Monday was my anniversary. Exactly a year since I started on my clinical trial and committed to taking 5 pills a day. An odd one to mark and certainly it wasn’t something I wanted to celebrate, but then in an odd way I guess one should celebrate.

But getting my results from last bloods put me on a downer. My viral load is still undetectable. But after the initial spike when first starting meds when my CD4 jumped from 320 to 780 it has slowly dropped, month by month.

Not one month gave me cause for concern, but the increments have added up to a 200-point drop over the last year and my percentage has risen slowly from 22% to 35.5%

My doctors are happy and I guess I should be also. But I find myself worrying and even that cannot be good for the numbers.

I have never been particularly numerically literate, as my accountant will attest. But even I can tell that it's not going in the right direction, even if it's not drastic or even interfering with my health.

Anyhow after I left clinic I went straight to work, and I had only slept for 5 hours the night before after finishing a job at midnight on Sunday. The day went OK but then the academy I tutor at had its annual company meeting.

The boss went through his usual routine of telling us how amazing he is and how lucky we are to be working for him. And I just realized that I have done nothing but complain about him and the place for months.

I got home at 9pm and after a bit of a chat with my mum I popped a zopiclone and went to bed. And slept reasonably well. But on awakening still tired, I pushed myself to go to the gym and while there I had an epiphany of sorts. Doing a job I love in a place I hate, that takes up so much of my time, and gets in the way of allowing me to develop the other parts of my business that give me so much joy was not only pushing me back towards depression but quite possibly suppressing my CD4 levels.

There is a lot to be said for happiness aiding health and the last six months at that particular part of my working life have been thoroughly unenjoyable

So while pumping iron (actually I was polishing the seat of the machine with the fabric of my shorts to be honest as I wasn’t doing very much) I realized that despite the drop in income that will arise from what I was about to do, the lift in spirits was undoubtedly going to help my mental health. Ongoing taking control of my well-being could only benefit my health in general

So I resigned that day, resigned from what has been for the last 12 months a steady source of income. And to say I am nervous about replacing that income with other things is a little of an understatement.

But the sense of relief is palpable and hopefully it will show up in my counts in 4 months time, so tonight my frame of mind is light and optimistic.

Update.

Got a call from the clinic today asking if I could pop in immediately, as something was wrong with one of my tests results. As you can imagine it put the fear of god into me. I had just left work and was walking towards the underground. And couldn’t really hear which test the nurse was talking about. Now luckily I work a 3-minute walk from my clinic so I really was able to go in immediately.

Thankfully when I was there he was able to explain that there was just too much Creatine showing up in my system and nothing major.

He wanted to know if I was injecting steroids. This made me laugh and I asked him to take a good look at me and tell me what he thought the answer was to that. He also wanted to know if I had started taking supplements for my gym routine or was pushing much harder at the gym. I have never taken an exercise supplement in my life as I feel what takes longer lasts longer. And my schedule has been so busy with work I was going about 40% less than usual.

The only thing I could think of was that there are mild doses of steroids in Beecham's Nightnurse, a flu medication I had been taking as it helps enormously with my insomnia.

Anyway he took more blood but I was able to discover that the rest of my results where back and my CD4 has gone back up to 710, which is a weight of my mind.

Am still happy I resigned from the job by the way

On February the 8th I spoke at a rally outside the Supreme Court of Canada, while inside the court debated  the laws currently governing HIV disclosure. I joined a National call to action spearheaded out of Toronto and helped assemble three people living with HIV to talk about their own experiences trying to negotiate sex under an ill-defined law that has been inconsistently prosecuted by the courts.  Below is an excerpt from the speech that I delivered as part of the protest.

I’ve spoken out on Parliament Hill, at the Human Rights Monument, on club event fliers, and in the pages of Xtra, The Ottawa Citizen, 24 Hours, 2B, and countless other newspapers and social media sites decrying the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. I’ve carried and marched under banners in the Ottawa AIDS Walk and Pride begging for amnesty and understanding for every gay man who chose not to wear a condom. I’ve served on Working Groups, sat in workshops, given testimonials, administered surveys, and debated strangers about the merits of a law that I know fails to prevent new HIV transmissions and in fact helps HIV flourish. I’ve dished out condoms to teenagers and senior citizens alike while trying to undo 30 years of fear based HIV campaigns and sex-negative messaging as an HIV-Prevention Worker.

I’ve been called a murderer, a sex-offender, an administer of a noxious substance, a whore, a faggot, a public health menace, a criminal, and had my dick compared to a loaded gun, because I am an HIV+ gay man advocating that sexual health is a shared responsibility and have talked openly about my own experiences around condomless sex and negotiating safer-sex and disclosure as an educator. Sex columnist Dan Savage once referred to me as an ’immoral piece of shit’ in writing…

I’ve had AIDS Service Organizations pressure other AIDS Service Organizations to not allow me to speak publicly at their events because  they’re scared about what I might say. They’ve called me a “live wire” and “unpredictable”. But I think I’m utterly predictable. Every time I get up in front of a crowd I only care about one thing, and that’s telling my truth. And right now my truth is that I am so fuckin’ tired of fighting about this issue.  

And I think that’s why a lot of us are here, at the Supreme Court. Yes  - we hope that history will be made and that we will be here to witness it. Yes - we’re gathered at the Supreme Court in the hopes that our communities will stop being criminalized. Yes, we want to see poz people stop getting demonized by the Police and the Media. Yes - we want our lovers to stop scapegoating  us when we make a poor decision together.

We’re here because we have hope, after years of arguing science over morality numerous times with our Doctors, our Families, and our Friends, that we will finally be done arguing. We’re hoping that the HIV-stigma and discrimination we encounter every day will be lessoned with a well articulated, modern, scientific perspective today in that building behind me. We want to say “we’re not criminals!” and “I told you so!” as loud as we can to our critics!

But of course, even if the Supreme Court re-defines non-disclosure laws based in science instead of fear, even then we won’t be done fighting. We’ll still have to advocate for public dollars to address our high rates of HIV in Canada. We’ll still have to advocate for our Government to fix CAMR and get generic drugs into Africa. We’ll still have to push to have comprehensive sex education in schools, and file Human Rights Claims when we're discriminated against. We’ll still have to pretend to not be hurt when a trick’s boner deflates in front of our naked bodies when we try to casually mention that we have HIV before things go “any further“. I’m still going to have to fight to pretend that it doesn’t hurt me when they say “let’s just be friends” and push me towards the door.  

But maybe I’ll be stronger to fight those battles without HALCO and a lawyer’s number taking up space on my cell phones rolodex. Maybe I’ll have more energy to be articulate and clever when I’m not busy trying to find a new way to ask “how’s life?” every week in a letter to an incarcerated friend who is awaiting trial for attempted murder simply because he wanted to have an orgasm.  And just maybe I can focus more on my own health and well-being when I’m not busy trying to get the men I sleep with to record the fact that they knew my HIV status before they agreed to sleep with me…”

An estimated 75,000 people in Canada were living with HIV at the end of 2009, according to the Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control. Since the 1998 Supreme Court ruling, more than 130 people have been charged for not disclosing their HIV+ status to their sexual partners.

In the early 1980s, nearly 10,000 Americans with hemophilia, a rare blood-clotting disorder, contracted both HIV and hepatitis C from blood and blood products used to control bleeding. Of those, approximately 2,000 remain alive today.

 In 1985, I tested positive for HIV, then called HTLV-III, at the age of 19. My brother and brother-in-law, both hemophiliacs, tested positive as well. My brother-in-law, Pat, lost his battle with AIDS in 1990, and my brother John succumbed to liver failure from hepatitis C in 2007.

As anyone who has tested positive for HIV knows, the diagnosis brings a great deal of uncertainty into our lives. How do we respond to the emotional burdens, physical challenges, and psycho-social pressures imposed by HIV? I have always relied on my faith and the support of family and friends to get me through the tough times, but I’ve also found solace and inspiration in unlikely area for someone with hemophilia - bicycle racing!

In 1999, I had a knee replacement due to joint deterioration that resulted from many years of hemorrhaging due to hemophilia.  My orthopedic surgeon informed me that my surgery and rehab would be more successful if I could get the muscles around the joint in better shape, so off I went to the local bike shop. I began with recreational riding on the neighborhood bike trails - nothing too strenuous. Then, after my surgery and a few months of physical therapy, I began taking longer rides of around 20 miles.  Then, I purchased my first road bike and joined a local bike club. I was soon able to complete 100-mile rides in five hours or less and found myself putting more miles on my bike than on my car!

I knew I was taking a risk riding in tightly grouped packs of riders, who often reached speeds of 30 mph. I had seen enough bike crashes to know what the consequences would be if I ever went down hard. But somehow, the thrill of competing in an athletic endeavor - something I was unable to do as a kid with hemophilia - made it worth taking the chance.

My involvement in cycling paid off in other ways too. In 2007, I learned that my liver disease had progressed to cirrhosis, caused by hepatitis C. I began interferon treatment, which can cause severe side effects, including fatigue and depression. Like many others with hepatitis C, I had delayed treatment because I “felt fine” and thought I was in the best shape of my life. During my treatment, I experienced weight loss, anemia, and allergic rash problems, but I was able to keep working and riding my bike. Studies show that regular exercise is as beneficial for the liver as it is for the heart, especially for those living with liver disease.  I also use my cycling activities to raise awareness of HIV/hepatitis C in my local community, and to inspire others to go on “living strong” in spite of their medical problems.

In 2010, after nearly four years of on-again/off again treatment for hepatitis C, I learned that I had, at last, defeated the virus, and would no longer have to contend with the side effects that had limited my cycling. I then decided to recommit to the bike, and on January 1^st of 2011, I took off on a 110 mile bike ride to start the year off right! By the end of the year, I had ridden 8,100 miles and set some new mileage benchmarks, such as completing a 150 mile ride in one day, and riding 300 miles in three days.

 I now have a new goal of becoming the first person with hemophilia to ride a bike across the United States, and I’ve begun planning the undertaking for this summer. I began training this year by riding 1,000 miles in the first thirteen days of January. My ride across America will be devoted, in part, to helping to end the stigma associated with HIV, as well as a tribute and memorial to the incalculable number of lives lost to the AIDS pandemic.

Bio:   Barry Haarde, 46, lives and works in Houston, TX and lives with severe hemophilia A. He participates in numerous local cycling events, including the MS150 bike ride from Houston to Austin. He serves on the board of the Committee of Ten Thousand and the Lone Star hemophilia chapter. For inquiries, contact Barry at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or through his Facebook page. 

There are few issues about which I feel more strongly than HIV/AIDS awareness and I take my advocacy/activism quite seriously, for a variety of reasons both globally-effective and intimately personal. I've found Twitter to be a fantastic resource for me in finding individuals, charity organizations, and hospitals/research centers to educate myself, lend support, and a million other uses when it comes to the disease. I cannot recommend it enough in this regard.

But...there's a downside, of course. For all of the people out there trying to educate, inform, and enrich life for everyone, there are just as many ignorant, corrupt, and hateful folks.

So -- one of the people I follow on Twitter (whose tweets are normally hilarious) posted a joke, a joke about HIV. Now, I firmly believe none of us should ever take ourselves so seriously that we can't find something to laugh at ourselves about, even if that laughter is in response to something as dire as illness, death, or catastrophe of some kind. I'm not saying I'm gonna do a 10-minute set of my best blond jokes at your funeral, but I have experienced the cathartic release of laughing at something truly devastating as a means of coping.

The tweet made me curious though; just how far would I be willing to go for a healing laugh? Are there certain subjects that are strictly verboten in any and every setting, or just around me personally?

With that in mind, I started digging around in the Twitterverse searching through thousands of tweets, and links, and blog posts for HIV/AIDS jokes. Believe me, there are A LOT and some of them are so repugnant I wouldn't even dream of sharing them here. Take my word for it, OK?

But the jokes are just that -- jokes. In bad taste? Of course! Not suitable for sharing in mixed company? Most definitely! But there is still an underlying intent of humor that cannot be denied, it softens the blow and makes them less painful, at least to me. But there's a lot of other talk going on out there, besides jokes and the tweets for doing good when it comes to HIV/AIDS. I'd like to share a tweet that stopped me dead in my tracks and caused me deep pain to even read:

"I feel the same way about people with hiv/aids as the nazi's did about the jews."

Now, all I know about the person who wrote this is that he lives in Iowa, has a wife/girlfriend, and generally likes to go out hunting, fishing and drinking with his buddies. I have no idea if there's some context that I'm missing, or if there's some extenuating circumstance that's not easily seen nor any of my business. But that doesn't change how I feel about it, right? Nor should it, if it's posted in a public forum such as it is.

The fact of the matter is, this young man (at least, that's what he looked like in his avatar photo) put this kind of ignorant hatred out into the world. Whether he believes it or not, was joking or serious, regrets it or is proud of it...it's there to inflict pain on anyone who reads it. At least, I should say, anyone who has any respect for the persecution and injustice that Jews withstood and suffered at the hands of fascist Nazis, or the pain, illness, and fear that anyone who has HIV or AIDS deals with on a daily-basis.

There are so many instances -- too many -- that emphasize the extremity of the hatred and intolerance that seems to be prevalent throughout our country these days. I know that I might be a tad hyper-sensitive about the whole HIV/AIDS issue, but to glibly liken yourself to a Nazi and their deplorable attempted genocide of the Jewish people?

And in such a sweeping, generalized way? I mean, I'd almost have preferred him saying, "...fags with HIV...", than to so callously throw all people battling this virus into his vile statement! Again...I'm utterly astounded and generally frightened to my core by this.

But that's what drives activism most assuredly, no? To be so affected by something that you feel compelled to action? I genuinely believe that all of us are capable of creating great change in any number of ways, but most definitely by simply sharing our experiences with the people we care about. So, I share this with all of you in hopes that it stirs you to action of some kind in making our world better for us all.

Where does that leave me and my (usually) inappropriate sense of humor then? I could get angry; ranting and raving at every offensive reference to HIV/AIDS, or find another approach. Is it possible to keep my sense of humor while trying to educate and raise awareness?

Let me share the line that started this whole voyage: "I wonder if people with HIV say 'I've got the Magic (Johnson) in me!'?" I think what offended me the most was...it's just not that funny. So, I replied to this tweet with my own: "No, we don't. We'll sometimes say, 'Let's go spread a little Magic!' though. (HIV Stigma isn't very funny, is it?)"

In a similar vein to the "Fighting Fire With Fire" approach, I've decided to combat this type of ignorance with better punch lines, sharper wit, and somewhat sardonic levity. Activism through comedy, if you will. Will I offend some people? Certainly. Will I make some people think about an issue differently? Maybe? I hope so. As they say..."See you in the funny pages!" LOL!

This post originally appeared on The Bilerico Project 

Jim Swimm is a forty-year-old Texan transplant in New York City: Gay, HIV+ and simply trying to make the world a better place... “ ‘cause I’m a superhero like that”. You can follow him on Twitter @Jims_Whim

I am not always the good guy. I am not always the guy who, because of being HIV-positive, looses out in love. Sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself in the role of the bad guy.  And when that happens, I don't know why but I truly commit to that role.

Let me explain.

The tall guy, David, did indeed ask me on a date. It was your typical date: coffee and a movie. He was very sweet, smart and yes, very tall.  After the date, David did the gentlemanly thing to do, and walked me home. Before you ask, I did not invite him up to my apartment, but he did have to lean far down to give me a good night kiss.

Throughout the next few weeks we had a couple more dates. You should know that I truly liked him, I did. I do. But unfortunately I did not feel anything more for him than friendship. One thing that is almost as hard to do as informing someone of your HIV status is telling someone that you sincerely like that you just aren’t into them. What made my situation worse was that I could see that David was falling hard for me.

So I did what any cowardly bad guy would do in this situation. I said, “I need to tell you that I am HIV positive.”

You see I did not tell David this because I wanted to do a bit of the ole in ‘n’ out. No, I told him this in hopes he would respond with something negative, like: “I’m sorry for you, but I can’t date anyone who’s positive.” Because if he did, I wouldn’t have to step up and tell him that I didn’t like him, like him. Yes, I am talking like a fifth grader, because my actions are clearly representative of the mentality of one.

Alas, he responded with, “Thank you for your honesty…What you just told me does not change my interest on my end…I still think you are endearing and adorable and I can’t wait to kiss you again…In this crazy world it is hard to find genuine sincerely good people…you are one of them.”

I would like to hang my head in shame now.

He went on to describe that HIV was not a problem for him and how he spent time in Africa with kids, a lot of whom were born with HIV.

Just so you know, my head is still hanging in shame.

Since my plan did not work as I’d intended and since I was playing the role of the bad guy to my fullest potential, there was nothing else to do than to continue along the same path. After yet another date where I couldn’t express to him that I had no intent to continue seeing him romantically, I thought that the best possible course of action was to create a little distance. So I stopped all communications. What is wrong with me? (That is a rhetorical question, please do not answer!)

He eventually reached out to me and we are now becoming friends and every time we hang out I feel a twinge of shame.

This is just a little story to illustrate that I am not always the one who gets crushed. As shameful as it is, I am not always the good guy.