Since HIV was discovered 30 years ago this week, 30 million people have died from the disease, and it continues to spread at the rate of 7,000 people per day globally, the UN says.
There's not much good news when it comes to this devastating virus. But that is perhaps why the story of the man scientists call the "Berlin patient" is so remarkable and has generated so much excitement among the HIV advocacy community.
Timothy Ray Brown suffered from both leukemia and HIV when he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant in Berlin, Germany in 2007. The transplant came from a man who was immune to HIV, which scientists say about 1 percent of Caucasians are. (According to San Francisco's CBS affiliate, the trait may be passed down from ancestors who became immune to the plague centuries ago. This Wired story says it was more likely passed down from people who became immune to a smallpox-like disease.)
What happened next has stunned the dozens of scientists who are closely monitoring Brown: His HIV went away.
"He has no replicating virus and he isn't taking any medication. And he will now probably never have any problems with HIV," his doctor Gero Huetter told Reuters. Brown now lives in the Bay Area, and suffers from some mild neurological difficulties after the operation. "It makes me very happy," he says of the incredible cure.
The development of anti-retroviral drugs in the 1990s was the first sign of hope in the epidemic, transforming the disease from a sudden killer to a more manageable illness that could be lived with for decades. But still, the miraculous cocktail of drugs is expensive, costing $13 billion a year in developing countries alone, according to Reuters. That figure is expected to triple in 20 years--raising the worry that more sick people will not be able to afford treatment.
Although Brown's story is remarkable, scientists were quick to point out that bone marrow transplants can be fatal, and there's no way Brown's treatment could be applied to the 33.3 million people around the world living with HIV. The discovery does encourage "cure research," according to Dr. Jay Levy, who co-discovered HIV thirty years ago, something that many people did not even think was possible years ago.
You can watch Brown talk about his cure in this CBS video report.
Source:
Yahoo!
Monday, June 06, 2011
"Functionally Cured" of HIV
Monday, April 04, 2011
Three Cheers to Three Years
It’s April. In the snap of a finger, the first quarter of the year just passed. And in a snap of the finger and all the knuckles of a hand, it’s been just over three years since I got myself tested for HIV. Well, whaddaya know?! Three frickin’ years?! Imagine?!
Yes, yes, yes. I think I’ve told this story a number of times already before, but please bear with my reminiscing.
I recall it was the last day of March 2008. It was supposedly the last day the Manila Social Hygiene Clinic was to offer free HIV testing. And just in time, I had gathered all the guts I had to drag myself there to get tested. And like you may already know, I had scouted out the place some days before, meaning to get tested, but chickened out at the last minute.
The second time proved to be a charm. I guess the end of March deadline was the push I needed. I am a crammer, after all. I mean I was still nervous as hell just walking there, let alone getting tested. But I have no regrets getting tested. At all. I got my results two weeks after, in mid-April.
So I tested positive. Oh well. I was fortunate that I was up for the challenge of living with HIV, which really proved not to be as much of a challenge as I‘d expected. I was curious, open, forgiving, and just ready to delve into unknown and unfamiliar territory, and I guess that helped in the adjustment period. A short learning curve before I could say to myself proudly, “Yep, I have HIV, no big deal“.
Even now, three years later, it’s not at all the big deal everyone expects. I’m still not going to die. It’s still not going to kill me. I’ll still be okay. But of course, I can only say all that because I got tested. Because I know that I am HIV positive. And I know what I have to do to take care of myself. That makes things alright.
In the span of three years, I have never been hospitalized for anything. Well, actually, it’s never happened in my lifetime, except if you count birth and circumcision. These past three years have been almost normal. So if HIV were a battle, then I’m successfully keeping the enemy at bay.
Three years. Geesh. It’s been a while, huh? But what’s changed? Well, of course I‘ve been taking anti-retroviral drugs or ARVs, for almost three years as well. It’s a daily habit, much like drinking multi-vitamins. I’m consciously keeping away from food with raw meats and fish, which I never really crave for anyway. Other than that, I’m not giving myself special treatment.
I am still working, in a field that got presented to me BECAUSE I was HIV-positive. As in, had I not been HIV-positive, I would probably not have started blogging, and would not have gotten the opportunity to write for the advocacy called Positivism, and would not even have gotten the chance to dare to delve into the industry I’m in now. So I can say I thank HIV for that. Interesting, huh?
I also have HIV to thank for some of the friends I have. My BFF. My pozzie posse. The rest of the positive community. The HIV advocates. The Yoga for Life community. I was telling W the other day that I would probably be a totally, totally different person on a totally, totally, different path in a totally, totally different place, had I not been diagnosed with HIV. I mean, I’m still me, but different. Am I making any sense? Bottom line, I have no regrets. I’m glad that three years ago I got tested.
Oh, speaking of tests… let me segue.
I haven’t told you yet, but I got my first CD4 test for this year. I was actually supposed to have it done February, but then I was informed that there was no reagent available to run the CD4 test. So I had to wait. As March came, I got the go signal. So in early March, I scheduled a trip to RITM with W. He was having his CD4 done too, along with all the other blood tests like the CBC and blood chem.
Funnily, I realized I fasted since the night before unnecessarily, since I wasn’t having a blood chem done. I pretended I was merely sympathizing with W’s own fasting. Hehe. Getting to RITM, there was no one at the clinic. It was past 8:00 am, and that was unusual. We headed to the back office, and were told that everyone was attending a seminar that week. Ah, okay. And skeletal force was late?! Argh.
After waiting a while, we decided to go back to the clinic. The nurse was already there, and so were a lot of other clients. Hmm, and we weren’t told. Gee thanks.
This was supposed to be a long story. Long, because the nurse on duty was all flustered, confused, overwhelmed and unfocused, probably because there were so many people there, but if you ask me, she was just plain unorganized and unsystematic. To cut the long story short, all I needed was a CD4 count and a med refill, and yet it took me till past 11:00 am. Geez. I swear, I was at the end of my patient nerve.
I waited for so long that I had time to think about how my last six months were, which could determine how I’d do at my CD4. That meant August to February. In that span, I stressed over Christmas, I lost my job, started a new and more stressful one, and so on and so forth. Sounded bad. But this was also the first full six months that I had been doing yoga as much as twice a week. That may have evened out the odds. So maybe I should think about what I’d been up to immediately prior to getting the test.
Well, the day before, which was a Wednesday, I was working stressed as usual. Bad. But it was yoga night, too. Good. But I slept late and got just about 5 hours of sleep. Terrible. But only because I had some safe mind-blowing sex that evening. Great. Still had no clue. No choice but to wait for the verdict.
Luckily, my calf-caressing friend went to RITM the following day. I texted him for the favor of asking what my result was. Back tracking, if you recall, I had just recovered from a CD4 yoyo of 493 - 447 - 493. Being up and down and all around was no pattern to expect. So when calf-caresser texted, I was shocked. My result was… 646. Whoa! Up 153?! I was in disbelief, honestly.
I was as a point where I thought the 500 mark was just taunting me. I’d been so close, so close. So to absolutely hurdle the whole 500 range was amazing! I’m happy. I officially now have a CD4 count of a normal, non-HIV-positive person. Kewl. I need to keep up with what good I’d been doing. Religiously drinking my ARVs. Of course. Doing yoga. Definitely. Having mind-blowing safe sex. Perfect. And just being optimistic and happy. Easier said than done, but the least I can do is try.
Great news without the April fools! Three cheers!
Friday, April 17, 2009
Happy Positiversary!
How time flies. Today is my 1st Positiversary! Three hundred sixty five days since I was told I was HIV-positive. Would you believe that it’s been a year? A year since finding out I’m HIV-positive. A year since my life was thrown into a frenzy. A year since I wondered if I’d even be alive for another year. Almost a year since I started broadcasting my new positive life through my blog.
Thinking back to that very day that I got my test results telling me I was HIV-positive, I remember not being able to do much at work. I was at my desk, but was really more preoccupied with learning what I could about HIV. I’d already heard about HIV since back in high school, but more than the scientific blur that I already knew, I needed to know how it was to actually live with HIV.
I’d gotten to a number of sites that had the information I needed, but none were in the context that I was looking for. They were all sites on living with HIV in other countries – useful somehow, of course. But nothing about the Philippines, where conditions might be different, resources might be different, acceptance might be different, and support might be different. Not knowing anyone personally who was living with HIV in the Philippines, I needed to know if there were any. I needed to read their story. I needed to know how difficult the road ahead of me was going to be. I needed to know how they were living, if there were any living at all.
And so I searched, and searched, and searched, and came up with hardly anything. There were just loads of statistics, and a couple of blogs written by HIV-positive Filipinos who were residing in other countries. Still not what I was looking for. It was then that I decided that I may as well be the first.
Considering that I was choosing to go through my HIV journey without the support of my family and friends, more than half my purpose was that I needed an outlet for sanity’s sake. I needed to speak my mind, regardless of who was listening, but at the same time stay anonymous to keep the paranoia at bay. The rest of me wanted to do it thinking that someday, someone like me might want to know the story of someone living in the Philippines with HIV.
Initially, realizing that I was being read was humbling enough. I don’t know how they stumbled onto my blog, but most of those who started following my story were actually people of other nationalities – some of whom hadn’t even heard of the Philippines before. I acknowledge I’m not exactly the perfect poster boy to put the Philippines on the map. But I think that support was what I needed, coming from people who were already relatively open-minded about HIV. I believe they were the ones who gave me the initial inertia to keep blogging, and keep living.
Eventually, evidenced by the comments being left, more Filipino readers came plopping onto my blog, and some, I think, have been following it religiously. The positive to the negative, male to female, gay to straight, local to those abroad, and from those who were making themselves known to those who chose to remain anonymous. It was then that I realized that everyone was affected by HIV. As in everyone.
Of course, things haven’t all been peachy with blogging. I’ve been criticized before, by the very HIV advocacy groups that should have been making the HIV journey less of a mystery, for being too open about my plight with HIV, as it was allegedly threatening the discretion of others who were living with it. Being told that I was just too new at it to understand the consequences of my actions just went against my natural logic altogether. I never understood why keeping the names of doctors, nurses and treatment hubs secret was helpful to anyone.
By now, I think they’ve realized they won’t scare me away that easily. I can only hope that the passion with which I tell my story has proved to those skeptical HIV-positives that I am no fly-by-night blogger, and that I mean no harm in telling my story. Did they want me to show a more kawawa image of a pusit? I don’t know, and I hope not. By now, their protests have died down, and maybe they’re even wondering why they didn’t think of doing this themselves in the first place.
Almost a year and over a hundred blog entries since I started, Back In The Closet will spin off onto a parallel course, as Positivism.ph adopts this B.I.T.C.H. as one of its resident bloggers. It shouldn’t be any different, just like putting my blog on steroids. Roarrr!
And so a year since it started, my HIV story goes on. It goes on for those who live with HIV. It goes on for those who await their own results. It goes on for those who are thinking of getting tested. It goes on, even for those who are just thinking about taking the risk. It goes on for those who are affected by HIV, which, in reality, is everyone. I remain... Back In The Closet.
