Okay, a bit of seriousness...

Sexual protection has always been one of the strongest issues within the gay movement, so please excuse the momentary morality within all the fun.

I can not strees enough to all of you to practice safe sex, even when it feels like your partner is clean.

A person can very easily not know that they are infected with something or lie about it to get the sex they desire.

how do i know?

it happened to me.

i dated a guy for a while when i first moved to austin, and after some time together we decided to be monagamous. we both had recently tested negative for all STD's, so we stopped using condoms.

everything seemed great.

and then he went out and started having affairs. because the sex was much better to him without the condom, he didn't use them with the people he was having affairs with. without realizing it, he became HIV positive, and brought it home to me, as well as a few others that he was having affairs with.

I am coming up on the year anniversary of my being diagnosed. October 17th is a day that I will not soon be forgeting, because it was the day my life changed drastically.

my situation is extreme, and there was not much i could have done to change it. i put my trust in someone and he failed me, but my situation is uncommon. most people who suffer my fate become infected through not using condoms in non-monagamous situations.

a condom, while not failproof eliminates the odds of becoming infected substantially. the few seconds of effort can save you from a lifetime of pain.

play safe... unless you want a case of the red ribbon blues as well.

"10.17.02" edit
[This message was edited Tue Sep 2 14:07:06 PDT 2003 by cborgman]

thank you, sawah.

one of the things i most often hear is "i have never met anyone with... it"

well, now you have. it hits closer to your home than you think it does.

if anyone wants to ask questions, i am happy to answer them, and if anyone needs or wants information on safe sex, i am happy to find some.

<--- doesn't really have questions, just wanted to post in here silently, to acknowledge

Chris, you rock.

Thank you for this very candid and honest thread.

In my line of work, I run into people in all stages of acceptance with their diagnosis. I find it amazing that after 1 year you are able to be as open and up front about being positive as you are.

Yet another reason why I you and respect you as much as I do.





....forgot the hug edit.....
[This message was edited Tue Sep 2 14:13:23 PDT 2003 by endorphin74]

honey...

you have opened yourself up to us in great ways...thank you for sharing your situation with us...:HUG:

while nothing i say will make it any better...i want you to know that you are loved by many...and you will always have friends here :HUG2:

the world is a cruel place...and things are so unfair sometimes...but take notice of those around you who support you and love you.

i wish i could find a way to let you know how brave and wonderful you are ...and i will think of you and your strength on october the 17th

all my love...and well wishings to you ...

kelley

thank you teller and endo

Thanks for that, sweetheart.

thanks kell and mel

the thing i most want to stress here is to protect yourself. the sympathy and empathy is wseet, but don't feel sorry for me, learn from it.

i understand where you are going with this...

if i may ask a stupid question...


what was it to hear the news the first time...were you angry, depressed, scared, or all of them ??

justkelley said:

no such thing as a stupid question. ask anything you like.

to be honest, my situation was really different from most peoples.

derek, my then-bf, got his notice, and thus began the nightmare. my reaction then was to go into complete and utter shock. i was at a rehearsal a week before that show opened, and was smoking outside before rehearsal started, and he called me on my cell phone. he told me that the CDC had contacted him a few weeks ago, and he had gone and gotten his tests done, and they had come back positive. i was strong for him, and then once i got off the phone, i went into shock. i completely missed all of my lines and entrances during rehearsal, and eventually told the director what was going on and left. i went to my best friends, Zach and Jacque, at their condo, and pured my heart out, stammering so bad i could barely complete a sentence. once i got it all out of my system, they got me smashed on jagermeister and weed.

once derek got his poz results, i began preparing myself for the near inevitability of what my test results would be.

so when i found out, i was prepared for it. but the intial shock of the night derek called me was pretty much indescribable. it's going to sound trite, but the only thing i can relate it to was the morning of september 11th, feeling the owrld shifting out of control and not being able to do anything about it.

Wow. I have great respect for your candor and bravery in dealing so openly with your diagnosis. Thank you for sharing this about yourself, and for your concern that the rest of us act responsibly to protect ourselves.

MUCH LOVE!

cborgman said:

i think that is one of my biggest fears ...

i mean ...you know you are safe...or at least you feel you are...and then to have that happen...

damn man...im really sorry

holy shit, tackam, i had no idea 10.17 is your birthday. ohh, i am sorry, hon

thank you mad and cloudy

justkelley said:

thanks hon. the biggest thing is to protect yourself. learn from my life.

cborgman said:

yes i know honey...but there is always a chance...

and it takes so long to show up...ya know ??

cborgman said:

Oh, who cares? It's not as if the world stops turning that day. I'm sorry it marks such a hard event for you, though.

justkelley said:

actually, it doesn't. i am glad you brought that up. i can pinpoint the week i was infected thanks to testing. i was quite sick for a week, like a bad case of the flu i could not shake. doctors looked at me, and couldn't figure out what it was. they tested for everything, including HIV, and all came back negative.

it didn't how up then because that was the intial infection. 2 weeks later, derek's tests came back positive, and 4 weeks later mine came back poz.

it will show up in a test pretty quickly.

and tests are often provided free of charge.

cborgman said:

So wait, the 6 month thing isn't true anymore? That's news to me.

Or is it just that it can take up to 6 months for the antibodies to show up. . .?

if i am correct in my memory, the longest window for it to show up is 3 months. i could be wrong.

Alright...questions...

Are you going to die prematurely? How do you feel about that?

cborgman said:

I'm sure that the tests have become more sophisticated and sensitive (ie. able to detect lower levels of antibodies) over time.

teller said:

probably. i am in fine health now, and so far have been doing fine numberwise, but my immune system has always been a bit under the average, and eventually it will probably drop considerabley and i will contract some kind of bizarre disease because my immune system will be considerabley weakened.

since i was a child i have had premonitions that i would not live past 45, so in a way it is kind of comforting to know what the cause will likely be.

how do i feel about it? well, it kind of sucks, but i am not gonna let it get me down.it has had a very positive effect (lame pun ) on me in the sense that it has gotten me much more motivated in my life.i am actually doing a lot of writing, something i was never focused on before.

people respond to it very differently. my doctors and therapists and whatnot have all repeatedly told me how amazed they were by my handling of it. aside from mass chaos the night derek got his results i have shed no tears, and been okay with it. within days of my results coming back, it was pretty much life as normal. i used to go to support meetings, but found they just brought me down. i would go in to those only having been diagnosed two weeks prior and find that many of the people in the group had been diagnosed for years and were struggling with it.

but this is not the norm. most people deal with it pretty painfully. i have had a lot of magor curveballs thrown at me in life, so something like this was pretty easy for me to put into perspective. the biggest thing that has kept me up about it is telling myself "worse things happen to better people"

damn...it still seems tragic.