Surviving HIV AIDS

This page is dedicated to my story of HIV and AIDS and how I feel that I have survived. Anything that I say is not to be construed as medical advice. I am not a person in the medical community. I only provide my story and thoughts as informational.

I was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1984 and as such am a long term survivor. I have been very close to death on a couple of occasions; however, I have rebounded each time. In 1985 I had lymphadenopathy which is a swelling of the lymph nodes and it continued on for three month. I was in bed much of the time counting my blessing and being thankful for the good things in my life.

In 1985 I also had oral thrush, strep B, and oral herpes all at the same time in my mouth and throat. It was very difficult to swallow and had to gargle with a drug like novacaine. Here again it was about three months until I recovered from this massive infection.

In 1986 I came down with shingles or herpes zoster. This is an excruciatingly painful disease. The infection started from a nerve in my back and spread out from there to my belly and down into my groin. It also went up my chest and down my left arm. They put you on drugs for pain but nothing can stop it – it just makes you care less about it. With good medical care I did recover in about 4 months without any scars.

My last big opportunistic infection was histoplasmosis. This bug gets into the lungs, blood stream, bone marrow and also possible the brain. Without immediate treatment you will begin losing weight from all of the fever sweating that you do. I lost about 38 pounds in a months time. Each morning I got up on the scale and each time more weight had disappeared. I was placed in the hospital for about a week to start my recovery. The drug was awful. Unfortunately when I got well so did my weight. This was in 1995 and except for prostate cancer I have been in pretty good condition.

If you have had sex with unknown partners, remember everyone they have had sex with is a possible exposure to HIV. Anonymous testing is available and should be done as soon as possible. The site below will take you to a place that you can test via mail order. Otherwise, look up a Aids Support Organization and find out where testing is available.

The below chip will take you to a site where, if you should want to, you can purchase a home test kit. They will provide you all the directions and how to have the test analyzed.

A great site to look into, particularly if your local and live in Hawaii is “dacoconutwireless.com.” This site was created by a local man who has put a lot of work into HIV AIDS. Looking at it may inspire others to do the same.

Tags: AIDS, HIV, Long Term Survivor, Robert Zimmer, Survival AIDS