AIDS

I realized I was experiencing the same denial I had heard about so many times. I had convinced myself that a genetic fluke had protected me against the virus in the 1980s, and that the low-risk sex I practiced would keep me uninfected. I insisted on having another HIV test, telling myself that my results could have been mixed up with someone else's. How many times had I seen this desperate need to believe that the diagnosis was some kind of mistake -- that "I did everything right, so how could this be happening to me?" -- grip friends and acquaintances?

Then I saw the positive result. Even the reporter in me had a hard time believing it. I wrote in my journal that day, "Suddenly it's all as personal as personal gets -- my very person, my body, my health, my life, my sense of security, my fears of illness and death." I wrote that; but I was only beginning to grasp it. Part of me was still the dispassionate observer, looking on, writing about somebody else's life.

Then, a week later, I received more shocking news. My tests revealed a relatively low viral load, likely indicating a recent infection. But the T-cells, the white blood cells that HIV infects and destroys, were also very low -- only 198, compared with 600 to 1,200 in a healthy person. I knew what that meant. It was a fact I'd cited in so many stories. A T-cell count below 200 indicates a damaged immune system and risk of life-threatening infection. I knew that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a T-cell count under 200 an AIDS diagnosis.

I was floored, but my doctor said to forget all the images of suffering and death I had witnessed, because there is effective treatment today. He said that my counts would improve once I began medication -- and that if I took it properly, I could expect to lead a healthy, even long, life. But a parade of faces passed before my mind's eye: once-handsome faces covered with lesions, atop the wasted shells of once-muscular bodies. I had cried for so many young men as I chronicled their stories. Their stories that were now my story.

I recalled the last weeks of Bill's life, when I visited him at the hospital each day after work. I used to feed him his supper and shave his face. I watched as his mind and his life ebbed away in April 1994 -- two years before "combination therapy" and new drugs finally brought hope of living with HIV rather than dying from AIDS. I didn't think any pill could help me manage such a painful memory, or other memories like it, of friends taken by AIDS -- Gregg, Ron, Allen, Fred, Bob, Louis, Billy, Eric, Michael and Jim, to name a few.

What medication could take away the anger I feel each time this country's religious right blocks comprehensive sex education for young people? There's no treatment for my outrage at those who claim they believe in a loving God but hate and abuse their gay children and relatives -- then suddenly "discover" the HIV-AIDS pandemic because it also affects "innocent" children in Africa.

I was afraid of the potential side effects of the medication I would now have to take for the rest of my life. I knew they could range from insomnia and diarrhea to much more serious problems, such as diabetes or heart and liver disease. I was terrified of developing the gaunt look -- another possible side effect -- that Gregg had the last time I saw him alive in 1998.

Despite everything I knew about HIV, I found myself re-reading the most basic information, remembering what others with HIV had said about how information is power. This time I used my reporter's ability to ask questions for the biggest assignment I would ever have: staying alive.

My insurance policy limits prescription drug coverage to a mere $1,500 a year; the medications I would need cost $1,700 a month . So I searched the Internet and e-mailed friends in Europe looking for lower prices. When I found nothing, I scoured the Web sites of organizations that serve people with HIV-AIDS, feeling a new gratitude for their work. Suddenly groups such as the National Association of People with AIDS didn't seem like just sources of information for a story, but sources of the kind of hope I badly needed.

I contacted several people I knew from my years of reporting, to see what they could suggest about getting the treatment I couldn't afford on my own. Cornelius Baker, former director of D.C.'s Whitman-Walker Clinic, was a friend and someone I had interviewed a number of times. He suggested I look into a clinical trial at Whitman-Walker. I enrolled in one in which I would receive regular checkups and free medications for 96 weeks.

Four months of treatment have already suppressed the virus to the optimal "undetectable" level. My T-cells remain troublingly low. But the nurses and doctor at Whitman-Walker assure me that my immune system is rebounding.

In March, I asked my doctor for a sleeping pill for the insomnia that has been the main side effect of my meds so far. I also asked for a referral to a psychiatrist to find out why I'm always on the verge of tears. The psychiatrist said I'm feeling sad because my HIV diagnosis has challenged my understanding of who I am and my sense of where I'm going in life. He said I'm suffering, and it's natural to feel sad in the face of suffering.