In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Diagnosis 31 Diabetes?Cholesterol?SomethingElse? Hoping to reassure myself, early on, I told the nurse at the hospital that in the long run I’d rather be HIV positive than have diabetes. I tried very hard not to wonder too much what her perturbed expression actually meant, but it has left me with an uncomfortable, lingering doubt ever since. Other people, too, tried their best to sound reassuring, although it wasn’t clear who it was they were trying to reassure sometimes, me or themselves. I’m guessing both. Let me be clear: the irritation I felt toward my friends now and then was the result of my own confusion, not of anything wrong they might have done. If they appeared collected and reasonable, I blamed them for dismissing the seriousness of what was happening to me; if they seemed distressed,they were at fault for freaking me out needlessly.The poor things just couldn’t win. In truth, however, the shock wasn’t mine alone, and my friends, too, had a lot to process in those early days. I expected (and received ) support from them and didn’t always realize that they needed some as well. They often gave me something along the lines of “Some people have high cholesterol and they have to take a pill every day or they’ll die. Today, it’s the same thing with HIV.” There’s some truth to that, and if anything I appreciated the kindness. It stemmed from a desire to show that HIV is not something that marks you as radically different—­even though the mere fact of implying as much confirms that it does, if not to my friends perhaps. Somehow these casual dismissals, affected or not and well intentioned as they were, seemed as inappropriate as unwarranted fears of my impending death.A friend of mine, who is also HIV positive, once told me in response to my frustration with such reactions, “To have HIV isn’t a catastrophe but it isn’t nothing either,” an observation I take to be both comforting and perplexing; comforting because having to choose between nothingness and catastrophe feels a bit like deciding between chicken-­feta sausage and baked brie with a mango-­ ginger reduction: you look down at the menu wondering how on earth your life could turn into such a pile of crap; perplexing because it still leaves a deafening silence halfway between two notions that stubbornly resist all easy attempts to put them into words. If it isn’t a catastrophe and it isn’t nothing, then what the hell is it and how can I talk about it? I don’t know, really, but I don’t think it’s like cholesterol. No one feels nervous in your company because you have high cholesterol. Right? 32 Diagnosis (Update: My cholesterol level has now risen to such levels that, in light of new statistics indicating that otherwise healthy people living with HIV have a tendency to drop dead of heart attacks for no apparent reason, I now have to take another pill every day.) ...

Share