It’s a timed execution, a death row for the soul, a mass conspiracy with lives. It’s disgusting to realize once you’re inside, a prisoner of a virus that will never subside. In films like, “House of Numbers” the virus is contested to even exist. Also in the film, some Scientists claim it was created and not discovered. But ridiculously expensive medication became available to extend the lives of the afflicted. It seems to be a gift. But the medication does not cure, only controls the progression. Quality of life does not elevate for the sick, just keeps them alive, while corporate executives fly company jets around the country and world paid for by developed countries that can afford to supply their sick with the medication.
A month supply of the cocktail of pills can cost nearly 10 thousand dollars or more. AIDS is a formidable foe. Being diagnosed with AIDS from the start, I didn’t know what that meant. But it’s a numbers game, a cell count that makes no sense at first. Once your T cell count drops below 200, you have AIDS and it doesn’t matter if they rise above at a later point. Once you have AIDS, you always have it. And having it makes you suseptible to any and all illnesses around. Thrush got me diagnosed in the ER, where I was told that I had 18 months to live, Meningitis followed a couple years down the road and Pneumonia has become as familiar to me as the flu is to the majority of the population.
One such time, Pneumonia had me comatose and in the hospital for a month. Due to lack of oxygen to my brain, I had dementia. When I came to, I remember coming through a light so bright that I could not see through it. But I did hear the doctor say, “Mike,do you know where you are?” as I would imagine an alien abductee to hear once they reach the space ship. My guess was the last hospital I had been to but it was way off nevertheless. I thought that the doctor had a surgery lamp on me. I highly doubt that was true. I was only comatose for a matter of hours so the rest of the month I remained in a frighteningly demented state. The nurses assistant visited all day and would continuously tell me her name but I couldn’t remember it, even if she told me a mere hour before. Having dementia, is not a comfortable state of bliss, it’s like watching a movie that started before you arrived and is now playing at a rate your eyes nor mind can follow. My Mother visited often, with my sisters, and brought me a notebook, knowing my proclivity for writing but I was so confused I was making notes to get in touch with people that weren’t in my life anymore. And then my right foot was on fire and I didn’t know why. When the physical therapist came in I would scream when he tried to put a sock on it. I wanted to ask the doctor what was wrong and I tried hard to remember but the doctor only came in to see me in the middle of the night. Not knowing what was wrong, I tried to get out of bed and go to the bathroom, I planted my left foot and then tried to step with my right but it didn’t move. I fell hard, smacking my head on the solid hospital floor leaving a lump on my forehead. Late one night the nurses had received an order to bind me to the bed, so they came in and began to tie me to the bed and put a diaper on me. I fought hard. Traumatized, I was fighting for my life. In my mental state I didn’t understand, nor would I allow a diaper to be put on me. When my Mother came to visit, I would beg her to untie me but she never did. Soon enough I would learn to untie them myself but I never remained free for very long as the nurses kept a close eye on me and would re-tie my lashings.
Fresh out of drug rehab, I was having dreams that I had a bag of Crystal Meth on me and kept trying to get anyone, nurses, housekeepers, it didn’t matter, to give my a syringe from the dirty needle container that I saw on the wall. That only stopped when I asked my Mother and was yelled at by my eldest sister. In my demented state I was sleeping and having dreams with my eyes open. Waking was like seeing a painting come to life before your eyes. Later my Mother would tell me that my doctor told her that I might not come back fully. In my demented state, a nurses assistant was flirting with me, telling me how her boyfriend treated her bad over and over. But she stopped my hand when I attempted to palm her breast, I called her a cock tease as I watched that nice full butt walk out of my room.
I was discharged to the first of many nursing homes I would visit. There I had to get used to walking with a cane, never getting an answer to what was wrong. The week long stay seemed like a month, my mind not yet recovering it’s integrity. Appalled by the treatment of the elderly I had a sit down with the administrator and tried hard but failed to articulate my concerns. I couldn’t stand the way my roommate treated his unappreciated wife, so I wandered the halls and slept minimally in the foyer by the television, watching a show called Insomniac. My mother came to visit daily, alone, and unbeknownst to me was fighting hard to get me into a home for people with HIV. She succeeded after calling everyday, basically being unrelenting, making my name known.
At this home I was introduced to a clinic and a doctor who put me on my first cocktail of pills with side effects ranging from diarrhea to nausea and headaches. Fortunately, I never experienced any of these. I attribute this to my hard drinking ways before I got sick. And the dementia slowly went away. After a battery of tests and many MRI’s a doctor from UCLA said he could not see any trauma to my spine but told me that I would never walk again. I had finally began to be able to remember peoples names and could probably find my way home only to have a doctor I did not know, tell me I was never going to walk again. At that point I almost preferred the confusion. Although the doctors could not find any trauma to my spine I knew that I had hurt myself after a fall from a billboard while high on drugs and my disease just exacerbated it. Which is why I can not walk and am now in a wheelchair. And a relationship began that still exists today with a pharmacy that loves me and has actually sent me a Birthday gift consisting of Calvin Klein products, these people do not know me and haven’t taken the time but because of the near 10 thousand dollar medication regimen that is gifted to me by my doctor.
The pharmaceutical industry exists to keeps my head above water, to support their families and the lobbyist that pay off politicians that make sure to keep undercover a cure. My doctor is just doing her job and I love her for it, she makes me feel like a human being and won’t let me fall through the cracks even when I’ve raised my arms preparing for the inevitable downhill of this rollercoaster and she’s only doing what Scientists profess to be the truth. It is with those scientists with whom I have beef. Their explanations of what this virus is and how it got into the human population seems far fetched, at best, and a outright lie to many. How can a society that can discover the theory of relativity not be able to solve the problem of a virus? Unless the virus is so foreign and unnatural that it was created by Dr.Gallo and not discovered. Conspiracy theories always seem wild and spouted by a crazy person. But this theory is shouted from mountain tops by many people, many of which are scientists.
And the pharmaceutical companies should be ashamed of themselves. There are very few generic AIDS medications and there effectiveness is debated , which is why so many are dying in Africa. They cannot afford the proven medications available in the United States and other developed nations. If I had to pay for my medication out of my pocket, I would be dead. But the government knows that, so they make sure that they pay for it. They make sure that the pharmaceutical companies get their money so they can afford to pay the lobbyist that pays them right back in the end. It’s a vicious circle that consists of jeweled cuff linked hands with suffering empty pockets in the middle without whom the circle would just be men holding hands. They contain us like they would a secret oil well or diamond mine. The definition of AIDS is political and very convoluted. Some say it was a reason for the CDC to get funding since there was no existing marketable disease after polio. There are more than 12 definitions of AIDS worldwide. The definition of AIDS in America is different than the one in South Africa, in America it’s just a name that is a level of illness that insures government benefits. Yeah, our government throws us some pennies while they make million off of us. I’ve had friends with one T-cell who spend their entire U.S. Treasury check on drugs because their quality of life is so low, many are living in shelters surrounded by strangers. Many lose their own family due to this disease. Just because this disease is 30 years old doesn’t mean that ignorance has ceased to exist. There is so much confusion and discrepancies in diagnosing HIV.
A man called The Berlin Patient was the first man in the world to be cured of HIV through a bone marrow/stem cell transplant. But, how available is this? Will Medicare pay for it? No way. There are cures out there but they are not front page news as they should be and they are not available in the birthplace of the disease, the United States. The Berlin patient bares that name for a reason. He now lives in the bay area but got his treatment overseas. the most advanced military country in the world could, but does not, spend the money necessary to develop a cure for political reasons. America lets my friends die for political reasons, keeps me in this wheelchair for POLICAL reasons, and forces me to buy my own lightweight wheelchair. How many other atrocities are allowed to propagate by the United States government? The truth is, sadly,we will never, ever, know, unless we all stand up and be not afraid to speak our minds, even when completely off base. It’ll throw them off when they try to follow. Your deaths in your family from all forms of cancer, your family that’s been denied food stamps while the head of the household figures and re-figures the family budget until they fall over in a heap of tears and sweat baffled as to the government’s reasoning, you, trying your get your child into a systematically Caucasian college system that never spelled your name right in any class, all twelve years of primary education and you, the one’s that literally puts food on our tables, yet get deported, degraded and mocked for doing so. No one can do everything but every one can do something. We CAN make a difference, but it’s going to take everyone of us to do it.
