World Aids Day has just passed and what have I done to help? Well, not very much. Battling this disease for fifteen years has taken a toll. The last few days when I should have liked to be connected with my brothers ans sisters whom are PWAs I've found it is a challnege, sometimes beyond my coping skills, to just take the medications every time they are required. I suppose this is a product, at least in part, for a soft upbringing in the West. So much is just given to us in the industrialized world and we forget what poverty, true poverty, is really like. A beautiful film titled Yesterday was shown on HBO the last few days. It is about a small bu beautiful African family and the struggle of a mother, dying of AIDS, to fight the stigma f her also infected and dying husband, her strength in seeking help against odds to insure her daughter's survival, which make booking an appointment here in NYC with an AIDS specialist (not a simple task) seem as if it were of no consequence or difficulty at all - and perhaps it isn't.Perhaps I add the burdens it seems to entail myself.
Not entirely. It is an upward fight to receive medical care in the United States, especially on an income which is insufficent for independance from charities and welfare in order to stay alive. Mark has taught me that one must fight the system, which is in place to allow those whom are a burden, to die. So, with his great help, we have done so for nearly two decades, beating the odds time and time again. yet, I can only feel ashamed of my worry and sckeptasism when i see how so much of the world has literaly no way to win against this disease. A disease which is managable if one has access to medication and the medical community. I am angry when i see people, such as the African family illustrated in the film, die wastefully and uselessly for a manageable disease. yet, how does one efect change?
Mark and I fight, and it is a fight, to maintain our health; secure the medications which are unafordable to us, as well as the treatment at hospital and with our doctors. Sometimes it seems almost strongarm techniques are needed to survive, for to be pleasently quiet and humble in demeanor will insure one's death. All of this costs tens of thousands of dollars for us yearly. Without ADAP and APLA and like organizations fighting constantly for our benefit no personal strategy or effort upon our part would have kept either of us living to date. So, you must fight for the funding and for the access. It takes so much time. It is no wonder so many of my gay friends give up and die. And with this a fact in the West, imagine how futile it must seem to a young mother in Africa or India, nations we send even less help than we do to care for or own though these countries have hundred thousands of such PWAs.
As Asdvent continues it becomes simply a duty to prepare for Christams with a solemnity, stillness and fall of gentle tears, begging with hope to the coming Child, that inHis Love and Mercy he will open the hearts and coffers of the world to save each precious life.
Not entirely. It is an upward fight to receive medical care in the United States, especially on an income which is insufficent for independance from charities and welfare in order to stay alive. Mark has taught me that one must fight the system, which is in place to allow those whom are a burden, to die. So, with his great help, we have done so for nearly two decades, beating the odds time and time again. yet, I can only feel ashamed of my worry and sckeptasism when i see how so much of the world has literaly no way to win against this disease. A disease which is managable if one has access to medication and the medical community. I am angry when i see people, such as the African family illustrated in the film, die wastefully and uselessly for a manageable disease. yet, how does one efect change?
Mark and I fight, and it is a fight, to maintain our health; secure the medications which are unafordable to us, as well as the treatment at hospital and with our doctors. Sometimes it seems almost strongarm techniques are needed to survive, for to be pleasently quiet and humble in demeanor will insure one's death. All of this costs tens of thousands of dollars for us yearly. Without ADAP and APLA and like organizations fighting constantly for our benefit no personal strategy or effort upon our part would have kept either of us living to date. So, you must fight for the funding and for the access. It takes so much time. It is no wonder so many of my gay friends give up and die. And with this a fact in the West, imagine how futile it must seem to a young mother in Africa or India, nations we send even less help than we do to care for or own though these countries have hundred thousands of such PWAs.
As Asdvent continues it becomes simply a duty to prepare for Christams with a solemnity, stillness and fall of gentle tears, begging with hope to the coming Child, that inHis Love and Mercy he will open the hearts and coffers of the world to save each precious life.
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