Vice interview about being Poz

[Guest]

[think before following links] https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wkjp/what-its-like-to-have-hiv-now-2020

 

I hope these queens know what they are getting into, and can afford the meds.

 

[PhoenixGeoff]

In general, I'd say none of us knows, or knew, or will ever know what we have gotten ourselves into.

I thought I knew what to expect.  I didn't.

I thought I'd gotten a handle on it.  I hadn't.

I've lived with it now almost twenty years.  I find myself losing that war of attrition.  I'm tired beyond words.  Very, very tired.  And I've no-one left worth living for.

[BootmanLA]

1 hour ago, PhoenixGeoff said:

In general, I'd say none of us knows, or knew, or will ever know what we have gotten ourselves into.

I thought I knew what to expect.  I didn't.

I thought I'd gotten a handle on it.  I hadn't.

I've lived with it now almost twenty years.  I find myself losing that war of attrition.  I'm tired beyond words.  Very, very tired.  And I've no-one left worth living for.

I thanked you for that post because I think it's important that anyone who's chasing - or even considering chasing - understand that it's not a comfy feather bed life with chocolates on the pillow. Being part of some non-existent "brotherhood" doesn't do squat for you.

And it's not, as you've noted, a relentless grind of bad things happening to you. For the most part, with enough resources and fortitude, it's all manageable, more or less, until it isn't any more.

Triple-drug cocktails in a single (expensive) pill have been around for not quite 20 years. Thus far, broadly speaking, prognoses are good. But some of the earliest drugs have proven to have long-term toxic effects on the human body. The newest drugs, not so much, but then we have far shorter experience with them.

And so far, it appears that the best of these drugs show no signs of becoming ineffective over the time they've been in use. There's no guarantee, though, that things will stay that way. What if we find out that these drugs work for, say, 30 years and then the virus manages to overcome them, after 30 years of hiding deep in the body where the drugs can't reach the virus? We assume that, of course, drugs will continue to advance, but for how long?