Yeah.
Part of me feels ashamed though. Like I failed my body, my friends, and my family for not taking care of myself. I knew the risks. I knew about PREP (didn’t use it) and condoms and safe sex and HIV/AIDS. I knew about all the precautions, so it wasn’t a lack of me being educated (not speaking for people as a whole btw). But...I just didn’t.
It was very uplifting to tell my sister though. She cried. She was in her teens when HIV/AIDS became a big thing. She grew up thinking that it meant you were going to die. So it was a great weight off my shoulders to see her face change when I explained current (and future) medications to her and how they handle the virus. I’ve had several people agree that there are various other diseases (most quoted one is Diabetes) that are actually harder to control than HIV nowadays.
And it’s true. Right before my tonsillectomy I was in the hospital for a peritonsillar abcess. The guy I shared a room with had diabetes. The nurse came in to give him his insulin. He told her that wasn’t enough. She, being very clinical, said that that’s all he should need. He stated he usually needed more. She said that they would wait and see. She came back later to check, and his sugar was still too high. They struggled more throughout the night to get his sugar down, since it was very high after he ate dinner. Sometime during all this, I popped one pill in my mouth, swallowed, and fell asleep.