You can see pain as a sacrifice and actually enjoy that physical pain because you know you’ve gone beyond your previous limits. That physical pain can actually feel good when you are upto something you deeply care about.

You can accept sadness and see it as one end of the pendulum swing; which will surely shift to the other end soon.

You can see anxiety as a sure sign, that your lizard brain is at work and that you need to defeat it.

These would be my cures to the STD. :)

You wrote, “And its like AIDS – i.e. two people with AIDS still can’’t have sex with
each other. It only makes the AIDS in both of them worse. Everyone dies
faster.”

Where on earth did you come up with that little gem? You seem to think that people who are living with hiv cannot have sex, not even with other people living with hiv. (calling us “people with aids” is just sooooo 1990s) All you need are condoms and you don’t have to worry about hiv.

I’ve been poz for over fourteen years. I’m happy, I’m healthy, and I have peace of mind. Success, right? I also have a poz partner and our sex life is great and no, we don’t need condoms with each other.

I have also, in the past, had an hiv negative partner. We were together for eight years and he remained hiv negative despite our full and satisfying sex life, through the simple use of condoms.

To suggest that we poz people are going to make our “aids” “worse” is
just silly scaremongering. We’re not dying faster because we have sex
lives with other poz people, or negative people for that matter.

Quite the contrary; those of us who have fulfilling sex lives, including
with other poz people, are living longer and enjoy better mental health
than those who believe such scare tactics and eschew sex altogether.

You may have read some half-arsed sensationalist media article about something called reinfection, aka superinfection (not super as in super-duper, but as in superimposed; one infection on top of the other), but there have only been a handful of documented cases in the thirty years of this pandemic. These cases have only been seen in people very newly infected where their bodies had not yet come to terms with the initial infection.

There has been no evidence to date that someone dealing with reinfection will become sicker or die faster than someone dealing with one infection. Today’s treatments can deal with a reinfected person just as well as they deal with anyone else. Haven’t you heard? Hiv is no longer a death sentence!

Please James, I’m loving your blog and have become a faithful follower, but next time you decide to use a serious illness that affects many people – including some in your readership – to make a point, please, please, PLEASE make sure you have your facts right.

To do otherwise is a disservice to everyone. To do otherwise when talking about hiv promotes the stigma those of us living with hiv have to face – and fight – on a daily basis. Thank you for taking this into consideration.

By the way, you have inspired me to pick up blogging again. I have a blog at http://blogs.poz.com/ann/

I haven’t posted in quite some time, but will be blogging again in the near future. My archives are still available although sadly some of the photos I posted in the past are now missing due to a server change or some such shenanigans beyond my control.

Otherwise, thanks for the great blog and thanks for the inspiration.

Life to me James is focus on these three things and they fullfill me. Because isnt that what we all want? Fullfillment? A continously growing experience in these areas with the most important ingredients APPRECIATION and CONTRIBUTION bring me fullfillment. If I had to put one of those areas at the top of my triangle it would be Love, because this life means nothing with out it. Focusing Love on Family, Spouse, Friends and Spirituality bring balance within love.

I just got done reading your blog on self publishing a book, I would like to write one someday on those three focuses I will call “The Tri-Force of Life.” As I feel fullfillment in those areas I feel I need more experience to draw from as I am 24 years old.

A good article tho thank you, its always good to keep ourselves in check through introspection and the greatest journey of all, self-actualization.

-Russ Taylor
Olympia, WA

great post dude.