HIV/AIDS: Some Issues I'd Never Imagined

[CanadaSue]

A partial synopsis of the article here but it's really worth reading the whole thing & it's not too long.

Initially, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis meant get your affairs in order. Then, we learned to consider it a chronic disease. Now we're seeing that, for unknown reasons, men, (all that's mentioend), living with HIV/AIDS are 'aging' at a faster rate. Is it the virus, the treatments or breakdown of immune system? They're developing conditions, often more than one; usually seen in far older men.

Some now have no choice but to move into nursing homes & some feel forced to go back into the closet, so to speak. They're dealing with often homophobic seniors who don't know anything about HIV/AIDS. Often the staff really don't either.

Nobody expected this or thought it through - what to do, how to handle a population of HIV/AIDS survivors in the long term.

Very interesting read:

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/news...ing-homes?bn=1

[Kassy]

Interesting indeed, thanks!

Somewhat related:
Long-term survival with HIV-infection : the reverse side of the medal
Author: Eefje Jong

http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/...2/UUindex.html

[Sysiphus]

Is it the virus, the treatments or breakdown of immune system? They're developing conditions, often more than one; usually seen in far older men.

HAARP involves taking a cocktail of drugs with multiple side effects. Protease inhibitors and so forth are tinkering with biochemical machinery at a very fundamental level, so it is not really that surprising that some are seeing premature aging and the like.

[rb.]

Damn that sucks.

Here's my problem with this, said with the outmost respect as one of my two best friends has been HIV+ for 16 years, no meds yet. When my grandfather came back from WWII with TB, he went to a hospital specificly (sp?) for TB patients, because it's contagious. I think the same should be done for HIV patients, but more an assisted living home than an "old age home". There's so much PC crap around AIDS and HIV that it affects the afflicted in the opposite way from which it was intended.

[Sysiphus]

But HIV is not spread by casual contact, so why go to such extreme measures? It is a completely preventable disease except in cases of mother-fetal transmission.

[rb.]

Because they'd be more comfortable in being themselves, and no staff worker would run screaming from bodily fluids. Hiding info, or feeling you have to, whether you should have to or not, is a horrible way to have to live. It's also a terrible stress on the immune system. I'm not saying isolate them, I'm saying give them a place of their own, where they are free to talk about thir lives, med problems, have friends and loved ones visit, all without hiding their AIDS.

[Kassy]

Originally Posted by Sysiphus

HAARP involves taking a cocktail of drugs with multiple side effects. Protease inhibitors and so forth are tinkering with biochemical machinery at a very fundamental level, so it is not really that surprising that some are seeing premature aging and the like.

HAARP...shouldn't that be HAART?

[Sysiphus]

HAARP...shouldn't that be HAART?

Lol - you are right; wrong acronym.