Life sucks - life costs too much money

Sooooo stressed with life right now. Of course finding out your HIV positive is not easy. My financial situation sucks balls right now (past due on my credit cards, collections calling). Teeth are bothering me: my bridge is loose and I haven't been able to chew on the right side of my mouth for two months now - can't afford to go to the dentist.

My car is a few thousand kilometers behind schedule for maintenance. I called to find out how much my next servicing would cost for my car, about $3oo. Apparently the next servicing is the big one, where they check everything - of course it is!

I was doing my taxes and I am going to owe between $400 - $500. WTF! Why the hell does everything take so much money.

My first appointment with the infectious disease specialist was supposed to be March 26th, but has been pushed back to March 31. I just want to get it over with. Nervous about my blood tests coming back. I can't stop thinking "what if I have to go on meds right away?" How the hell will I afford that?

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Told My Boss

A couple of days after I found out I have HIV, my boss at work asked me if I wanted to help out with some supervisor duties. Basically, just opening and closing two nights a week as a supervisor. I wouldn't manage a team of people or have the same responsibilities. I told her I wanted to think about it. I didn't tell her why I needed to think about it.

I was leaning towards saying no, thinking right now wouldn't be a good time as I have a lot going on in my life right now, but when I found out, I only have to do supervisor duties twice a week and not manage a team, I thought why not, it would be good distraction from all the complaint calls I take. Maybe for part of my day I wouldn't get yelled at because we don't dice our ham.

I started training today, and I decided to show up a half an hour early to talk to my boss. I decided I was going to tell her that I am having "health issues" and that if I do help out with supervisor duties I need to make sure I have a consistent schedule (they like to have your schedule all over the place) and that I may need some flexibility with doctors appointments. I went into her office and told her that on March 1st I got some bad news at the doctors. She said "what happened?" I was going to say "I am not ready to say what is going on" but instead out of no where it just came out "I have HIV."

I think I blurted it out knowing I could trust her. I used to work for this company seven years ago and I always had a good relationship with her. She told me for any scheduling needs to come to her, she is more than willing to be flexible with doctor's appointments and such. She told me "make sure you come to me, it's no one else's business." Then she said "I just want you to know, if you are ever having a tough time, you just need to vent and rant and not have someone say anything just have someone listen, you can come into my office anytime to do that." I had tears in my eyes.

Funny story of the day:

I am sitting with my co-workers and we are talking. I rub my eye because it's itchy and all of a sudden my eye lid flips. You know how people can flip there eye lid inside out? Well mine flipped inside in, if that makes sense. My eye lid somehow flipped and then my eye lashes were stabbing my eye ball. I started freaking out ( I have a thing with my eyes, eyes creep me out. I can't even put eye drops in, I have to keep my eye closed, put the eye drops on my eye and slowly blink them in) and was trying to put my phone on not available so a call wouldn't come in. My co-workers are laughing at me and I hear only you, this would only happen to you. I guess I should mention that I am known as the accident prone one (I once poked my eye with the headset). So I am trying to un-flip my eye lid but having issues because I am grossed out from the feeling and having to touch it. I finally un-flipped it and then my eye was itchy the rest of the night - I was too scared to rub it again.

I showed up for my appointment, yay!

So, I show up for my appointment. It probably helped that my good friend was coming with me for support. We met a half an hour before the appointment at a coffee shop.

I started the day, not wanting to get out of bed. I love sleep and I love my bed. I truly do. BUT, I got my ass out of bed at 11:30 am, I can't remember the last time I got out of bed before noon. Oh wait I remember, it was when I had a horrible experience at an employment agency and I was told I couldn't have the job because I had two late payments on my credit report... but that's a whole other story.

So, I got out of bed and had a shower. I then blow dried my hair and decided to flat iron my hair... I know, could I be any more gay! My flat iron is awesome! My friend bought it for me, she's a hair dresser, it's so tiny and cute. So anyways, after flat ironing my hair I realized I was behind schedule, so I didn't have time for breakfast.

I was two minutes late meeting my friend; I was late for good reason though, I parked 10 blocks away for free parking and walked all the way to meet her, it was a way to get exercise..... yes that's why I did it... exercise haha.

I ordered a caffee latte, I should mention I hate the taste of coffee. I was assuming it would be creamy like chai lattes I get, but oh no, I was wrong. Coffee to me, tastes like dirt. So I went to the counter to get sugar; well I almost put salt packets in my coffee, but thankfully the coffee gal working pointed me in the direction of the sugar. I put some sugar and milk in it... and then it tasted wonderful. Now I was all jittery from not eating and drinking coffee. My appointment was at the STD clinic... they have a doctors clinic there. To get to the reception desk, you have to walk down a long hallway. I like to call it the "walk of shame". One of these days, I really want to burst to in an exam room and say "how's that q-tip in your penis?".

So we get to the reception desk and the woman in the chair looks at me and then walks away. There are 6 other people and they are having a conversation. All I ask is to be acknowledged. Just a "hi, we will be right with you would suffice." But noooo that would be too simple. So anyways someone finally acknowledges me and tells me to have a seat.

S0 the doctor comes and gets me and we go to one of the rooms. She asks me if I have a list of my partners from January 2008, oops I thought they wanted from January 2009, not like it matters because I could only provide a list of three people. Unfortunately, most of my partners were anonymous that I either met offline or at a bathhouse. I'm not proud of it, I wish I would have had the ability to seek help for my depression, but I didn't. What's done is done. Need to look forward.

So then she asks me if I would like a book on HIV. I tell her yes I would . She hands me the book. This book is like a freaking text book! It has 22 chapters! Then I get on the bed thingy (I can't remember what it's called, I have had a couple of coconut rum and pepsi lime drinks while writing this... tee hee). She puts the rubber band around my right arm but can't find a vein. The she ties it around my left arm and finds a usable vein. While she is doing this I think about my appointment two weeks ago, when the nurse was trying to find my vein and kept calling my veins little buggers (best nurse ever by the way, I have never laughed so much at a doctors appointment). So anyways, she puts the needle in and jokes that I probably won't need a blood transfusion after. I ask her how many viles of blood she is taking and she tells me 11. I think to myself "shit, I should have had some breakfast." I am staring at the roof and the air vent catches my attention, it's effing crusty. It's all brown and dusty. What the hell?? It looks like someone took a shit on the roof.

Then she asks me what I do for a living. I tell her I work in a call center for a pizza company taking complaints. I go on about how people are passionate about their pizzas and that the world comes to an end when we forget their dipping sauce. She starts laughing and says she couldn't do my job, she would just end up telling people off. So finally she is done stealing all the blood out of my body. She leaves the room via the side door, and then come backs through another door. She says ha! I am houdini! I laugh, and think to myself, wow I am lucky that I have such awesome nurses/doctors to deal with. She tells me they take so much blood to test me for everything and anything such as tuberculosis and stuff. She hands me a form to go get chest x-rays taken, which also tests for tuberculosis.

A few thoughts go through my mind. First one is: this is what my life is going to be, constant medical test the rest of my life, fuck! Next I think thankfully I live in Canada and this is all covered by healthcare because right now I have no money (that is a whole other story I have to talk about).

So I leave the room and go to the waiting room where my friend is waiting for me. We leave and we go run some errands she has to do. We are at an office, she has some forms to fill out. I am standing beside her and start to feel light headed. I remember that I didn't eat breakfast and had 11 viles of blood taken, soooo maybe I should have something to eat. So when she is done, we head to the food court. This is the weakest food court I have ever seen. I am a food court connoisseur. I demand that I have selection! There is like 3 things to choose from. So I end up eating teriyaki chicken stir fry. It was good, but I still like to have options. I come home and take all my clean laundry off the floor and finally hang it up. I then watch the last half of hour of America's Next Top Model and realize why I stopped watching the show.... Tyra is freaking annoying!

Well that's my day, I know I rambled but it feels good to talk about what happened, to talk about the good, the bad and even the insignificant details of my day.

Tee hee. ( I love saying tee hee)

Didn't Go

So last night, I had it all planned I would wake up at 11 am and would go to the local HIV organization for counseling and information, welllll that didn't happen. I couldn't drag my ass out of bed. I noticed as I get more and more depressed, I sleep more and more. I just want to stay in the comfort and safety of my bed. I feel like nothing can go wrong if I don't leave my bed, just stay hidden under my covers. Eventually I got out of bed, but by the time I ate breakfast, I mean lunch, showered and got dressed and procrastinated to the best of my ability, it was too late to go as they close at 4pm.

Tomorrow is my first appointment with the infectious disease specialist. I'm nervous as hell, but thankfully my friend is going with me, so I know I will show up haha. I will post how things go at the doctors appointment.

I'm HIV Positive

On Monday March 1 @ 4:10 pm, I found out I am HIV Positive.

I am writing this blog to share my experiences and struggles with living with HIV, in the hopes it helps others and helps me in dealing with this life changing event.

When she told me the test came back positive for HIV, I didn't cry, I didn't freak out. I just said, okay. I was in a daze. I knew I had been having unprotected sex, I knew there was a good chance this could happen, but it still shocked me. I immediately thought, what did I do to myself.

While I am thinking to myself, the nurse is going on about how it's not a death sentence, I can lead a full life. Then she tells me I will need to provide a list of partners from January 2009 until now. I'm thinking to myself, oh fuck, each time I came to the clinic previously to get tested, I always lied about how many partners I had and if I knew them. She said in the list to try and provide their names and date of birth or at least there age. Thinking to myself, "date of birth? it will be difficult enough providing a name".

Then she handed me some pamphlets about HIV and one about a local HIV organization. Then she started making doctors appointments for me to see an infectious disease specialist. The first appointment is this Wednesday March 10th. During this appointment I am supposed to give them a list of my partners since January 2009; during this appointment I am going to have to tell them 99% of the time, it was anonymous and I don't know. They are also going to draw blood, to run tests to find out what my viral load is and cd4 tests. Viral load? CD4? Huh? I have been doing a lot of searching on the internet, some of it good, some of it freaking the hell out of me. Viral load is how much HIV is in your blood, it shows how rapidly the HIV is reproducing in the blood. CD4 are cells that direct the immune system but are also infected with HIV. These tests determine if and when an HIV positive person should start taking anti-viral medication.

So, she is talking about Viral load and CD4 and I am thinking what the hell is she talking about. She then asks me how I am feeling, I tell her that I have to go to work now. She is shocked and says "I can't believe you are going to work". Not like I have a choice, HIV doesn't prevent me from paying the bills. So I go to work and I am thinking work will be a good distraction, it will take my mind off things. WRONG!

I work in a call center for a pizza company. I work in the complaints department. This lady calls in angry because we don't have a record of her order. She is screaming at the top of her lungs about how she has been moving for three days and her kids are cranky, and her life sucks, and now her pizza hasn't been ordered. I keep telling her to please stop yelling and that I will be happy to retake the order and send it out with a discount. She is yelling at me saying " have you ever moved for 3 days?, have you?" I told her "yes I have, I have moved a lot in my life I know it's stressful". The next thing she says is "fuck you!!! I can't deal with this, and I hear the phone crash to the floor". Then her husband comes on the phone and says in a concerned tone "hello? what's going on?" I said " I can't deal with this! I am disconnecting this call!". Then I hang up. I am sitting there, thinking about how I was tempted to say to her "have you ever found out you have a disease that can't be cured, and then come to work and have to deal with crazy people like you?". Then I start laughing to myself; I am thinking about the husband and the look on his face. He is probably thinking WTF?, my wife is freaking out, the pizza guy is freaking out, it's just pizza.

Then I get another call, woman yelling at me, because the store won't dice the ham on her pizza. I apologize and agree with her it seems weird and ridiculous that the store won't take 30 seconds to dice ham but tell her it's out of my hands, I'm not in the store, I'm in a call center I can't force them to dice ham. She gets even madder and is using the F word every two seconds, yelling at me about how her three year old can't eat the full slices of ham. I snap and yell back " stop yelling at me!!! and then I hang up on her. Somehow I made it through the rest of my shift - it probably helped that the rest of the people that called were relatively sane, lol.

Today it has been one week since I found out I am HIV positive. I have cried a few times in the last week. It's a lot to deal with, I have a lot of anger towards myself, because I did this to myself. Thankfully I have an amazing friend I am able to confide in and who said where do "WE" go from here.

Tomorrow is my day off, I am trying to work up the courage to go the local HIV organization for counseling and to get more information and then my first doctors appointment is on Wednesday with the infectious disease specialist. I will write about how that goes.

So long for now :-)