Greetings!
Sorry it took me so long to get back to y'all...
My current doctor is fond of telling me that she hasn't lost a patient to AIDS in many years and that as long as I keep on meds I'll probably die of old age. So I'm wondering what is "old age" for someone with AIDS...
And how many patients being treated for HIV have instead died of something more acceptable as a side-affect of their meds...
Our stories are being hidden away and our fellow Americans are being distracted by the more deserving and politically advantageous Global View focused on the Africans. Please understand that I empathize with their situation, but charity and compassion must come first at HOME.
I've begun a new page to my website that is devoted to telling our American POZ Story. I'd appreciate it if you would check it out and consider sharing yours.
Just some thoughts from someone whose grown weary of The Journey. That's not to say I'm giving up, just slowin' it all down and movin' the finish line closer.
The Stages of Death
When we have experienced the distant signs of death, the close signs of death will occur. First the earth element of the body dissolves. The external sign of this dissolution is that the body becomes thin; and the internal sign is a mirage-like appearance to the mind. Next, the water element dissolves. The external sign is that the mouth
and tongue become very dry, and the liquids of the body, such as urine, blood, and sperm, decrease; and the internal sign is a smoke-like appearance to the mind. Next the fire element dissolves. The external sign of this dissolution is reduced warmth of the body and coldness in the area around the navel, the centre of the body's heat; and the internal sign is a sparkling-fireflies-like
appearance. Next the wind element dissolves. The external sign is reduced power of movement due to the decreasing power of the winds that flow through the channels of the body and cause us to generate gross minds; and the internal sign is a candle-flame-like appearance. The mind perceiving this appearance is the last gross mind of death.
The first subtle mind of death is the mind perceiving a white appearance. When this appearance ceases, the mind has become more subtle and perceives a red appearance. This mind again becomes more subtle and transforms into the mind of black near-attainment, to which only black appears. At this stage it is as if the
dying person has no memory. Since there is no physical movement, no heartbeat, and no movement in the channels, some people think that this is the end of dying; but in fact the consciousness has not yet left the body. The mind of black near-attainment transforms into the most subtle mind perceiving the clear light of death, a clear bright appearance like the light of dawn. This is the sign that
the most subtle mind that resides within the indestructible drop at the heart has manifested and all other minds have ceased to manifest. Then the indestructible drop opens, and its white and red parts separate, releasing the consciousness, which immediately departs from the body. The white drop descends through the central channel to emerge through the tip of the sex organ, and the red drop
ascends through the central channel to emerge through the nostrils. When this happens it is the sign that the consciousness has left the body and the process of dying has ended.
photo from www.greatercincinnatiglbtnews.com
Four large panels from the AIDS Quilt were displayed from January 12th to 16th at Simon Kenton High School in Independence, KY. The memorial display was organized by students from the school. At the opening ceremony, senior John Mains said, "We hope to bring awareness to our peers about the real danger of HIV infection which leads
to AIDS deaths. A lot of youth look at AIDS as a disease that attacks only gays."
|| commentary ||
Why
bug chasers bug me
When asked about bug chasing by his mother, a 20-something writer finds himself asking some tough questions of his own. And he discovers some gay men who bug him even more than the so-called bug chasers who try to get HIV on purpose.
By Adam
B. Vary
An Advocate.com exclusive posted January 8, 2004
So I had to explain bug chasing to my mom. On December 2, the day after World AIDS Day, she sent me this e-mail. It started off much like the countless missives she’s been sending me since, well, basically since e-mail began: “I was at the gym today without anything good to read for my 30 boring minutes on the elliptical trainer.”
So far, so good.
But then she explained that to fill those minutes, she watched a daytime talk show on the gym’s TV. The day’s subject? Gay men who deliberately try to be infected with HIV—they call themselves "bug chasers." One of the guests was a gay man featured in The Gift, the controversial documentary that was a hit on the film festival circuit this
past year (and that airs in February on the Sundance Channel), about a few young gay men who actively pursue “conversion,” who see contracting HIV as a highly erotic entrée into a club of premium exclusivity.
I think I’m safe in saying that this is something no 24-year-old gay man in Los Angeles wants his mother, living back in Ohio, to see.
Now you must understand, my mom is quite the savvy gal. I mean, the woman calls me to gab about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy—this is not someone left wanting for sophistication when it comes to the gays. She’s also a clinical social worker who’s seen much in her 20-plus years as a therapist, and yet this phenomenon—this “bug chasing”—was
so beyond her, she decided to write to her gay son, who lives in West Hollywood and writes for The Advocate, and ask him, “Where does that kind of wrong thinking come from?”
It isn’t the first time that question’s been asked. The whole bug-chasing hoop-de-do started, really, with a February 2003 article in Rolling Stone titled “In Search of Death.” It claimed 25% of gay men newly infected with HIV got it from bug-chasing—a rather unsubstantiated figure that was loudly decried as overinflated sensation. Gay
columnists Dan Savage and Andrew Sullivan took a swing at the issue, and Newsweek even did a follow-up story in which the doctors quoted in the Rolling Stone piece denied ever offering the one-in-four figure.
The uproar is perfectly understandable. Not only is bug-chasing abhorrently self-destructive, the argument goes, it’s exactly the kind of behavior that has branded gay men as sick, unnatural freaks in the minds of many, many homophobes. We don’t want people thinking we all live our lives “that way,” yet the attention the media’s paid to bug chasing
could easily lead, say, unsavvy mothers living in Ohio to think maybe we all secretly do.
Still, I think to look at bug chasing as a minor annoyance that can just be swatted away does nothing to answer my mom’s question. The issue here isn’t whether it’s 25% or 2.5%, or even that the press coverage is overexaggerated. It’s that bug chasing sits at the extreme edge of homophobia, a national pathology that has festered so far into the minds of
some gay men that a few have begun not only to believe their lives are disposable, but to pursue, actively and even eagerly, their own destruction.
Think of the young, inner-city black man who doesn’t see a future beyond 25, who looks forward to dealing drugs, joining a gang, or even going to prison—another kind of exclusive club. Of course, I'm not speaking about all young, inner-city black men, or even a large number of them, but it does happen. And when members of a minority begin to believe so fully
in their own uselessness to the rest of the world—and even to the rest of their minority—that they don’t care whether they live or die, isn’t it time to put aside political correctness and just address the damn problem?
Besides, bug chasing isn’t even the scariest thing out there. What terrifies me more are the gay men of my generation who just, you know, kinda forgot to wear a condom with that one guy they slept with that one time—whether or not they got HIV as a result. Here’s a solid statistic that is truly alarming: The CDC reports at least one half of all new HIV
infections occur in people under 25; the largest subset of that group is gay men.
To which I can only reply, What!?
Of all demographic groups in the whole of this country, you would think that gay men under 25—we who have been pummeled with safer-sex education and HIV/AIDS awareness pamphlets since before we even knew we were gay—would be last in line at the risky-sex buffet. Why do so many young gay men, then, act so recklessly? They may not be chasing the bug, but they
sure are certainly fine with occasionally wading into the swamp shirtless and without any bug spray, and I can't believe it's only due to the overconfidence of youth.
It’s been pointed out that current treatments for HIV and AIDS have made the disease so “manageable” that they have drastically cut the fear factor for catching it. Indeed, Larry Kramer and others have been screaming for a while now that the companies that make those drugs put out far too many ads with buff, healthy, hot HIV-positive men proclaiming how
wonderful their lives are. Still, I didn’t really get it until I aired my lament to a gay friend of mine my age. He responded by simply stating, “Well, no one in our generation has had all their friends die from AIDS.”
Is that it? Do we all need to lose five friends to this disease before my generation will get that having HIV is not just bad, but life-alteringly bad, that the life-extending drugs that must be taken on the strictest of schedules have side effects that make the recent flu outbreak look like a 24-hour cold, and they’re becoming less and less effective?
And then I think back to my mom, who cared enough about her son to write him and remind him to be safe. I’d worry that bug chasers don’t get that from their parents, but really, my bigger concern is that they don’t get that from their community. How they must have felt when we so quickly jumped at the mere mention of their name, so eager to wash
their taint from our skin that we very well may have pushed them that much farther into the abyss.
http://www.advocate.com/html/stories/906/906_bugchasers.asp
04/19/03: What should we do about bug chasers?
Yes, like it or not, every day HIV-negative gay men intentionally put themselves at risk for infection. But the solution to this reemerging crisis is neither to sensationalize the “chase” nor to condemn it. The solution is give gay
men the love and support they need to do the right thing: Live healthy lives. By John Sonego, director of communications, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Keeping patient alive can be wrong, pope says
VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II told a group of doctors Saturday that resorting to extreme measures to try to keep alive the terminally ill at all costs does not respect the patient.
John Paul was addressing participants from a scientific congress on gastroenterology, a branch of medicine studying diseases of the stomach and the intestines.
Telling the doctors that caring for patients "must take into account not only the body but also the spirit," John Paul said it was "presumptuous" to count just on scientific technique.
"And, in this perspective, extreme measures at all costs, even with the best of intentions, would be, in the end, not only useless, but not fully respectful of the patient who has reached the terminal
stage," he said.
Enquirer News Wire - Sunday March 24, 2002
