Progression experience

[Mkegaymer]

For those that chose not to medicate what has your progression been like with respect to sex, energy, quality of life over time?  Talking with someone considering this path and wanted to get some reality around it.

Quote

 

  On 4/17/2023 at 4:42 PM, Mkegaymer said:

Has any brother chronicled the journey from being pozzed until the end? Say if they didn’t take medication?  What it was like along the way?

 

 

[austin_submale]

1 hour ago, Mkegaymer said:

For those that chose not to medicate what has your progression been like with respect to sex, energy, quality of life over time?  Talking with someone considering this path and wanted to get some reality around it.

Following because I am interested as well...

 

[descartes70817]

I wasn't testing or medicating until I ended up in hospital with PCP pneumonia. In the prior couple of years I had a number of opportunistic infections including constant diarrhea, difficulty swallowing and keeping food down and a prostrate infection. I also found out I had a serious H. Pylori infection in my stomach and a serious bacterial infection in my large intestine and colon. I also found that my ability to fuck to completion went down from 2-3 times a day to once a week if I was lucky, but I kept on fucking until about a week before I was admitted to hospital, where I was told that if I'd tried to sleep it off I probably wouldn't have woken up. I seriously do not recommend allowing your infection to get that far along. If your CD4 cell count drops below 500 get on meds ASAP.

[Mkegaymer]

Thank you for sharing. 

[ErosWired]

You posted this in the sexual health section, not the backroom, so I’ll answer you. On September 14 of this year, I’ll be a nine-year AIDS survivor, that being the anniversary if the day I was released from the hospital where I came as close to dying from HIV as you can without actually doing it. And I’ll start by saying that that does not make me a member of some goddamn “brotherhood” of people who love their disease. HIV is the Enemy.

What was progression like from pozzing until the (damn near) end? Mostly a big suitcase full of nothing to speak of, because I never knew I was positive until it has already progressed to AIDS.

There were signs. My seroconversion illness was severe, and put me in the hospital for a week while they treated my symptoms, but the test for HIV came back false negative, so they assumed it was some nameless virus that I got over, and sent me home. I did not, therefore, begin ART when it could have preserved my immune system. Three years passed, in which I had no clue that I was being eaten alive inside. All I knew was that I was gettin progressively more and more tired during the day at work, to the point that I finally had to start lying down on the floor of my office to regain enough energy to continue. Trips to the doctor showed anemia and drops in B12, which might have raised flags with my GP, had he been more aware of HIV. He wasn’t.

 I did test myself for HIV a couple of times during that period, though there wasn’t a lot if reason to; I wasn’t feeling sexy enough, and didn’t have the energy, to play. The at-home tests I took both reported negative. False negatives.

So it wasn’t until late July of 2014 that it all caved in. I got pneumonia. Then, as soon as I recovered, I got it again. Because I no longer had an immune system. That was followed immediately by fungal meningitis, accompanied by the two small strokes that nearly ended my life, and whose aftermath I still contend with today.

You want to know what the progression is like from pozzing until AIDS ends you? You’re asking the wrong fucking question now that AIDS isn’t a death sentence. The “progression” keeps on progressing once you survive, and it ain’t pretty. It’s meds, and side effects, and body changes, and forced lifestyle changes, and doctors, doctors, needles, needles, and more needless, everlasting test after test, because the Enemy is in you, Sweetcheeks, and they can’t get it out, and it will try to kill you every fucking day you let it.

And the “progression” never feels like progress because every. single. day you get reminded that you have HIV. Every day. Because every single day you have to stop and take a pill to keep yourself from dying. There’s no choice. None. If you choose not to treat the disease, you will die. It’s just a question of how soon, and how miserably.

If you’re looking for someone’s account of how wonderful and transformative it was for them to contract a debilitating, life-twisting and ultimately life-ending ailment,  I think it’s important for you to know just how deeply shitty it actually is.

I stand in solidarity with every survivor fighting the Enemy to stay alive and live some semblance of a normal life. But I am nobody’s “poz brother”. Fuck that noise.

[Qilly55]

1 hour ago, ErosWired said:

You posted this in the sexual health section, not the backroom, so I’ll answer you. On September 14 of this year, I’ll be a nine-year AIDS survivor, that being the anniversary if the day I was released from the hospital where I came as close to dying from HIV as you can without actually doing it. And I’ll start by saying that that does not make me a member of some goddamn “brotherhood” of people who love their disease. HIV is the Enemy.

What was progression like from pozzing until the (damn near) end? Mostly a big suitcase full of nothing to speak of, because I never knew I was positive until it has already progressed to AIDS.

There were signs. My seroconversion illness was severe, and put me in the hospital for a week while they treated my symptoms, but the test for HIV came back false negative, so they assumed it was some nameless virus that I got over, and sent me home. I did not, therefore, begin ART when it could have preserved my immune system. Three years passed, in which I had no clue that I was being eaten alive inside. All I knew was that I was gettin progressively more and more tired during the day at work, to the point that I finally had to start lying down on the floor of my office to regain enough energy to continue. Trips to the doctor showed anemia and drops in B12, which might have raised flags with my GP, had he been more aware of HIV. He wasn’t.

 I did test myself for HIV a couple of times during that period, though there wasn’t a lot if reason to; I wasn’t feeling sexy enough, and didn’t have the energy, to play. The at-home tests I took both reported negative. False negatives.

So it wasn’t until late July of 2014 that it all caved in. I got pneumonia. Then, as soon as I recovered, I got it again. Because I no longer had an immune system. That was followed immediately by fungal meningitis, accompanied by the two small strokes that nearly ended my life, and whose aftermath I still contend with today.

You want to know what the progression is like from pozzing until AIDS ends you? You’re asking the wrong fucking question now that AIDS isn’t a death sentence. The “progression” keeps on progressing once you survive, and it ain’t pretty. It’s meds, and side effects, and body changes, and forced lifestyle changes, and doctors, doctors, needles, needles, and more needless, everlasting test after test, because the Enemy is in you, Sweetcheeks, and they can’t get it out, and it will try to kill you every fucking day you let it.

And the “progression” never feels like progress because every. single. day you get reminded that you have HIV. Every day. Because every single day you have to stop and take a pill to keep yourself from dying. There’s no choice. None. If you choose not to treat the disease, you will die. It’s just a question of how soon, and how miserably.

If you’re looking for someone’s account of how wonderful and transformative it was for them to contract a debilitating, life-twisting and ultimately life-ending ailment,  I think it’s important for you to know just how deeply shitty it actually is.

I stand in solidarity with every survivor fighting the Enemy to stay alive and live some semblance of a normal life. But I am nobody’s “poz brother”. Fuck that noise.

Thank you for saying the truth of this disease 

[NWUSHorny]

I was about to write that people who have gone through the full cycle "don't have internet access in the cemetery," but @ErosWired stated it more eloquently.

Edited May 1, 2023 by NWUSHorny