February 5, 2002 - This year started off much better than last year. No news of anyone passing at this point. The trip to FL went off without too much drama. The couple we went down with broke up the day they got back, but that only affected us due to the fact that one is a dear friend and I hope he gets through this as soon as he can because the other one is not worth the grief. It was also good seeing my man's parents again and the new house in Zephyrhills. The weather was darn cold again so we have decided that next year we'll wait a month or two before we go down.

Personally, we are doing fine. I was graced by the visit of one of my favorite cousins and she passed my email address to some others who I have heard from. Feels good to be around them and have their acceptance for some reason. I guess we all are not that lucky, so I feel blessed. The home front is still way stressful as my partner and his sister are still at odds over this house and their nephew living here (what an unpleasant mess!). We are taking every measure to try and get out of here, but with my limited income and he having to make sure his agreements are upheld, it is going to take some time. I will be asking my case manager to see if maybe my Xanax can be refilled to keep my stress level down and hopefully help me not to "blow" at these two while all of this goes on.

I haven't been into the doctor in a while, so there is no news to give you there. The next appointment is March 7th to get some blood drawn and I don't see the doc until April 18th. I can tell you that thanks to a new program here in Michigan, called the Dental Demonstration Project, I was able to get some MUCH needed dental work taken care of including a skin graph to cover a very receded gum line. I am thankful to be here in this state where they try to make sure we are taken care of. I also have no news as far as that grievance I filed a while ago (remember that? It was some time ago wasn't it!) but I have new information about the agency. They were supposed to use some Ryan White funding to pay for some care I received as well as some referrals they made to other places for my care. What I found was that there was never anything done and now I have over $800 listed on my credit report that I know is these charges and another $848 that I need to investigate to see if it is one of theirs as well. I am outraged to say the least and I have retained an attorney to hopefully help me clear this up.

I have taken some time to also reconstruct this site a bit and I hope you don't mind the changes.

July 8 - WOW! A whole season has gone by and I have not updated you at all to the recent changes/hell my life has been through. I'll start off letting you know that things between my husband and I are still OK, in fact even better! We are now proud homeowners and don't live with his sister any longer. She found out that I was HIV+ (how she did not know was beyond me as I did my work from home and was always doing interviews for TV and such...) and proceeded to make our lives a living hell and forced us out of the house. My husband gave up the 15 years of investment on the place that he and his sister were supposed to be splitting and bought a new house for us. That's the short of it as I don't want to bore you with the details, but know one thing. I have lost all respect for this sister and she is not welcome at our house. As far as my husband is concerned, he no longer has sisters as they all became mega-bitches during this phase. I have never understood how ones family can be so ugly towards each other and am feeling totally blessed for those I have. My little sister let us stay in her vacant trailer while we were in transition to our new home and even let us live in her basement for a week when the trailer park told her she couldn't not let us live there anymore. That is family! We're settling in here and hopefully we will prosper here for a long, long time.

My health has held up pretty well through all of this except for a week or so when I had walking pneumonia and felt like the world was ending, but after we got passed the stress of the situation, things settled down and I am feeling pretty good now. The new med (Trizavir) seems to be working well as my counts are looking better. The CD4 has came back up in the 400's and the Viral Load dropped back into the 1000's at the last lab results. I see the doc again in August, so I will update you then to let you know how things are.

I was recently in DC for AIDSWatch 2002 and it looks like it was a successful event. But I am scared as to what the Bush Administration and our current congress has in store for HIV care and prevention here at home. I beg of you, contact your government officials and ask them to adequately fund HIV issues, as we have more and more people becoming infected, and less money to care for them. We need to do more to prevent new infections, with less money to do that. Something has got to change in DC for this to happen, and without your voice telling our officials what needs to be done, they will continue on the dangerous path they are currently on. I never thought I'd be one to become so political, but these are peoples lives they are messing with and it pisses me off!

I was also honored and blessed this past May to once again meet Mr. Cleve Jones, the founder of the NAMES Project Memorial Quilt. He was a speaker at our Task Force's PWA retreat, and I had the chance to spend some time with Cleve, and got to know him. He is a fantastic person and has done so much for the PWA community. I urge you to obtain a copy of his book, "Stitching a Revolution" and find out more about him yourself.

August 22 - Getting settled into a new home takes a while and takes a bit out of you as well. On top of that, we had the mother-in-law here for a month and had to go back to the sisters house to get more stuff from there for their mom. Some day soon, we will get over there and get the rest of his things from there before she looses the place.

Went to see the doc this past week and my osteoarthritis has gotten worse and has spread all through my back. He has me taking Celebrex and it seems to be helping, but I am still having some really bad days and some how I need to convince the doc that it is time to also start some pain management... We'll see about that! Good news it that my CD-4 count is 508, which is the first time it has been that high since my diagnosis in 1986. My viral load has gone back up to 1038, but I am not concerned with that being it is not up into the 10,000's like it was before switching to Trizivir. And being I am dealing with more arthritis, it is possible that can cause the count to be higher. I will start to be concerned if it is higher the next time I get the test done in November.

Things have been fairly well and I have been considering going back to school and getting some computer education under my belt. I have a lot of catching up to do to get back into the work force and I am glad that I have the Rehab services to help me do this. It will take a few years, but I will get there god and health willing!

I can't believe it is the end of summer already and we have only made it to the beach once! Maybe next year we can get there more, as we should be totally settled then and have more time for it. We're looking forward to the upcoming Labor Day weekend and spending some time camping with the boys. Will be good to have a mini vacation.

November 1 - Another summer come and gone. Nothing seemed to go they way we planned it to this year, but we have the new home and are making the best of what comes our way. Kind of an uneventful time, but the home is coming together and things are still good with me and my husband. There have been some trying times there, as my health has been declining some and it brought about issues with our sex life (you don't feel much like having sex when you are in total pain all of the time) and I am making the best of it, trying to get him to understand where I am coming from. Sometimes it seems that he forgets that I am living with HIV and the complications that come with it, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we do not talk much about it.

I did find out from a recent MRI that the pain in my back is not all in my head. I have two herniated discs and another that is inflamed putting pressure on a nerve going into my groin, which makes it feel as though someone has a pair of pliers on my right testicle most of the time. From what the Nurse Practitioner told me, there is not much they will do about it unless the disc actually ruptures and then they will consider surgery. I wonder how fast something would get done if they had to live like this. Believe me, I am sure they would not just prescribe themselves Darvocet and send themselves home to "deal with it" as they did me. I am considering switching doctors, but that can be trouble too as there are not many docs dealing with HIV here, unless you go to the same clinic I am going to. They still have the $800+ being reported on my credit report, which is causing a lot of credit issues for me, and I am sure my hounding them about it could be playing some role in the treatment I am receiving, but that could just be my paranoia coming in. I have sought out legal counsel to try and assist getting this cleared up, but something tells me that it won't go away until after 7 years when they have to remove it. (About one more year.) I wish I could convince the attorney to file a defamation of character claim against them, in hopes that if they are doing this to someone else, they will move a bit faster to clear it up with them, but she says that this is not enough to base a claim on even though I can not get any credit due to this matter. Would be nice to be able to consolidate some of these outstanding credits I have with extremely high interest rates into one simple low interest rate loan, but no one will do this for me with those outstanding medical bills on the report. WORDS OF WISDOM: If someone says that they will clear up a financial matter for you in reference to medical bills, follow up to make sure that it actually happens and you are not put into the same situation that I am in. Or, make sure you do not seek any treatment that you or your insurance (if you have any) can pay at the time.

My recent counts looked good. The viral load was at around 1000, which we are not worried about at the time and my CD4 was over 500 for the first time since I got into treatment for my HIV. I go in for blood work in two weeks and we will look at the viral load at that time to see where it is going and deal with things then if necessary. I would like to ad here that you really should communicate with your doctor about the lab results you receive and know what they mean if at all possible. A lot of doctors push as hard as they can to get your viral load to an "undetectable" level, and will try to switch your meds at the slightest decline, but don't let them. Switching meds a lot will/can lead to resistance, and that is not a good thing with the limited amount of treatment options you may have. If it is only a small change, leave it alone. If it is a major change, leave it alone for at least one more blood draw and see what those numbers look like before you decide on a change. It could just be that you were having a rough day when the first set of results came in.

The upcoming holiday season will find us in Florida for Thanksgiving and home for Christmas. I am looking forward to the Florida trip as it should be warm down there this time, as it has not been so nice to us when we had gone in Dec./Jan. before. It will be nice to be in a warmer climate so hopefully the arthritis won't be so bad. Snowing here already. I am not ready for winter...

Chapter 7
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