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: 2002-09-08 02:12 pm (UTC)But....perspective is an odd thing. Nobody in my RL circle of friends has, AFAIK, contracted HIV. Cerainly none has died from it. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, alzheimers, kidney disease, are all things that have touched my life closely, and therefore are all things that I pay close attention to - I listen to the numbers, I wait for news of medical breakthroughs. I am a recently diagnosed diabetic, so I really pay attention to that news. While I am aware that there are many horrible diseases in the world, my own focus is directed towards the things that touch my life directly. It doesn't mean that HIV won't touch my life at some point, nor does it mean that I am unsympthetic to those whose lives it has touched, just that I don't put as much emphasis on it. Therefore, when I hear the number 11,000 (I'm assuming in America rather than worldwide) it doesn't hit me as that big a number.
Please don't get me wrong. I am not defending morons. Nor am I in any way belittling the work you do - dealing with the daily tragedies of other people's lives is work of greatness, and I am in awe of your abilities. I'm also not belittling the pain and suffering that people with HIV are subjected to, nor begrudging them the funding and research to find cures. I'm not suggesting that the person you are battling is in any way right - I'm just trying to say that there may be people out there who agree with part of what is being said (the non-moronic part), and that they may have their own reasons to do so
no subject
Date: 2002-09-08 09:38 pm (UTC)This isn't a person who doesn't understand the scale of the problem. It's a person making a declaration that the problem isn't that big a deal because it doesn't affect him, and because HE doesn't think it's spreading that fast, or that widely. (You could accuse me of not telling the entire story here, but I'm really not skipping that much.)
The idiot in question first asked where the "heterosexual epidemic" was. He figured "epidemic" means "it's responsible for a large percentage of deaths". Then he was told it simply means "spreading quickly and widely", and he decided that 11,200 cases a year spread by heterosexual contact in the US isn't "spreading quickly", and he didn't mean those OTHER places where he'd have to admit he was wrong. After a bit more of a reaming of his 'logic', what he *REALLY* meant was "well, people who take careful precautions aren't in a lot of danger, right?" He's also decided that he's being attacked for not "towing[sic] the line" We're probably just jealous because we're part of the masses, and can't see the brilliant things he can see. That's why he gets picked on, you see... intelligent people always get picked on.
To quote Dave Barry, "I'm not making this up".