Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Miami Herald - June 11, 2006
Jacob Goldstein, jgoldstein@MiamiHerald.com
Not long after Tim Barnum moved to New York City fresh out of college in 1977, he became part of a group of seven close friends. By the time he moved to South Florida 12 years later, all but one would contract HIV. Five of the seven would eventually die of AIDS.
"We had a lot of sex in those days," he said. "A lot of gay men were having a lot of sex, and it wasn't more dangerous than anything else, as far as we knew."
Sometime in the early 1980s, a friend from San Francisco wanted to crash at Barnum's downtown apartment. The friend had recently fallen ill with what would later be called AIDS, and he was in town for a benefit to support the growing number of gay men who were suddenly getting sick.
"We were reluctant to let him stay with us," Barnum said. He and his roommate decided to let the man stay, but they took a precaution his mother used to take when one of her children got sick:
"We washed his dishes separately, as if he had a stomach virus."
As the years passed and the disease spread, the light of understanding dawned slowly.
"You didn't know how you got it, or what part of sex you got it from if it was sex, or if it was the drugs we were all doing on the dance floor," Barnum said.
In 1986, Barnum tested positive for HIV. He didn't feel sick, but every morning after he got out of the shower, he checked his legs for spots -- a sign of Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare cancer that often strikes AIDS patients.
"Any mosquito bite, any mouth infection, it was a panic," he said.
But he stayed healthy, and in 1989 he grew tired of city living and weekly funerals and moved to Miami Beach. As the years passed, he found that relative longevity had its own pitfalls.
"I had IRS problems and I had student loan problems," Barnum said. 'When I found out I was positive, I was like, 'Why am I going to kill myself paying those things?' "
That caught up with him when he decided to buy a house in Miami Shores.
In 1999, his immune system began to deteriorate, and the virus level in his blood started to rise. He went on AIDS drugs for the first time. The drugs didn't make him feel sick, but they made his face waste away and reminded him that he had HIV. With time, the drugs slowly became less effective, and last year he changed to a new regimen that includes a protease inhibitor, a much stronger drug.
"Before I go to bed, I take these pills -- eight or nine of them -- and your lips are numb, your stomach is upset," he said. "I have intestinal complications. I get up in the morning, it takes me until 11 or 12 to think clearly. I'm just fogged."
Debilitated by the drugs, he went on part-time disability, scaling back his business of managing computer networks. He's restless now and is thinking of moving to Asheville, N.C., with his partner of seven years.
'At 52, I'm thinking, 'Ten more years? There's a life,' " he said. "I'd say that's pretty good. . . . I would have felt more sad for myself if I'd died in my 30s than if I die when I'm 60.
"But who knows? Maybe in 10 more years, there will be some great drugs out there."
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