Stylin' Friday: The Baseline CD4 Count

The follow-up from my diagnosis, in a feeble attempt to imitate the style of Oink Grrr…

As my PCP (pneumocystis carinii pneumonia) surrendered, microbe by microbe, to the constant onslaught of the fairly simple antibiotic, it came time for me to return to the scene of my damsel-in-distress faintness (after the bronchoscopy). When my stalker - er - caring doctor asked me if I would consent to having an actual HIV test, it was almost anticlimactic. What could be easier than having a test for which we were all reasonable sure of the outcome? With no hesitation, I held out my arm for the onslaught of the vampire.

As it takes a while for these things to come back (yes, dear pea-hens*, even when the answer key has been faxed to the whole class, the markers take their time), I returned to the drudgery of my job at the time. I might have whistled while I worked, but I am apparently genetically incapable of emitting that kind of sound.

Going back to the hospital, I got my next surprise. It seems that my CD4 count, which should have been the equivalent of this scene of a beach teeming with walruses…


…looked more like this:

My stalker caring doctor tried to explain the situation with some kind of military metaphor (generals and soldiers and such) while my mind wandered to thoughts of how I might politely point out that I had three university degrees and might do better with real medical terms. In the end, it boiled down to my having a baseline CD4 count of 4, which my stalker doctor said meant that I had been infected for at least 10 years, probably more (this was 1997-98). If I had been able to see into the future, I might have named them lumpy, humpy, dumpy and frumpy, but being limited to the here and now (or the there and then), I had no choice but to call in "Nervous Nelly" to work and go home to consume bonbons and daytime television for the rest of the afternoon.

*I did have to come up with my own poultry and my own term of endearment for it, but this does refer to you, the reader.

My next instalment will likely be about looking back on where this infection might have come from — or not — and other such philosophical ramblings. Any suggestions on a style?

Girth Day!

Okay, not very environmentally correct, but I went shopping on Earth Day. At least it was a charity event — Au coeur de la mode, for a foundation funding AIDS charities — but the karmic moment came when I got home and tried on my two silk shirts (for only $40!): a bit snug both! Now I shall also have to lose weight to wear my lovely purchases, apart from working on improving my overall health.

Tragic!

Stylin' Friday: PCP and Diagnosis

On finding out I had an AIDS-defining pneumonia, in the style of One By One.

On the 20th I had trouble breathing. The symptoms were : coughing to the point of running out of breath, hard to stay standing, fighting to return to bedroom, falling to bed, breaking glasses on the way down. I woke up later, coughing again.

The woman at Info Santé spoke in difficult English. She offered only two choices of clinics; both were far away for a winter day and open for only short hours. I left her thinking that she had helped me, but I did not intend to go. Two days until I would see my own doctor at his office.

I don't remember the 21st. I imagine it full of coughing and sleeping. Or trying to sleep. The neighbours came and went : I heard them on the stairs and I heard their front door opening and closing. Nobody noticing my difficulties inside my apartment.

Afternoon on the 22nd, I try to imagine taking a bus and metro to my doctor's office. I step outside into the cold and I can't breathe. Nobody sees me go back inside to phone a taxi. Will I remember my doctor's office address? The taxi driver takes me there easily, but I do not remember him. Or her. It is usually a man, so I think that is who it was.

My doctor greets me as he always does. Leads me to his office down the hall, stands aside for me to enter before him. Asks me how I am doing. Breathing is hard, coughing is easy, so I do what is easy and I try to explain. He seems to know what is wrong and writes a long note for me to take outside, up the hill to the hospital emergency. I wait until I am out of his office to read the note and confirm his suspicions for myself. I have the strength to read "PCP" and I understand what it means.

Flashback to all the times my doctor encouraged me to have a test for HIV. I not cooperating, not ready for a result I knew could be positive. Not mentally or emotionally ready for the result I knew could be positive. Back to now with no choice but to accept it. The cold waited for me outside the doctor's office, but the taxi had moved on after I paid. A new taxi stops easily, the driver does not question the close destination. Or I do not have the strength to notice and commit the reaction to memory. I am too busy trying not to cough and trying to breathe to remember the rest of the three minute ride to the hospital emergency room.

I show the note to the person behind the plexiglass. I don't notice her reaction to the note I have already read because I am concentrating again on breathing and on not coughing. I wait my turn in the waiting room.

The doctor is pleasant and businesslike. He asks me questions and listens to my breathing between coughs. He appears to have read the note, which he mentions to me. A simple prescription for antibiotics and an appointment to come back the next day for a test he calls a bronchoscopy. He tells me that this would not have been necessary if I had followed my doctor's advice and been tested for HIV in the past. I don't remember if I am panicking on the inside because most of my energy is taken up trying to breathe and trying not to cough.

The doctor leaves and I go back into the waiting room. I am not aware of whether everyone is looking at me: they are preoccupied with their own miseries. Now I have one more: how to go back home through the cold, how to get my antibiotics prescription filled. Only one thought: my friend who told me about his being HIV positive at least a year before. I know I can count on him and my instinct is right. He comes to the hospital and takes me home in a taxi. Then he goes out and gets my antibiotics and brings them back to me. When I cry and tell him I don't have the strength to deal with this, he reassures me that I will find it. "We make these efforts to be here for the pleasure we will have tomorrow." I know that I will remember this. I feel bad that I can't tolerate his smoking after he has done so much for me.

I am lying on my bed, struggling to breathe when my parents phone me. I have so little energy, so little awareness of breaking news gently, that I tell them what my doctor's note said and that I am too weak to talk. I tell them this means I have HIV. Even in my weakness I know that I will have their support. They were very good to me after my long struggle to come out to them about my homosexuality and I have no doubts about their love and support. They ask me if I am sure about the HIV, and I say I am. I am not thinking about how difficult this news is for them to hear; I am focused on breathing and not coughing and trying not to drop the phone.

On the 23rd, I make my way again to the hospital for my bronchoscopy. I have fasted for this, but I wouldn't have had the energy to cook for myself anyway. I remember taking something to relax my throat, remember the tube going in and some kind of images. These might have been in my unconscious. I still have trouble breathing. After the procedure, I am lying on a bed in a clinic at the hospital, with a something measuring my blood oxygen, which is low. I am weak and I tell the nurse (a man) that I don't think I can go home. He gives me time and check on me every now and then to see if I am less weak.

By the end of his shift, he has found me a bed in a room in the hospital with three other people in it. I have all of my clothes on, but not my boots, and I am in bed with a tube hooked around my ears and under my nose giving me oxygen. I stumble to the bathroom once or twice in the night. I also hear the man in the next bed trying to get more and better drugs from the nurse. She knows what he is trying to do and she does not give him what he wants but does not need. I do not see her face, but I can imagine its impatience. I do my best to avoid any contact with this man, pretending to sleep even when I am not.

I ask several times about my antibiotics, because I do not want to miss a dose. I am confident that the antibiotics will make it easier for me to breathe and end the constant coughing. My back has been sore from coughing for so long. In the morning, after many times hearing the man in the next bed ask for different drugs and hearing him talk to one of the other people in the room many times through the night, they bring me breakfast. I understand the value of hospital food. When I am as weak as I am, as unable to take care of myself, this is the best thing that could happen : a meal placed before me.

I don't know how it happens, but one of my co-workers and friends comes to see me at the hospital on the 24th. It is Christmas Eve and she brings me some food from a Christmas meal. She takes me home in a taxi. I am still weak and I am still struggling to breathe and not to cough. At least now I am home and I have my antibiotics (they were not precisely on time in the hospital, and this bothered me a lot).

I am alone again at home. When my phone rings during the day and I answer it, I am suspicious to hear the doctor I saw in the emergency room. He asks me how I am feeling and if I am taking my antibiotics. When I hang up, I still do not feel like I understand his calling me. The calls continue for almost two weeks. Every day through the holidays: am I feeling better, are the antibiotics working? I feel less suspicious and I am amazed at the doctor's dedication and caring.

We wait for the antibiotics to work before we do a real HIV test.

Again with the long wait!

I wonder if it is just that I am lazy, or that I lead a boring life, or that I keep experiencing the combination of busy at work and tired at home, but I have proven to be an exceedingly unreliable poster. So let me catch up a bit....

I did manage to squeeze in a couple of films lately (without going into the difference between 'films' and 'movies,' a distinction I used to like to make, nose firmly in the air). I actually saw The Namesake a couple of weeks ago, shortly after my last entry. As an aside, there is a very funny blog entry by the lead actor on his Namesake blog in which the interviewer insists on pronouncing the film title "naam-uh-saa-kay" — now who's pretentious?

All in all an enjoyable watch, and it reminded me that I can't wait for the next Harold and Kumar film to come out (you've got to love that Kal Penn!).

And after that crazily deep review, we move on to my next film, which all the critics are panning, suggesting it is even less deep than my reviewing skills. (But I flatter myself: they don't even know about my reviewing skills!) Yes, I went today to see Pathfinder. If you read my last post about going to see 300, you would know how much I love to watch scantily clad actors as well as those in elaborate period costumes. Here again, the perfect mix, with scantily-clad aboriginal people (plus one faux aboriginal person, who, of course, is the lead) who all spend a lot of time at the gym, and a bunch of scary Vikings who try to hide their bad haircuts under very elaborate horned masks and helmets but fail, as their unruly beards and other assorted facial hair pokes out for all to see.

As usual, the good guy saves the day after a whole lot of gore and other untimely deaths, but he still doesn't seem all that happy.

Wow! Two movies in about three weeks! Hold me back, I'm a wild man!

I have also spent a bit of time thinking about something I want to do with this blog, and I believe that I have come up with something interesting. I'm going to draw on the memory of an exercise we did in my Grade 12 English class (yes, I can still remember back that far, although I'm sure I will smudge the details a bit in the doing), which was to tell my own story in the style of another available example of writing. I did want to start this blog after all to talk about my life with AIDS and how that has affected me and my outlook on life, not just to provide deep two-sentence reports of movies or films I have seen. And if I can do that by challenging my ability to write in a variety of styles, so much the better. I have already chosen my first kooky example of writing to follow, which you can see here. I expect to get that first one up in the next week or so, but I am most open to any suggestions of other blogs to imitate in my writing. I still promise to tell my own stories and to copy only the style.

In the meantime, I keep amusing myself by participating in Haiku Saturdays here and Fib Sundays here. Lots of fun and a literary challenge to boot! I encourage one and all to join in.

Now to get to work on my first — oh dear, what shall I call it? Maybe if I post it past midnight on Sunday evening I can call it 'Mimicking Mondays,' even though I hold my breath each Monday for Mug Shot Mondays here. Well, I shall have to work on the title as well as the content. Wish me luck....