On Meds?

[Guest cumdrainer4u]

Hi guys I have been reading these discussions for awhile now and truely amazed I do have a HIV fetish for sure ,but scared to go through with it due to my everyday life (family,work ect.) It seems sexually I want and need hard core stuff,but in my everyday life I am laid back and cautious! Those of you that are pozzed are you taking meds and do you ever feel just simply too tired from meds to have sex. I love sex and love to bare but have never knowingly taken a pozz load. Always wondering what it is REALLY like being pozzed. I hope some guys will chat in on this discussion or steer m e to a earilier discussion that I may have missed. Thanks alot

[AlwaysOpen]

I got pozzed when I was 29 or 30, and I am 55 now. (Hell, I may have been poz even earlier than that, but that was the age I was TOLD I had it) I can think of at least two likely sources of it, but not certain of either, and really, does it matter?? I went from diagnosis in 1987 until 1999 without doing meds. A relationship ending after 19 years, the BF dealing with cancer, the "end of the world " Y2K crap at work. It all added up on my stress levels, and I went on meds reluctantly. At the time my T were 45, and the viral load was 84,000. I bounced around some horrible meds, some/one caused me several years of uncontrollable shits, but I am now doing Isentress and Truvada once a day and am undetectable VL, and T cells in the 500 range ( great for me !) I get fisted and always take raw loads, so my re-exposure level is fairly high.

Reality: I do get tired. But then, I work out in the heat of Florida and I am not 20 years old anymore, so when I get home and crash in the recliner, I wonder if it is the bug or the age. And then I mention it at work with the guys I work with ( straight men , most married) and guess what?? They walk in their front doors, hit the shower, and pass out for an hour or two on their beds or in their recliners--- and they have distractions in their homes I don't, like a wife or kids demanding time from them. So I give HIV a pass on that.

If you are taking raw loads, you will eventually have a poz load in you ( you probably have had many already!) Yeah, the guys profile said neg and plan to stay that way, safe only, but didn't he just fuck you raw??? So, what part of his profile do you put stock in?? As far as the allure of getting the bug-- maybe it is the invincibility of youth: do you hop in the car and not click the seatbelt before turning the key too? (Have you ever seen a wreck where someone went halfway through the windshield and then fell back through it into the car again? They knew a seatbelt was a safety item, but gambled. Maybe you hope to get infected, so you no longer have to have that worry on you with each sex partner. I fuck raw all the time, but some of it is out of need. How many neg posters don't even look at a profile if there is poz in it? And in the gay world, I am not the sweet hot young thing I once was- sort of like yesterdays bagel- if there is a choice for a fresh one or one with a little crust and history, well, really now- the fresh is always more appealing.

Expense. OK- so you are neg today. Quit your job, go out and buy your own health insurance. You answer the questions on the form, get the medical exam, and they approve you and you get a good rate - maybe $100 a month. Now, get infected and lose your job due to the recession. Yeah, theres COBRA (really expensive no matter what). So you try for private insurance- the 3rd question- do you have HIV? WHAM!! Either you get rejected outright, or the monthly rate for a bare bones coverage is going to be $500 or more a month. Try being in a job or career, and wanting to make a change- the ghost haunting you will always be whether you can get insurance, or if the new employer will take you with HIV ( the pre employment physical might well turn it up- and most companies have the 90 day opt out clause in their hiring. If they can, they most likely will figure an incident or performance level you failed, and cut ties with you; so you will be trapped at whatever job you have today--forever. Even with a good med plan, you better figure on paying at least a $50 co pay for each med, per month since all the hIV meds are not on any generic lists. So, in my case, I get a three month supply , costing me $200 every three months (buy two months and get one free, per my insurance plan). Thats $800 out of my pocket each year just for meds. And then you need quarterly labs - more cost. And the doctor collects a co-pay to read you the results and check you over for any signs of other issues.

Look- you may well get pozzed, but make your life long plans now. With todays meds, you will live and probably die from other causes, but, once you are bugged, you will lose a lot of the freedoms you can expect today. Sex-wise, yeah, one freedom. Life-wise- well, a lot of doors will close.

Edited September 10, 2011 by Hotload84

[PhoenixGeoff]

AlwaysOpen had a lot of good advice.

I'll second a lot of what he said. Assuming you catch it early on, they probably won't recommend meds for a little bit. I don't suggest doing what AlwaysOpen did and waiting for your T-cells to drop that low. Below 250 or so, you really start opening yourself up to opportunistic infections. Also, treating HIV earlier seems to result in better long-term outcomes, which is why the CDC is currently strongly recommends treatment if you CD4 count (T-cells) drops below 350, and suggests treatment for those with CD4 counts between 350 and 500.

The medications today are considerably easier to take than the way things used to be in the past. Generally speaking, you take three different medications that each target a different part of HIV's lifecycle. Every medication does have its side effects and drawbacks, so it often takes a little experimentation to find the set that works best for you. You really have to work closely with your doctor, especially at the beginning, to figure out what is the best way for you to treat it. Don't be afraid to report side effects that are hard to handle. There are almost always better alternatives.

You do really have to consider what your health insurance situation is if you're American. Your best bet as of right now is to work for a large corporation that will have a big pool of people covered by health insurance. You'll need to plan things out in advance a bit and take full advantage of things like Flexible Spending Accounts. Working for a smaller company (like a small law firm) can be problematic, because health insurance companies can and do pressure smaller companies to fire employees that run up the bills. They're not supposed to do it, but they do.

Your other alternative is to go on some kind of public assistance. If you're living in an urban area, there's almost certainly an HIV/AIDS group that can help with navigating that. But there are income limits and suchlike, which means that if you are working for a smaller company or for yourself, your expenses can skyrocket. A buddy of mine is a contractor who buys his own insurance on the private market. He routinely complains about his premiums getting jacked up by hundreds of dollars per month every time his policy gets renewed. The Healthcare Reform Act is supposed to fix this by stopping insurers from considering pre-existing conditions, but we'll see how that works out.

So life does become more complicated. You have to pay attention to a lot of things that you didn't have to before. Looking at the guys who do well with HIV, they tend to take care of themselves better, including cutting back on drinking (HIV meds tend to be hard on the liver), cutting out recreational drugs (many are very hard on the immune system), eating better, exercising, getting lots of sleep. Basically, all the stuff you know you're supposed to be doing but that few of us actually do.

Does it cut back on the sex drive? Not that I've seen. Yes, many men have declining sex drives once they start aging, but plenty don't. And the guys who get HIV seem to start out with pretty high sex drives in the first place. So I wouldn't worry about that too much. (There are some men with HIV who do get declining testosterone levels for reasons that aren't really all that clear. If you have insurance, they will usually cover testosterone replacement therapy. Basically you inject yourself with it every few weeks).

So yeah: good news is, it's not a death sentence. And you'll continue leading a pretty ordinary life, by whatever standards you use to define "ordinary." Bad news is that if you want it to keep working out that way, you're going to have to be more proactive about your health care, may have to make a few lifestyle changes, and will have greater medical expenses.

Bottom line: I was never much of a "chaser" myself, just really into barebacking and quite a bit of a slut. I've been living with HIV for almost ten years now and can't really say that I've had any real regrets about it.