Just a few hours ago I turned 53 years old.  How in the hell did that happen?  I will also be somewhere close to living with HIV/AIDS for nearly 15 of those years.  What is really amazing is that I have been on the same antiretroviral regimen for this entire time.  However, after more than a few blips on my HIV radar screen I have come to realized it is time to change medications and I am scared shitless.  (For all of you who have been down this road many times I am going to ask you to stop shaking your heads in disbelief.  I don’t know why my meds worked for so long or so well, but the fact that they did I am grateful – but I am also scared.)

I always knew this day would come, but as the years went by and my numbers stayed great I guess I thought I would become the exception to the rule and not need to change.  I love my wishful thinking…after all it is wishful thinking that grabbed me and suckered punch me into alcoholism.  Sobriety made me realize very slowly that wishing for things to change doesn’t really work all that well.  Clicking your heels three times will only makes you look like a fool and will not deliver you back home to the safety and comfort of your family and bed. 

So after over 2,847,000 milligrams of AZT slugged into my body I need to change my regimen.   It sounds so simple.   After all I am an expert in HIV/AIDS and a practicing primary care clinician and AIDS writer and leader.  However, simple this is not.  I feel scared and isolated.  I am having the usual wishful thoughts of simply stopping all my meds for awhile – or even forever.  It just gets damn tiring to take chemotherapy everyday twice a day for over a decade with absolutely no end in sight.  Today I may have turned 53 but no matter how many years I have left on the other side of the dash between the year I was born and the rest of my time on earth I will be swallowing AIDS medications for the rest of my life. 

What the hell ever happen to us in the AIDS care community demanding a cure?  I have not heard anyone even dare use the “C” word with AIDS anymore.  So let it begin with me…I want a fucking cure for my disease!  It is time for the international AIDS leadership (do we really still have any leaders out there anymore?) to get off of their butts, and relight the fire of HIV/AIDS activism because it is no longer on the critical list – it is dead! It is as dead as Sarah Palin’s wardrobe bill search.  It just does not exist anymore.

It is time for a cure.  It is time for action.  It is time for all of us to stop being complacent with the fact those of us with AIDS get to stay alive by taking toxic medications daily if we are lucky.  It is time to tell the truth that the side effects of these medications and HIV make some days a living hell of pain and fatigue that just simply does not go away no matter what you do.  Some of these days seem to linger for weeks.

So as my birthday floats into yet another grateful sunset I remained pissed that we, and that certainly includes ME, have lost sight of our mission to end AIDS.  Daily chemo is only stop gap measure that needs to be relooked at again.  It is time for a cure.  In fact, it well past time for many of us.  Action is needed now.