I post these journal excerpts from the past to share/compare how I’m doing today.
Notes for my Infectious Disease doctor
Sunday, July 20, 2003, 11:29:45 PM

Some sort of change in my medical condition has been getting progressively worse for the past several months. I can’t stop worrying: I feel the constant physical, emotional, and psychological stress will dramatically shorten my life span if it keeps up. It seems I’ve felt this way ever since I came home from the hospital after being treated for pancreatitis: worry that a heart attack or some other physical breakdown will result from this.
My partner and family have become terribly concerned because they've been watching my vitality, stamina, and abilities to relax & cope diminish. They also say that I’m looking more & more weak and run-down —truth is, I really do feel as bad (sometimes worse) than they say I LOOK.
—see such profound changes and worry that a heart attack or some other physical breakdown will result from this.
Something very bad has been happening lately though: continual worried to where the pressure is crushing me: I can't make it stop.
Up until now, I've always been very laid-back. I've never been the type to worry about things because I’ve always seen in this as a pointless exercise that drains valuable physical and emotional energy
We’ve tried several anti-depressants but nothing is helping at all.

Physically:

• Very often, my heart feels like its beating way too fast. At these times, I often lie back and close my eyes to try and bring things under control. Often, I can "hear" the sound of my blood in my throat pumping way too hard: it’s like my hearts beating out-of-control. It’s frightening.

• I’m constantly dropping things. I walk into furniture, hit my head, etc. My muscles and tendons feel so tight they could "snap." It feels like the strings of a guitar or violin being drawn so tight that something's getting damaged: me. The tendons in my hands feel like stretched catgut. Other muscles/tendons are being affected in strange ways too. My hipbones feel like are hitting against each other when I move my legs a certain way. The vertebrae in my neck crack very loudly. It’s very discerning. Everything just hurts especially my hands. Especially my right hand. I wear leather workout gloves and the pain goes away. I’m guessing the heat keeps them from hurting.

Current Medications used for this:

• At times I need Ambien to get to sleep sometimes I need ½ Zanax and 1 Ambien to get to sleep—when I often have bad dreams.

• I have panic attacks—like I’m going crazy and am going to lose it any minute—and have to take a ½ a Zanax to calm down.

• Initially, I tried Effexor to treat some of these symptoms, but that really sent me over the edge. Then I switched to Celexa and still am anxious but not as bad as with the Effexor.

I find myself going to the gay.com site all the time now. I don’t try to pick anybody up or anything like that. I just like to look at the pictures in the photo gallery. Just for a hoot I did a search for a 1 mile radius from my zip code and came up with 200 photos. I was surprised and shocked that there were that many gay men in my neighborhood. NOT I always thought we were isolated here in the east end of Orlando. It’s nice to be thinking about sex again. For a long time I just accepted that I didn’t have a sex drive, that it just sort of came with the territory. I thought that I was getting too old too. It’s funny how those thoughts can creep into your head and you just accept them. Well I miss sex. I don’t miss having it control my life like when I was younger. (that’s how I got into this mess)
Well that’s not true. I have to cut myself some slack there. I didn’t really consider myself a whore, hell I was just trying to keep up with my peer group (they are mostly dead now). So I guess I ‘m glad I didn’t keep up with them completely.

I'm totally amazed on how fast 21 one years can just shoot by. I first found out I had the HIV virus in 1983 in Chicago. I was 26 and so naive. My partner had signed me up for a free medical exam for a drug company that was trying to develop the first mass distributed blood test for HIV. My partner Paul and I were part of a 600 participant group. Over the years that figure has dwindled to just me and him. It boggles the gay mind. At first I had am "oh well" attitude. Then as more and more of my friends, lovers and acquaintances were getting sick and dying, I started to get scared. I was self medicating at that time and wasn't really facing reality anyway. I had run away form my home state of Massachusetts when I was 21 to escape the shame of being homosexual, and had totally immersed myself into the gay subculture of Chicago's gay bar life.
I was dating Paul; a bartender at the time at Carol's Speakeasy, a gay bar and disco, and it was a world that was totally new and exciting to me. We had met when a mutual friend, Arthur, had asked me to participate in a bar league softball game. Just a Saturday afternoon in the park with the boys. I agreed and was placed on the Carol's Speakeasy Team. I was in the outfield and the opposing team had hit a pop fly. Paul and I both ran for it and knocked heads trying to catch the ball, and that's how we met.