Those of us affected by HIV have been through the trenches and are truly battle-tested for this one.
25th Annual Gay Pride Parade in NYC: Act Up Demo protesting AIDS epidemic, New York, New York, June 26, 1994.
Yes, I’m high risk and taking it seriously, but for the last three decades, mortality has never been far from my mind. When my husband was diagnosed with AIDS in 1992, we faced a deadly virus that at the time had no drugs, vaccine or cure. He refused to discuss how he contracted HIV. My theory is that he was bisexual and had trouble dealing with it. He became so sick that I stopped asking him. The priority was to stay alive and help him recover.
But as it turned out, I didn’t die and neither did my son, who is now 29. We are currently together as we “shelter in place.”are like a blast from my past. Unfortunately, I know all three very well. I tested negative in 1994 for active HIV with a PCR test. Later, my doctor indicated it was probably a faulty test. But HIV didn’t enter my mind when I developed a serious cough 12 years later. It also didn’t occur to the doctors that it could be HIV-related.
I was lucky that by then an effective and lifesaving cocktail to control HIV had by then been developed. However, it took over a decade of testing to develop the antiviral cocktail now in wide use. In my case, the maintenance cocktail started out as a complex regimen and now is down to one daily little pill. I have been fortunate to have little or no side effects and to have remained healthy for the past 16 years. But I am not without survivor’s guilt, which plagues me to this day.
Another lesson from the fight against HIV and AIDS is that you can’t count on a vaccine. Hopefully, advances in the medical field will lead to fast-tracked medications and protocols to deal with COVID-19 and its trajectory. The stories of solitary deaths in hospitals are reminiscent of the AIDS era. I watched several die in my husband’s hospital ward, with no loved ones around. All I could do is try to give them courage to fight.
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