21 June, 2004 - 12:52

I've been thinking about viral strain recently. Apparently there are innumerable viral strains of HIV, the most recent of which are resistant to about 50 percent of the current classes of antiretroviral medications.

The conference was heavy, amazing, reality-checking and inspiring. Meeting someone who was 14 years old when she contracted HIV, HEPC and herpes was phenomenal. She almost died once but is now totally healthy and on a very powerful cocktail of drugs (30 capsules per day). My 35 year old roommate was on a three-therapy cocktail and had lost a lot of weight in his legs, face and arms.

I'm going back in to the doctor's office tomorrow to ask to have an HIV viral load test to really find out what is going on. This past week has been riddled with weird symptomatic fucked-up ness like seeing spots, tinnitus, extreme fatigue and arthritis. It's been a month since it all started and this is getting too weird. I stopped worrying when I got the negative p24 test and that's immediately when everything else happened.

So I'm back to Square One.