and antibiotics until the count reached around 200. It's now around 300 after three years, where it ought to be at least 500, and it may never get that high again. I started on Atripla, then Triumeq, and now Genvoya. Every. Single. Day. Atripla sucked because it had to be taken at the same time each day, coordinated with meals, so there were times when I could, and could not, eat. It also made me gain weight, and shifted that weight to unattractive areas of my body. It has taken a long time, a complete change in my lifestyle, and a heartbreaking change of diet to alter that. Most recently, my doctor informed me that, as a result of my medication, I have developed a low-grade case of diabetes. Yep, you heard that right - meds-induced diabetes. Why am I bringing all this up? Because these are the consequences. I'm alive. I'm relatively healthy. I'm not sick, my viral load is undetectable, my chance of infecting someone else with HIV is very, very low, and my chance of getting another opportunistic infection is also very low as long as I take my HIV meds daily. But that doesn't mean I don't have to pay a price for my barebacking. From now on, I have to live very carefully. Until science catches up with this enemy virus, I have to live with diabetes. I have to watch what I eat, knowing that badly prepared food could do far worse than give me a bellyache. I have to work extra hard to keep my body from changing shape into something I don't want to look at. And I have to live with the understanding that my life expectancy, even with these miracle meds, is my mid-70s. That's at least 10 years less than I should have had. Now, I never particularly wanted to live to be an 80-year-old, so that's no great loss for me, but in a general sense, is the feeling of a raw cock up your ass worth ten years of your life? I can't answer that for you, because I can't answer that for me. Even after everything I've said above, I'm still not sorry for the day I took 34 loads in my ass. I wish I could do it again tomorrow, and the day after that. Being that kind of bottom completes me. I've accepted that part of the reason I'm here is to serve other men in just that way, and it gives me great joy every time a man experiences his climax inside me. I feel as though what I lose in quantity of life I perhaps gain in quality of life at that moment. I only wish I had more opportunity to give. But maybe that's what these HIV meds do, after all - not more opportunity to give the virus, but to give ourselves.

I got tested regularly at six-month intervals, not including the times when my doctor had me tested for cause because he knew that I had sex with men. I never had a re-test for a negative result, however, so none of he negative results were ever suspect. I just had a run of very, very bad luck as far as the test results. In hindsight, there were other clues that the doctor *should* have seen, like low B12 levels and other markers, that should have pointed to HIV infection, but he's a GP without a great deal of experience in HIV diagnosis and simply didn't connect the dots.

Positive and on meds since September 2014. Undetectable for over a year, haven't missed a single dose of meds in three years. Guys said I was a 'power bottom' before, no reason not to be one now. I'm not a chaser, though - not looking to get *superinfected*. :b

Undetectable does not equal Negative. It simply means that the viral load is extremely low, radically reducing the risk of infection. If you're on PReP, you have an added margin of safety, but wherever the virus exists, there is risk. I've been undetectable for over a year, but I will only bottom now because topping is a higher-risk activity, and... well, I was born to bottom anyway.

I had a sphincterectomy also, and I would emphasize - be patient - give it enough time to heal! I was a little too eager, and jumped back in the saddle (or, kind of, was the saddle) a little too soon, and it set my recovery back a while. No more fissure problems now, though. Also, be sure to regulate your diet to keep enough fiber moving through you, and make sure you always get enough water. It's very important.

In July 2011 I got pneumonia. No big deal; I went to the doctor, got treated. The odd thing was, the next month I got it again. My doctor said, "Nobody gets pneumonia twice." But he treated me anyway and sent me home. Later in August I got a cracking headache, worst I've ever had. My brother had to take me to the emergency room, but they sent me back home. By the next day, I was at the doctor again, and an astute nurse spotted the signs of possible meningitis. Back to the hospital. Long story short, by early September I had been diagnosed with fungal meningitis, and had nearly died from two small strokes related to it. I lay in my hospital bed and one morning a small United Nations of doctors from different nationalities lined up by my bedside and delivered their verdict. "You have AIDS." "What?" "You have AIDS." "Are you saying I have HIV?" "No, AIDS." (The guy didn't pull any punches.) My C4 count stood at 49. My new infectious disease specialist put me on ART immediately. I've been on Atripla, Triumeq, and now Genvoya. I've had shingles, and watched my body shape change as a result of the meds, and have had to change my lifestyle because the meds have given me a case of med-induced diabetes. Many things about all this suck ass, and not in a good way. I tried to figure out how this could have happened - I had gotten tested regularly. My tests had been negative. There had been no indication at all that I had had HIV in my system that could have turned into AIDS. I had been careful. But not careful enough. I knew that. I had no idea who had given me this, and would never have any way of knowing. There had been too many men. The most likely time had been the day I took 34 loads in my ass, probably without a single condom; there was no way of knowing. There had been other times, many other times, but every time I had been tested, the tests had resulted in negatives. Not all of these were over-the-counter tests, either. Two years earlier, my doctor had hospitalized me for a mystery illness that he chalked up to some unnamed virus that came and went. At the time he gave me a full-bore HIV test, which came back negative. Yet I'm now certain that that "mystery illness" was my seroconversion. I quizzed my doctor later: How could this have happened? I had been under his care for years - how could HIV have flown under his radar long enough to have turned into AIDS and nearly kill me without his seeing it? He explained that the problem with modern HIV testing isn't just false positives, but also false negatives. The truth is, the science just isn't good enough yet to give us certainty in diagnosis. I was just unlucky as I could possibly be. On the other hand, I was as lucky as I could possibly be. I survived. I've now been undetectable for over a year, and have not missed a single dose of medication since I began three years ago. My cell count is now at 300, which is not too bad for someone my age, and it may improve. I don't hold any bad feeling toward the man who gave me HIV. I hope he discovered his infection soon enough to be treated before it wrecked his immune system. In honesty, I can't say that I regret the behavior that resulted in this, because the day I took 34 loads was a highlight of my sexual life. I would do it again in a moment. What I will never, ever do again is top anyone. I will put no one at risk. I will not be the one who passes this down the line. This blog is called News From The Front Lines because we are at war with an Enemy, and I am committed to fighting that enemy inside my body, and in the world outside. I will use my words, and I will use my body as the means to fight, and if I can prevent even one person from ending up where I am now, then I will have justified my survival where so many others have died. More dispatches to follow.

I have one nephew who is very much out. His brother is totally straight and married, but completely stands up for his gay brother. The whole family does, which is something in Kentucky.