Feeling bleak.
Sep. 7th, 2002 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaNot having a great day here.
The HIV post, okay, was ridiculous enough to be funny - say, when he accused me of being a fundamentalist Christian ringer hanging out in alt.poly solely to discourage people with my anti-sex lies. Or when he simultaneously argues that you can't prove that people in Africa are dying from AIDS because they haven't all had Western Blot tests, and that half the people in the penal colonies of 19th century Australia died of AIDS. But scratch the surface and it isn't funny at all. Not when people are suffering and dying.
The other guy who followed up on the issue in alt.poly wasn't funny at all. "Of course, even one case is tragic, but I wonder what the statistics on heterosexually transmitted AIDS actually are. I heard years ago that was going to be a gigantic epidemic, but I haven't heard much about that lately. Did that epidemic occur after all and I've just not heard about it?" And when I gave him some numbers, "11,000 cases of heterosexually transmitted HIV per year sounds like a lot," but he's not sure that it really is, compared to, you know, important things. Especially since people who don't do risky things, like white middle class smart people, don't have much to worry about.
And I just... I was angry when I replied to him, but now I'm feeling unutterably sad about it.
I'm the first person to spread the word that HIV is now a survivable chronic disease, rather than an inexorable march to the grave. I believe in antiretroviral therapy. I have patients and research subjects who have lived twenty years or longer with the virus. I know folks with HIV who are, paradoxically, healthier than they've ever been - because getting HIV led them to give up drugs and other unhealthy behaviors, and because they're getting excellent medical care.
But you know, I've also watched people die. I've watched them get diabetes and lipodystrophies and peripheral neuropathy from the meds. I've watched them struggle to swallow because thrush has overgrown their throats. I've seen them waste away to skin and bones. I've seen their sores that don't heal. I've seen the intractable migraines and the cognitive dysfunction left by a toxoplasmosis-induced brain abcess. I've seen someone permanently lose their vision from encephalitis. And I've heard people tell me their stories of fear and anger and grief and shame and confusion and isolation and bereavement and hopelessness, again and again and again.
11,000 cases of heterosexually transmitted HIV per year may sound like a lot, but it isn't really. I'd like to invite that smug son of a bitch to sit down with even one thousand people with HIV, and look at their bodies, and hear their stories. Then he can tell me whether it's a lot. If he hasn't run out of the room screaming.
I can do it. I'm a good therapist. I work well with this population, and I enjoy what I do. It doesn't frighten me to work even with someone on the verge of death. I don't come home from the clinic every day and cry. But sometimes, you know? It just builds up, and I want to rage against people who don't understand, and throw things, and post in bitter vituperativeness, but under the thin crust of anger is a vast well of sorrow, and I'm liable to break right through.
Someone in my extended social circle is taking potshots at me in every imaginable forum. I just don't have the energy for this. I have no idea what to do about it. Ordinarily, I'd roll my eyes and dismiss the whole thing as ridiculous, but bystanders are being hit with the fallout. Right now I'm in full righteous "let me tell you about people with real problems" mode, but I recognize that that's probably neither fair nor helpful. And it's certainly not gracious.
Exhausted today, for some reason. I napped hard for a couple of hours this evening, and have only swum back up to the surface with difficulty. I said I was going to do some data entry for my dissertation, but I don't much feel like it. I don't know what I do feel like doing, except perhaps wandering around the house moodily checking Usenet too often, eating too much, and watching too many back-to-back episodes of Trading Spaces.
Hey, it just occurred to me that I felt this same way four days into my last course of antibiotics, and it may be the levaquin knocking me out. My last course of antibiotics, during which not only did I feel exhausted and sick to my stomach a lot but the thingy on my breast went from a small painless pale pink bump to a huge throbbingly sore livid red nightmare. Four days into the new antibiotic that was supposed to really help and the damn thing still looks exactly the same, but it's a fourteen day course and I'm probably being unfairly impatient.
Jesus. The whining doesn't end, huh? Sorry. I'll stop now.
The HIV post, okay, was ridiculous enough to be funny - say, when he accused me of being a fundamentalist Christian ringer hanging out in alt.poly solely to discourage people with my anti-sex lies. Or when he simultaneously argues that you can't prove that people in Africa are dying from AIDS because they haven't all had Western Blot tests, and that half the people in the penal colonies of 19th century Australia died of AIDS. But scratch the surface and it isn't funny at all. Not when people are suffering and dying.
The other guy who followed up on the issue in alt.poly wasn't funny at all. "Of course, even one case is tragic, but I wonder what the statistics on heterosexually transmitted AIDS actually are. I heard years ago that was going to be a gigantic epidemic, but I haven't heard much about that lately. Did that epidemic occur after all and I've just not heard about it?" And when I gave him some numbers, "11,000 cases of heterosexually transmitted HIV per year sounds like a lot," but he's not sure that it really is, compared to, you know, important things. Especially since people who don't do risky things, like white middle class smart people, don't have much to worry about.
And I just... I was angry when I replied to him, but now I'm feeling unutterably sad about it.
I'm the first person to spread the word that HIV is now a survivable chronic disease, rather than an inexorable march to the grave. I believe in antiretroviral therapy. I have patients and research subjects who have lived twenty years or longer with the virus. I know folks with HIV who are, paradoxically, healthier than they've ever been - because getting HIV led them to give up drugs and other unhealthy behaviors, and because they're getting excellent medical care.
But you know, I've also watched people die. I've watched them get diabetes and lipodystrophies and peripheral neuropathy from the meds. I've watched them struggle to swallow because thrush has overgrown their throats. I've seen them waste away to skin and bones. I've seen their sores that don't heal. I've seen the intractable migraines and the cognitive dysfunction left by a toxoplasmosis-induced brain abcess. I've seen someone permanently lose their vision from encephalitis. And I've heard people tell me their stories of fear and anger and grief and shame and confusion and isolation and bereavement and hopelessness, again and again and again.
11,000 cases of heterosexually transmitted HIV per year may sound like a lot, but it isn't really. I'd like to invite that smug son of a bitch to sit down with even one thousand people with HIV, and look at their bodies, and hear their stories. Then he can tell me whether it's a lot. If he hasn't run out of the room screaming.
I can do it. I'm a good therapist. I work well with this population, and I enjoy what I do. It doesn't frighten me to work even with someone on the verge of death. I don't come home from the clinic every day and cry. But sometimes, you know? It just builds up, and I want to rage against people who don't understand, and throw things, and post in bitter vituperativeness, but under the thin crust of anger is a vast well of sorrow, and I'm liable to break right through.
Someone in my extended social circle is taking potshots at me in every imaginable forum. I just don't have the energy for this. I have no idea what to do about it. Ordinarily, I'd roll my eyes and dismiss the whole thing as ridiculous, but bystanders are being hit with the fallout. Right now I'm in full righteous "let me tell you about people with real problems" mode, but I recognize that that's probably neither fair nor helpful. And it's certainly not gracious.
Exhausted today, for some reason. I napped hard for a couple of hours this evening, and have only swum back up to the surface with difficulty. I said I was going to do some data entry for my dissertation, but I don't much feel like it. I don't know what I do feel like doing, except perhaps wandering around the house moodily checking Usenet too often, eating too much, and watching too many back-to-back episodes of Trading Spaces.
Hey, it just occurred to me that I felt this same way four days into my last course of antibiotics, and it may be the levaquin knocking me out. My last course of antibiotics, during which not only did I feel exhausted and sick to my stomach a lot but the thingy on my breast went from a small painless pale pink bump to a huge throbbingly sore livid red nightmare. Four days into the new antibiotic that was supposed to really help and the damn thing still looks exactly the same, but it's a fourteen day course and I'm probably being unfairly impatient.
Jesus. The whining doesn't end, huh? Sorry. I'll stop now.
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no subject
Date: 2002-09-07 08:39 pm (UTC)There's a way that you can get close to pain that you don't know, and be good with it, but it requires absolutely at the outset that you humbly know where your knowledge stops. And you know, the people who aren't clever in that way are usually also the ones who make snide comments about how therapy must be so easy because all I have to do is say "uh huh," and "tell me how that made you feel."
As for the drugs -- yeah, that is frustrating. I know my sister's antimalarial made her really super depressed. If it's not ANY better by Tuesday or so, it might be worth a call to your doctor.
Huh. I hadn't thought about antibiotic-induced depression, but it certainly could happen. And yeah, I've already got a follow-up appointment with my doctor for first thing Tuesday morning. She didn't like the looks of the thing either, when I saw her Wednesday, so she's keeping an eye on it.