More Labs! Woohoo!



When I was diagnosed with HIV I knew things would be different. I knew there would be so many changes in my life, from the serious to the mundane. An HIV diagnosis in 2007 was treated very differently than it is today. Back then the clinical thinking was to delay meds until it was clinically necessary, meaning until the accumulative degradation of your health due to HIV had decreased so much that meds were the last resort. Basically you got sicker and sicker until meds were necessary to save your life. My t-cell count was almost to the point of an AIDS diagnosis before I began meds. I literally threatened suicide to get my doctor to put me on meds. Of course, at the time I had 4 different infections happening concurrently so my threat back then was not idle by any means.

Today that has changed. Now the clinical guidelines are such that a person goes on meds as soon as they receive an HIV diagnosis. This is critical for many reasons, some of which were only recently discovered within the last few years.

HIV attacks your immune system; even people with the most basic understanding of HIV know this much. But HIV also attacks your gastrointestinal tract, causing irreversible and irreparable damage. HIV even changes the very structure of your stomach lining, causing you to not absorb food and nutrients properly and opening up your body to secondary infections that enter through this damaged tissue. Thus you get more stomach bugs, more gastrointestinal issues, malnutrition, leading to a handful of secondary issues. You don’t get enough nutrients so you become weak, lose weight, and get sick more often.

It sucks. It makes a manageable chronic disease become more intrusive on your life than you originally expected. I feel more limited because my body limits me. I try to tell myself it is all in my head and maybe I am making more out of it than it really is, but then….things happen. Things keep happening. Things are getting worse. I can no longer make myself pretend I am making this up in my head. I am afraid. I am terrified of why I am getting worse. I hate how tired and exhausting my life has become. I am tired of feeling like I just got out of a boxing ring, literally. I am tired of throwing up in the mornings in the shower or at the bus stop on the way to work. I hate not being able to make it a full week at work, even when I push myself to get up and go as much as I can.

So yesterday I reached out to my HIV doctor and today I went in for a series of labs so that we can get to the bottom of whatever it is that has me so run down. I don’t feel depressed. I am looking forward to school and that is my goal I am reaching toward. I do feel burned out at work, but that will be over soon, so that hasn’t really gotten me too far down. So I don’t think I am depressed. I am emotionally healthy I think. As much as an asshole can be functional anyway, haha. I should get my lab results in a couple of days and if they show something, great, we can fix it. And if not, we can run more tests. Even as I type this I feel like I could sleep for a week. LIke I should be taking something for the pain, but I think I have hit my max dosage of acetaminophen and naproxen for the week so I don’t dare take anything else. I am rather fond of my kidneys and liver. Lord knows my kidneys are already checking out.

Ok, off to bed I go with my Kitty.

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