Bert and Ernie

Last Saturday evening in the bar

Bert: Have you seen my Ernie?

Nic: No, why?

Bert: I can't find him.

Nic: Did you lose him?

Bert: I haven't seen him all night!

Nic: Dear Bert, there are personal problems and public problems. This is a personal problem....

Battles won, battles lost

The Councillor in Rotterdam responsible for Health, Jantine Kriens, has decided that Hiv patients no longer need psycho-social support.

Why? Because, she says, new methods of treatment mean that people with Hiv can now live to a ripe old age.

So organisations such as Humanitas which used to receive approximately 100,000 euro subsidy each year have been told that as of next year the subsidy stops.

What Ms Kriens conveniently forgets (or ignores) is that Hiv is a very different disease to other chronic diseases such as Diabetes, Cancer etc. First and foremost of course is that it is an all inclusive disease in as such as being Hiv infected means a higher risk of contracting Diabetes, Hart diseases, Cancer etc.

Add to this an almost universal stigma associated with Hiv and its hardly surprising when one finds out as a newly infected Hiv+ person that the world is not a very safe place any more.

Psycho-social support for Hiv+ people is at least as necessary today as it ever was. Especially for Gay men with Hiv for so many reasons that I've talked about before.

The Schorer Stichting doesn't/won't do it at a National level so it is left to small local organisations to carry the burden, and it is these organisations that will feel the knife in the next few years.

Of course its all about the money, it always is. However this won't be the last time that someone in charge of the purse strings makes this kind of decision.

P.S.

By the way, this is a left wing councillor in a dominantly left wing council. So forget any ideas you had that this could only happen in a right wing country.

Viral Transmission

Transmitting the Hiv virus to someone else is the least of my worries
at the moment. My concern is with H1N1 and the consequences of
transmission to me.
The epidemic wave has begun in my circle of friends and although it
hasn't yet reached my 'inner ring' it is causing me concern.
My throat is sore and the hyperchondria is difficult to keep at bay ;-)

Sent from my iPhone

Changing Meds

Sorry for the extended break, but as you see from the title of this entry I've been changing meds - again.

The side-effects of my anti-depressives where really disrupting my life, but I'd been taking them so long that I'd actually forgotten what life was like without them. But that wasn't why I had to change.

They'd stopped working.

Anyone that has been hanging on in there with me over the years knows what that means. It ain't pretty.

To be honest it wasn't until I started weaning myself off the old pills that I realised how much I need anti-depressives. For the less well informed, its not feeling a bit down, its not having a difficult day, its not having trouble with the neighbours dog.

It is day after day of crying at the drop of a hat for no reason whatsoever without being able to control it.

It is a physical pain in the gut of fear, for no reason, without respite.

It is an inability to concentrate on even the words coming out of your mouth. Stringing words together to make a complete sentence is a nigh on impossibility.

However,

I'm on new pills now that are working and that means I'm out of the danger zone once again.