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Author Topic: Labs and Life...  (Read 4273 times)

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Offline ndrew

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  • Posts: 695
  • ....-.-.-.-.-.....
Labs and Life...
« on: January 09, 2007, 12:16:20 am »
Hello Friends,

Tomorrow I get my first lab results after going on Atripla in early October.  I am a little nervous.  I am sure this is nothing new to many of you.

I feel pretty damn good and lucky in many ways.  I have a great job (aside from some issues here and there), I love what I do, I had my best year career-wise last year, I have been going on SOME dates here and there (not THAT many, but better than nothing), I like my house, for 38 I have the best physical shape ever, which is a lot of work BTW, BUT I feel like there is a BUT coming...  The but is I am wondering if the meds have made me slightly depressed.  I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning and I guess I am lucky, cuz the Sustiva knocks me out.  I really enjoy sleeping.  But once I get up and get going things get done.  However, I also sometimes feel like my head is full of cotton. 

I also want more from life, but I am not sure what it is now and where to go.  I am not sure.  I know I want to keep working on how to give MORE of myself and be a positive force in the world.  I just don't always know where that path is.

I started teaching again today.  My first class was tough.  I was all over the place, but my large lecture class (123 students) was a lot of fun (I felt clearer by then thank you Ms. Jasmine Green Tea.)  They are college students, but they are so young.  They have so much hope and innocence behind their eyes.  God, it crushes the heart because you want the world for them. 

Sometimes I look at stacks of work and feel overwhelmed or I sit down to work on a paper and I can't focus and I think HOW THE HELL am I going to make any sense... and sometimes, a lot lately, deadlines and things creep up on me like yellow ghosts...  but I don't give up.  I push myself and push and the brain gets going...  I guess I am scared that it just doesn't get going like it used to.  Perhaps this insecurity feeds into a complex...  but you know what, dammit I am still learning SO MUCH and growing SO MUCH... as a teacher, as an artist and well, with my cats...

I have been single for a few years and it makes me feel selfish.  I can have everything the way I like it all the time.  I don't know if that is so healthy.  Do you know what I mean?

I hope I don't sound like I am whining.  I just have more self-doubt and I wonder if it has to do with the Sustiva?  Or perhaps it just the third year blues of having moved where I am and the work that I do?  I have to say that I can live with this and I am not going to succumb to these feelings... but I do feel more isolated and I feel like I want to isolate some.  Perhaps a little anti-depressants are in order, I have plenty of pills, I might as well add to my collection...?  I will ask my doctor tomorrow.

I think I am having a mid-life crisis!  I feel like things are more of a routine, even though I am enjoying this calmness.  I am fighting the urge to buy a new car.

I feel a melancholy of age.  I feel like the tip of a wave of life that is surging forward, dragging behind it all that I have lived.

And I feel watery eyed love.  I feel love for my only HIV positive friend here in the small town where I live.  I feel love for the organic strands of these forums, the weaving in and out of people and emotions and experiences.  I have to admit I admire the distance in some ways, because I harbor more fears of opening myself up to the world, but you catch me off guard with your sweetness and your caring.  I want to give in return.  I come here to love you.

I don't know what I am doing.  Am I set on automatic?  Just following the bend, the curve?

Perhaps this is life.  This sadness, this doubt, this messiness... this is good.  Breathe deep.  Live.  Cry a little tonight, it's OK, tomorrow brings I don't know what...

for you, I wish you the best.

Drew

Offline Longislander

  • Member
  • Posts: 2,489
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2007, 12:24:01 am »
Hi Drew,

This is still a relatively new chapter in your life. It's perfectly reasonable to like the calmness while you feel your way around. And you will find your way. There's alot to you, it shows in your posts.

Soon you will figure out what path to take next. Something that will jump-start you could be around that next bend.

Good luck with tomorrows results. Let us know.

Paul
infected 10/05 diagnosed 12-05
2/06   379/57000                    6/07 372/30500 25%   4/09 640/U/32% 
5/06   ?? /37000                     8/07 491/55000/24%    9/09 913/U/39%
8/06   349/9500 25%              11/07 515/68000/24     2/10 845/U/38%
9/06   507/16,000 30% !          2/08  516/116k/22%    7/10 906/80/39%
12/06 398/29000 26%             Start Atripla 3/08
3/07   402/80,000 29%            4/08  485/undet!/27
4/07   507/35,000 25%            7/08 625/UD/34%
                                                 11/08 684/U/36%

Offline SoSadTooBad

  • Member
  • Posts: 267
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2007, 12:33:05 am »
Drew - I can relate - 6 months on meds for me - and both times I have had labs done, I have been very happy with the result.

I can tell you that I was not able to resist buying a new car - and it did wonders for my morale - was less kind to my bank account - LOL...  Sometimes you need to do something just for the hell of it, if it makes you happy.


Offline Blixer

  • Member
  • Posts: 712
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2007, 01:08:00 am »
Perhaps this is life.  This sadness, this doubt, this messiness... this is good.  Breathe deep.  Live.  Cry a little tonight, it's OK, tomorrow brings I don't know what...

Drew,
I can definately identify with nearly every word you wrote.  You expressed things so clearly.  Maybe it is a "midlife" thing.  Maybe it is a reorientation.  Maybe it is realizing our mortality.  Maybe it is a point to determine just exactly what it is that is most important to us right now and going after those things.

Best of luck! There are several of us thinking similar things.  As you find new insights I'll look forward to hearing them.

David
Diagnosed 1/9/06
8/27/2007 CD4 598, 29%, VL 58 (72 wks)
11/19/2007 CD4 609, 30%, VL < 50 (84 wks)
2/11/2008 CD4 439, 27%, VL <50 (96 wks)
5/5/2008 CD4 535, 28%, VL <50 (108 wks)
10/20/2008 CD4 680, 28%, VL <50 (132 wks)
Changed to Atripla in 2012
1/14/2013 CD4 855, 35%, VL <40

Offline lydgate

  • Member
  • Posts: 1,022
  • Virgin, can't drive
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2007, 02:13:03 am »
Drew,

It's late and I loved reading your post and I'm a bit teary too; which is to say I don't know how best to respond. I don't think you were setting forth a thesis so I'm going to respond with some autobiography as well, and I hope that won't be construed as selfish or hijacker-ish.

I feel lucky too, my numbers are good, the doctors tell me I might not need meds for years or ever (too soon to predict that of course). I'm 34, I've been around the block.  I'm a grad student who hates being a grad student, and this is the fourth university I'm attending. I know academia well, and know also the sense of Feeling Old when faced with hordes of undergraduates day after day.

At 34, I too am in the best physical shape I've been in my life. (Funny how a virus made me go to the gym frequently.) I, too, have been on a few dates. No romance in sight though; but hell yes, a lot of online hooking up.

Finally, I know what it's like to feel depressed. Seriously and clinically depressed. My first ghastly episode was when I was 10 years old. For no discernible reason. I know I'll be on anti-depressants for the rest of my life (well, probably).

You're not whining. Not at all. Thank goodness for posts like these. If your melancholia has to do with Sustiva -- here's hoping that a few more weeks will clarify things. There are other med choices, as you know.

Well, I have more to say, but I'll save that for later. I'm pretty sure your lab results are going to be great.

Jay



Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

George Eliot, Middlemarch, final paragraph

Offline stevevaboy

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  • Posts: 60
  • In disguise ;>)
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2007, 02:37:19 am »
Well I certainly know I'm not alone with these same feelings.  I'm just at that age or stage in life where I'm constantly thinking, "Okay, now what?" and I just don't have any answers.  I shouldn't complain, numbers are great, I feel pretty good most of the time, stay physically active and I'm in great shape.  I date quite a bit, hook-up as needed, have good friends, but still....

NOW WHAT??

I often say to myself that I'm just plain ol' bored!  What in the hell can I do to jump-start and excite the rest of my life??? I just don't freakin' know!  I also have noticed a slowing of the mental processes as well and I do suspect a lot of my "changes" must have some relation to the meds, but not much I can do about it since my life basically depends on them.  I guess I have to accept the trade-off for getting an extended life.

I'm there with ya guys!  I guess it's just a day at a time until it's determined that our time is up.  Let's just try to live life to the fullest!

Steve
;0

Offline poet

  • Member
  • Posts: 934
  • Poet living and working in Central Maine
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2007, 07:57:58 am »
Hey Drew, here is my attempt:

You said: 'I am a little nervous (about getting your lab results).  I think anyone who has changed meds as you have feels this way and may still feel this way for a few more sets of lab results.  Given that you are on Atripla and what we have read here, the results should be good.

Trying to sort out what might be Atripla and what might be something else: You have a hard time getting out of bed; 'my head is full of cotton.'  The latter, given that I am on Sustiva, sounds like the drug.  The former sounds like sameness: the same (however great) job; the same (however successful) work-out; the same house; the same aloneness (which dating breaks up but doesn't resolve. 

You said that you are fighting the urge to buy a new car: newness.  In my case, to get over the sameness, I allowed myself to look at a house.  Not buy.  Look at.  It broke up the sameness pattern because I could then think about renovations, etc.  That house versus this cottage.  Remember what they say about going to the gym?  Vary your routine or you may find it becoming so boring that you stop going (said the swimmer who would do laps from one side of the pool to the other and then back :).  Teaching is what it is, but if you can find new material to add, a new angle on the same material.  And I, too, found living among NYU students kept me feeling younger and fresher.  Absorb some of it?

You said: 'I also want more from life, but I am not sure what it is now and where to go... I just don't always know where that path is.'  Yes: 'know thyself.'  Ask any writer or (fine arts) painter or composer or dancer; ask anyone in the arts WHY do you do what you do, given the lack of income: because I HAVE to do it.  Your answer to your question will arrive one day like Harry Potter's owl with no notice but with the absolute sense that you HAVE to do whatever it is.  And your frustration is that of any writer who is stuck without the new project fully formed in front of him or her.  Nothing to write about until it pops in his or her head.

You said: 'Sometimes I look at stacks of work and feel overwhelmed or I sit down to work on a paper and I can't focus... and sometimes... deadlines and things creep up on me like yellow ghosts...I push myself and push and the brain gets going...  I guess I am scared that it just doesn't get going like it used to.  Perhaps this insecurity feeds into a complex... as an artist.'  Right.  The artist confronting the sheet of blank paper.  The writer confronting the sheet of blank paper.  Will something happen?  Will something come into the brain this time?  Which is why, in my case, reading a paragraph of, say, Virginia Woolf writing in her diary about writing is enough to get my brain going. 

You said: 'I have been single for a few years and it makes me feel selfish.  I can have everything the way I like it all the time.  I don't know if that is so healthy.  Do you know what I mean?'  Yes.  It is one of my concerns for guys who are dating or 'trying' to date.  Being a couple means negotiating, allowing compromise, having to make joint decisions about a movie or a house.  But you are aware of this.

You said: 'I feel like things are more of a routine, even though I am enjoying this calmness.'  Yes, this is the problem with sameness (see above).  You continued: 'I don't know what I am doing.  Am I set on automatic?  Just following the bend, the curve?'  Ditto.

If you can write, write out where this person goes.  Follow this person along and see what happens.  In your mind.  Or, as an artist, draw him or make him a her and draw her.  Find the lines and colours.  Start a series and see where that takes you.  Wishing you all the best, Win

Drew
Winthrop Smith has published three collections of poetry: Ghetto: From The First Five; The Weigh-In: Collected Poems; Skin Check: New York Poems.  The last was published in December 2006.  He has a work-in-progress underway titled Starting Positions.

Offline bravebuddharich

  • Member
  • Posts: 179
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2007, 08:47:25 am »
Yes, perhaps this is just life, and try to remember that for most of us who are poz the disease makes us more tired than most people. I love your attitude, and wish I had more of it myself. The love for others. (I always fall for caretakers, guys who do jobs that help others). I understand the midlife crisis, I'm 4 years older than you are, and I am going through what the hell do I want to do if I'm not dying any time soon?? I can't figure any of it out, it just goes in endless circles!! And I understand what you say about being single, doing whatever you want; I haven't been on a date in such a long time, but i want the companionship of a lover and esp. of a best friend, so I am trying hard to get over my fears (realistic ones), and just go for it! I found your post very inspirational and helpful - thanks so much for posting it!

Metta,
Rich

Offline rick21007

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  • Posts: 286
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2007, 09:28:58 am »
Hey Drew---you write eloquently about things we all feel---thankyou for this gift. What a beautiful heart you have, my friend!

hiv shows up uninvited, unannounced in our lives and changes everything from the moment we first are told the diagnosis.  But in the same way other things, wondrous, awesome things also come into our lives often as unexpectedly--forgotten dreams that come to fruition.

Expect the unexpected.  Live in the moment with one eye to the horizon. And remember joy is a season of life that comes round again.

Rick




Offline woodshere

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  • ain't no shame in my game
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #9 on: January 09, 2007, 10:10:10 am »
Hey Drew,

"I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning...... I really enjoy sleeping.  But once I get up and get going things get done."

This sounds very similar to what I have gone through for years, way before I became HIV+. And yes while being pos tends to make us a little more tired it might be something not related to HIV at all.  My problem was related to my thyroid or basically lack of a working thyroid.  While the normal number is 0.350 - 5.5 mine was over 90 when I started my HIV meds last year and now has just barely (5.47) reached the normal range.  I am no longer tired all the time and I have little trouble getting out of bed.  Having good thyroid numbers also has dramatically helped my other numbers.  The thyroid panel is not a normal test performed when your labs are done, I always have to remind the nurse to make sure to run this test.  Just wanted to throw this out as a possibility.

One final thought, as my doctor wrote out a prescription for Wellbutrin XL he said, "Who wouldn't be a little depressed....." 

Cheers,
Woods
« Last Edit: January 10, 2007, 10:41:57 am by woodshere »
"Let us give pubicity to HV/AIDS and not hide it..." "One of the things destroying people with AIDS is the stigma we attach to it."   Nelson Mandela

Offline ndrew

  • Member
  • Posts: 695
  • ....-.-.-.-.-.....
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #10 on: January 09, 2007, 10:07:18 pm »
God, thank you all!  Your thoughts, stories, comments and all were very touching.  I am so glad to be Living With HIV among such good company.  Being in a small college town, where the average age is like 22, your posts make me realize I miss friends my own age.  And such wisdom of life here! 

I felt really vulnerable about my post.  I thought, "Gee I really laid it all out."  How wonderful to find comfort in our commonalities.  Anyway, I went from angst to gushy!!

AND HERE IS THE REALLY GOOD NEWS!!!

Before Atripla= VL 48,000, CD4 363, 21%

after three months of Atripla=VL under 400 (the doctor said undetectable), CD4 450, 25%

I am going to bask in the happiness at this news and I will be thinking of you all!  And you know, life feels much better tonight knowing I am not alone in this place of my life.

Kindest,
Drew

Offline lydgate

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  • Virgin, can't drive
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #11 on: January 09, 2007, 10:11:22 pm »
Three cheers! That's great news.

Just curious: your doctor didn't order the ultrasensitive VL test, which has a detectability threshhold of 50 copies? It might be worth, next lab time, to specifically ask for that, to see if viral suppression has gone even further (it probably has).

Jay
Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

George Eliot, Middlemarch, final paragraph

Offline ndrew

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  • Posts: 695
  • ....-.-.-.-.-.....
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #12 on: January 09, 2007, 10:15:49 pm »
Thanks Jay, he said he ordered it, but the lab didn't do it or something like that?  I was a bit confused... but I will be sure to remind for next time.  I never knew there was multiple sensitivity tests until today...  as I live and learn!

Drew

Offline AlanBama

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Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #13 on: January 09, 2007, 10:26:31 pm »
You're definitely not whining Drew, just letting us catch a glimpse into your soul.   I can certainly identify with what you are going through.   The only advice I usually give is never underestimate the power of gratitude.   Be thankful for your good fortune, your good health, all that is good in your life.   It can turn on a dime.   Some times, the most important words we can say are "thank you".

And having said that, I'll say that I am thankful that you are part of this group!
You have a big heart, I can see that, and I wish you nothing but happiness and joy.   Practice some quiet meditation, and that gratitude will bring you peace.

Hugs,

Alan
"Remember my sentimental friend that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." - The Wizard of Oz

Offline Life

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  • Member 2005
Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #14 on: January 09, 2007, 10:32:39 pm »
Drew your post was vantastic...  is all I can say right now...

Offline Eldon

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Re: Labs and Life...
« Reply #15 on: January 10, 2007, 12:08:40 am »
Congrats!

 


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