Saturday, November 17, 2007

Living longer with HIV

From the Toronto Star:
"You can't live your life with a gun to your head," says 52-year-old Gary, who tested positive for HIV in 1985. "At some point, you have to look away and get on with things."

While Gary is rigorous about his drug routines and follows his doctor's orders, he no longer wastes time speculating about when he'll die.

"I stopped asking my doctors how long I had to live 20 years ago," says the Toronto house painter. (Gary asked us not to use his last name.) "And I stopped paying attention to survival time statistics because, especially in the beginning, it was a pretty safe assumption that I wasn't going to live very long."

A lot has changed since then. Not only are people living longer with HIV, in the final analysis most of them will not die of AIDS at all. ...more

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