Revising My Story

I started this blog as the story of one person’s experience of living with AIDS, shortly after the ninth anniversary of my diagnosis. The story starts with my diagnosis and a refusal to speculate on the source of my infection. I find myself less and less satisfied with that as a starting point, as my baseline CD4+ count attests to the fact that it all started long before that. But when?

I want to be very careful not to turn this revision into a search for someone on whom to lay blame. I don’t think of blaming anyone for my HIV infection. This might be odd, as I have certainly (in the distant pre-condom past) had some pretty negative reactions to catching other STIs from people who probably knew they had them, despite the fact that most of those were pretty easily dispatched with. We’ll have to leave aside the HPV, which revisits.

So finding the when without being tempted to pinpoint the who. I may just realize who the who was in the process, but let me reaffirm that this is about completing a timeline and not assigning blame.

Here’s a first possibility.

Just before Christmas in 1981 (I’m detecting a terribly unfortunate problem with the month of December that keeps recurring in my life!), I went to the Emergency at one of the English hospitals with a throat that seemed to be closing up. The doctor I saw had seen me before, and seems to have made his diagnosis based on my file rather than my symptoms. He decided I had gonorrhoea and gave me a prescription for antibiotics that I needed to go to a pharmacy to fill. As it turns out, the prescription cost me most of the cash I had (probably less than $10), which was a terrible tragedy during the holiday period in an era before bank machines.

Most. Miserable. Christmas. Ever.

To add insult to injury, the antibiotics seemed to have made things worse, not better. When I went back to get the results of the throat swab, a more contrite doctor (the same one with a new attitude) announced that the gonorrhoea test was negative. The new idea he had was that I had mononucleosis, which in retrospective interpretation could have been my period of primo-infection.

Now I have to reflect on the credibility of that possibility. If we recall, my baseline CD4+ count was 4. If this was my primo-infection, it was a full sixteen years earlier. I would have had to have a rather strong resistance to last that long before finally developing an opportunistic infection, no?

I always thought that one of two things would be true about the timing of my infection: that I was infected early and held out for a long time, or that I was infected late and my system collapsed. This version would suggest the former.

I’ll have to do some more thinking.

The Test of Our Own Democracy

It has been fascinating to watch people in several countries in North Africa and the Middle East take to the streets to demand change, including change in their governments. It always makes me wonder just what it would take to shake our own society out of its torpor — what level of excess or corruption might make us take to the streets without being restrained by our notions of economic stability and our attachment to the status quo. I don’t exempt myself from that characterization.

The test I want to write about today, though, is much more immediate. The brother-in-law of the deposed leader of Tunisia has for some time had permanent resident status in Canada and is currently on the territory of the country, “holed up” (media terminology) in the Château Vaudreuil, a roadside hotel in the suburbs to the west of the island of Montréal. Our government has publicly stated that he is not welcome here, and has moved to revoke his permanent resident status, based on a non-respect of the requirement that permanent residents spend at least six months plus a day each year inside the territory. There are rumours that he might apply for refugee status, still more that his arrest and return to Tunisia has been requested by the new government there.

So what will our government do? If this man and his family claim refugee status here, they will have certain rights to have their case heard which might take several years. We have also had a principle, not particularly loved by our current government, that we do not send people back to a country where they may face the death penalty for whatever they have done at the conclusion of a fair trial ending with a guilty verdict. The usual practice is to get a diplomatic assurance that in the particular case the prosecution will not seek the death penalty.

What it looks like at this time: the Canadian government, which usually takes pains to abstain from commenting on any matter before the courts, has been vocal in rejecting these relatives of the former president of Tunisia. They have, however, said all the right things about our refugee process and about respecting the rule of law in Canada. We really need journalists to take up that approach, focusing less on the “outrage” that this man should be in Canada and more on the fact that we have rules and we follow them, and no person good or bad is exempt from them. If there is a case against this man, bring out the facts and let’s hear them in front of a judge.

I would never seek to protect an exploiter of people who has enriched himself at the expense of others, but neither would I be willing to throw away our principles of democracy and justice to punish his misdeeds.

It would be too easy to cut corners in a case that is so public and so blatant. It would be easy, too, for our government to ride a wave of outrage to gut our current refugee process. I’ for one, will not sit for that. It might be the thing that gets me out into the street.

Life 2.0

Like millions of people out there, I probably spend too much time on Facebook. Don't get me wrong — I think it's a really useful tool and a great way to stay in touch with friends and family, even potential clients or supporters in the case of organizations or businesses. I just want to share some of my observations about the perverse effects it might have, from my own skewed and admittedly perverse view.

First of all, let's talk about time. Not the time one might spend perusing the newsfeed or creeping the status of the friend of a friend, but the perception of time one might have in reference to what is read. News items have a way of bubbling back up to the top from time to time, like they happened moments ago, not the hours ago when I first saw them. That is enough to put me a little on edge — is there some glitch or planned function of Facebook doing this, or is my dementia kicking in?

There's a little Big Brother functionality in how it works, too. Change your profile picture now and then scroll back to what you posted last week or last month. No, you have always looked like that crazy kitten cartoon you just put up as your profile pic. (I am well aware of the fact that this is because it is stored in a matrix used to retrieve the current image associated with my identity, but it still seems like we have always been friends with EastAsia.)

One thing that Facebook has certainly done is to achieve that Web 2.0 ideal: tons of interactions and commentary on anything and everything. And it's all so easy, too! I find myself sticking my thumb up whenever I like something out there in the real world, rather than verbalizing any words of appreciation or approval. I have to add, however, that the group I set up to demand more options in our replies only attracted 27 members, despite the clever photos I worked up.

But what is all that clicking doing to actually getting out there and doing things? Totally choking it off. I am as guilty as the next person, I am sure, of indicating I will attend or might attend an event and then feeling like I have done my part in showing how worthwhile it is, so I don't really have to leave my house to go to it. Facebook might make it easier for groups or individuals to create events and invite dozens, hundreds, even thousands of others to participate, but it can also be disturbingly demobilizing. And like I said, I am certainly as guilty as the next person on this count.

One more bizarre situation that people setting up a social network for youth never anticipated. I have two Facebook friends who have died. Their walls fill up with comments from their friends who miss them and have that last message to leave, if not for them directly, for the friends and family who might be checking the page. The macabre part is when the automatic functions within Facebook actually remind me that I haven't talked to my dead friend lately, or wouldn't I like to suggest some new friends for my dead friend?

I guess that's when I snap back to realizing that the real world is going on somewhere other than on the screen in front of me.