July 20, 2004 - It has been a long time since I got on here and updated everyone about what is going on with me. There has been a lot that has happened and I have not had the energy to focus on this site. To start, my mother passed away the 13th of May and I have been whirling since then. My family always said they were not going to be the typical family, but there is always that one person who feels hurt somehow and issues arise. I am happy to say I believe we have worked all this out and fences are mended. Good deal huh?

I also decided to get some things adjusted in my life so I am no longer dependant on Social Security and the measly living they allow you to have. I received the "Ticket to Work" and decided it was time. I enrolled at Davenport University and am now on my way to a 2 year Associate in Business for Web Development. Hopefully in May of 2006 I will be able to do this work for a living and be self sufficient and be OFF Social Security. I am happy to say Mom knew I started and was, as usual, very proud of me. So this is for her as well as myself and I will make it!!

I remain on my Trizivir treatment alone, even though reports recommend that another drug be added as it is proven that Trizivir alone is not a viable treatment option. The doctor and I agree that as long as it is working, there is no need to "fix" anything. With the stress I am under and have been under, the last counts looked a little off, so we re-ran some blood work last week to see if it was just that or the possibility of the need to add a new drug as recommended. The current counts were CD4 at 480 (down from 600) at 20% (which is also down, was at 25%) and the viral load is at 1500, which had been undetectable for over 5 years. We both hope it was just the stress and that this round of blood work shows better numbers. If not, we'll figure out the next step together.

Other than that, things have been pretty much the same. Dan and I continue to be very happy and enjoying the new home. He is dealing with some current family issues with his mom and dad, so there is more stress I am trying to avoid, but remain dedicated to our happiness, so I will be there for him no matter what. We still enjoy spending time with the club brothers and have events lined up for a bit of travel and relaxation.

December 18, 2006 - I apologize for not updating it in quite some time. I recently made the decision to go back to school and that took up a lot of my time until graduation in May 2006. I now hold an Associates in Business Administration With Honor specializing in Web Development From Davenport University and am looking forward to returning to the work force full time. Going back to school after 20 years was no picnic but I am very happy I achieved this accomplishment.

I am also proud to report that my viral load is only 54 (non-detectable status is given at <50) and my CD4 is hovering around 574. This is good news as during school, my Trizivir alone therapy began to fail and I became resistant to AZT. I now take Truvada and Sustiva once a day and I remain healthy except in spirit.

I say this as I learned today that my Lab/Chow mix who is 13 years old has severe hip deterioration and unless the pain management we place her on works in the next few weeks, I will have to decide how long she must suffer before I let her go(which it won't be... I just can't believe doing it to her...).

I hope you all had a happy and healthy 2 years and wish you all happy holidays for the upcoming season.

October 12, 2008 - Well... as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And my good run with my HIV med regime and my long time (since 1997!!) of keeping myself healthy and well has done just that. Ended...

It started in May of 2007 with a 2 week stay in the hospital while they tried to figure out why my gut was totally distended and the nasty bowl issues, madly severe gut pain, and the inability to keep anything down persisted even though they could not find anything out of the ordinary other than an unidentified bacteria running ramped, assisted by the Celebrex I was taking.

After another 2 week stay in the hospital because the gut had gotten that bad again, I was FINALLY told I had, as the gastro doctor from U of M told me, dozens and dozens of ulcerations throughout the intestinal tract from the throat to the colon being caused by the combination of the bacteria and Celebrex working together to rip the gut apart.. Off the Celebrex then and on to a Fentynol patch to control the pain for my arthritis and osteoporosis. She also told me that it would take about a year for my gut to heal and things get back to normal. She was right as in May of this year, I started feeling pretty damn good again and the gut was doing what it was supposed to do.

But...

As we were clearing some branches away from a tree so we could re-roof the garage, I took a nice little 15 foot fall off the ladder I was on. I landed on my back and hit my head on some very uneven and jagged bricks that come off the back door of the garage as a ramp into the yard.

I suffered 3 broken vertebrae in my neck, three broken ribs in the thoracic area of the back which in turn totally severed 3 of the thoracic nerves that run along the inside of our rib cage in the back. I also chipped the tailbone. The only way to treat all of these breaks is to let them heal on their own. I did have a neck brace for two weeks to help the neck heal quickly while keeping my head immobile so as not to interfere with that healing.

During that healing process I had to deal with more pain than I could ever imagine one could go through, but it's better today, but had to have a second nerve block administered due to the nerves being still severed. They could not start healing until the ribs healed totally, as any little break in the rib not healed, would continue to sever the nerve next to it. Hopefully in the next 4 months that this block is working is enough time for the nerves to heal so I can be done with that!

So, that was a lot to deal with in a year and a half so far, but it's not the end. I had noticed a while before this all started that I had a bump on the rectum. It was VERY sore to the touch and made wiping clean a real difficulty. But being everything else that was going on, I put it off until my broken bones mended some.

When I did address this with the doctor, I was sent to a butt specialist and he thought it may be an anal fistula, which is a tract from the inner colon wall out to the outer side of the butt. The cause was thought to be due to the ulcers, with the docs thinking one of them went radical and made this tract, as can happen with this type of problem I had. However, when he tried to probe it to see if he could see where the tract went to repair it, he couldn't find one. Thus, I was scheduled for surgery to investigate if it actually was a fistula and if not, just remove the mass and send it off for biopsy.

I got the call a week later. The mass came back as cancerous. I was told it was a form of skin cancer that can evolve in those who have had hemeroids or anal warts, as someone like I have had. We immediately scheduled another surgery to remove more of that area so cancer mapping could be done to see if it was spreading further than the mass that was removed.

I am happy to report that the cancer was totally removed when the initial mass was removed and I am at this point cancer free. There are still a couple of spots he wants to monitor, and they are starting to bother me somewhat, but he is just going to watch them to see if any progression other than irritation remains as it may just be irritated from all the other things going on down there.

I wish I could stop here, but as they say, when something begins, it won't stop until it's totally through it's cycle and my bad news wasn't done yet. During the healing process from the ribs, my viral load started to spike and the CD4's started to decline. The Atripla had worked it's three years (as most drugs with me tend to do) and was now failing. Genotyping was completed and verified this, so it was time for another med switch. Being there was this new inhibitor out there in clinical study that keeps the HIV virus from attaching to the CCD5 receptor on the CD4 cell. If I had this type of strain that used this receptor (not all strains to and not all of us qualify for this drug if it does not) he took a blood test to check my strain.

I had been off my Atripla for about 2 months already by the time the test was done and the results came back. In just this time, the virus became active enough to start up my thrush again, and I started to go into panic mode to get back on drugs. Finally this last Friday (10/10/08) we got the results and I am eligible for the study drug as I had the strain using the CCD5 receptor. This means that I also had to add other drugs to my regime as well. I went from one pill, once a day to 4 pills in the AM and 5 pills in the evening. I am taking the new drug, Selzentry, Prezista backed with Norivir, Isentress (another newly approved drug I don't know much about), and Viread.

I didn't like the idea of going back on another protease inhibitor, but I guess its for the best as the alternative would suck. You've got to do what you got to do.

Well... That pretty much catches you up on my health at this time, and being I have had to deal with all of this, the degree I received didn't get me back to work as I had hoped and was pretty much told that I won't be going back any time soon either. This is starting to stress me some as I now have over $9000 in student loans that are due for repayment and I can't pay them. I can defer them for a period due to unemployment, but am not sure how long they will let me do this. I will keep doing it until I can't anymore, but they refuse to discharge them for my disability as it began BEFORE I took out the loans. (NO SHIT ASSHOLES!! I was rehabbing FROM my disability to go back to work. Being my disability got worse again and I couldn't do this, isn't there ANYTHING these idiots will do to get me out of this debt I can not pay back on my $900 a month income?? Need to keep working on that one eh?)

I missed the whole summer 2 years in a row, resigned from our leather club we belonged to as obligations as members for them could not be met, and watch my partner Dan carry all the weight of keeping up our home (inside and out) all by himself. This sucks and hurts like hell as here I was, a healthy man able to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, even thinking I could maybe even get back to work and become a contributor to society again.

I try to keep my head up knowing it just will take time to mend and I need to give myself that time. I just hate being like this. Feeling worthless. Hard to keep the chin up, but try to do it anyway. I will get through this. I got through the last 22 years of this shit and am not ready to stop annoying folks yet.

Stay tuned for updates as I have time once again to get back in here more often and update this more than I have been. I hope this finds all of you healthy, well or at least like myself, in the mind set that even though I feel like hell, I know I am not ready to let this virus win and will do what I need to in order to stick it out.

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