NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND; PWA Health Group - April, 1996
Horacio Tintos

Because of hospital bureaucracy, I couldn’t get a medical appointment until April, but I had an appointment with a social worker two days after I got my results, and got my blood drawn for my first T cell count. There was basically enough time before my first appointment to memorize all the information the program had given me, so I decided to learn what was known about the illness.

First, I decide to make my life last as long as possible. I’m not going to fall apart or kill myself because I have a virus in my blood. Secondly, I am infected, but don’t want to be reinfected. I need to take care of myself. But more than anything, I don’t want to ever infect or give this to another human being; no one deserves to carry this kind of load. Thirdly, I need to help myself in all aspects of my life - emotional, physical, economical, and social, to try to continue my life happily. It’s a big challenge, but I resolved to know how to deal with and overcome every problem that comes with the development of this disease. Since February, 1995, when I learned I was HIV positive, I decided to do all that I can to strengthen my immune system. I changed the way I ate, since it was such a disaster, so I ate as much fruit, vegetables, and cereal as I could. The binges when I would drink and stay up all night were gone. Resolute in my decisions, I started taking Cat’s Claw and shark cartilage. I knew perfectly well that they were neither going to kill the virus, nor even slow down the illness. I had heard that they help the immune system. I had faith that it would strengthen my immune system, so I did it not wanting to give the virus the opportunity or room to advance quickly.

In the following months I felt well and my T4 cells were around 430, but the doctor told me that something strange was in my blood, and I would have to redo all the tests. Later, he told me that I had two other infections in my body, and then I got red sores on my skin that bothered me when I walked. The solution to this problem was 2.4 million units of penicillin for three weeks.

May was the worst; I was so tired all the time, and I lost fourteen pounds. Besides, they had taken fluid from my spinal cord to see if the infection had affected my brain. I had begun to walk more slowly and my balance was off. Because I was so nervous, my immune system was fighting against HIV and the other two infections, and I was taking so many antibiotics, my T cell count went down terribly, to around 200. The doctor told me that we shouldn’t lose any more time. He said that it was imperative to start to take pharmaceutical medications. I had told him earlier that I would not take antivirals.

I perfectly remember that morning in the hospital when I had a long, serious talk with my doctor about the medicines he wanted me to start taking. The decision was to take AZT with 3TC, because, as he explained, they had been shown to block or slow down the virus, and in the best cases, raise T4 counts. I felt like a marionette, slowly nodding my head whenever I thought I should, acting like I knew why my doctor was being so adamant. For the first week I only took AZT, three times a day. I was told to take it alone so my body could get used to it, and to begin 3TC later.

I also had to take Bactrim as a prevention against a bunch of respiratory problems that are common and devastating for HIV positive people. He told me that a high percentage of the people’s bodies reject Bactrim, for reasons that were not understood. "If you seem to have an allergy to it, stop taking it and we’ll find something else that you can take."

Since the first week of taking AZT, I felt like I had poured Drano into my stomach. My stomach was swollen, I was nauseous, I was sweating all the time, and I had headaches. Even so, I continued taking it for a month because I thought I would learn to deal with the side effects. I tried alternating Bactrim and 3TC, in an attempt to find out which of the two medicines was giving me the side effects. Incredibly, I had no problem taking Bactrim; no allergy to Bactrim and no side effects with 3TC.

By the fifth week of taking AZT and 3TC, my body couldn’t handle it any more - I had lost more weight, didn’t have an appetite, my stomach hurt all the time, I had chills, my body ached, and to top it off, I had a headache 24 hours a day. I spoke to my doctor again who told me we should half the dose of AZT, which I did for another week. I felt so physically and emotionally bad because I had put an iron faith into the combination. I only ever had heard about combinations of AZT and another antiviral. I was devastated, psychologically destroyed because some of my friends and some of my support group had or were taking AZT without any consequences. Why wouldn’t my body accept it? On top of it all, my T4 cells had dropped to around 100.

After another appointment with my doctor, we opted to completely stop AZT. Although the combination of Zerit and 3TC was not very well studied, the results have been fabulous for me. I have no side effects right now. I feel perfectly well, have gained all my weight back, my other infections have disappeared, and magically, my T4 cells, which were racing downward, are increasing with each test. I still take the Cat’s Claw and shark cartilage; if they are not helping me, they are at least not hurting me.

I now believe that it is important to take the antivirals even though they cannot cure a person with HIV, they can extend how long they live. I am also staying with the natural therapies that I take because I belive that they are helpful to how my body functions: how it cleans out the bad things, how it even out the functioning of my body. I think that both things have the highest importance in my body.

Copyright © 1996 - NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND - The PWA Health Group Newsletter. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied or reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission from the PWA Health Group. NOTE: The PWA Health Group is no longer in existence, as per notification in 2003. An organization called Visionary Health Concepts has succeded them. VHConcepts is a HIV/Hepatitis+ owned and operated health education company specializing in providing free HIV & Hepatitis treatment programs For more information please contact Email: edu@vhconcepts.com. .