Hung Up

Everything is fucked up. Everything. I was in suspended disbelief land letting all of these weird occurences of late wash over me. Communicating with Mrs. Illinois, ending up in the hospital with pneumonia, being a project manager and making all that money on my last project, parlaying the transition from project to project agency to agency without a hitch, my New Year's Eve 'kiss,' suddenly seeing 31 and everything being completely normal and my friendship renaissance with A, V and BE. But now these surprises are becoming bad weird. Pneumonia is fine. I have no beef with pneumonia but now the ramifications are starting to wash over me and none of them are cool. First of all, when the doctor first came in to my little niche in the ER, she kicked out my mom and the first thing she told me was that my chest x-ray revealed spot/s on my lungs. Fine. I was speechless and reactionless. Secondly she asked me whether I had ever been tested for HIV. That's when I started to become alarmed while simultaneously feeling like it fit; that's the missing link. I have HIV. She explained that the type of pneumonia that the x-ray revealed is characteristic to people with AIDS, it is usually the first sign that their HIV has become full blown AIDS. That's the worst possible diagnosis I can imagine but at least it is a diagnosis and it felt right in it's awfulness. I told her I had been tested in October. She wasn't going to press me to take the test until I remembered that I had never actually gotten the results from my doctor. I got the results for all of my other STD tests (negative) but since HIV is an entirely separate procedure, the results for that test did not arrive with the others in the mail. I wasn't proactive and didn't call my doctor. She never called me. I assumed that meant negative. I figured she'd call if the result was positive. But sitting there in the ER I realized that just because she didn't call me doesn't mean I am negative. I could have just been lost in the shuffle. I took another HIV test at the hospital. My mother came back in and I told her the news and we waited for the result.

Let's just say it was a long 30 minutes. My mother and I didn't say much to each other. I was laying on a stretcher in a hospital gown with a sheet over me and my mother was sitting next to me in a chair. We had privacy as our room was separated by a sliding glass door and curtains. But still, we didn't speak. Pneumonia being what it is, I was cloudy and fading in and out of consciousness. Unfortunately it wasn't tangerine dreams with marmalade skies. I wondered whether I would become an AIDS activist. I pictured myself making these penetratring speeches with a bandanna covering my bare head to groups of high school kids. I wondered who gave it to me and I dreaded making the phone calls to the men I've slept with and tried to anticipate who'd confess that he just found out that he had it too. That asshole, who is he. I wondered and went through the list. Obviously none of them seem like they'd have HIV but then again, neither did I, according to common stereotypes. I wracked my brain for warning signals. Who was reckless enough, who was the most lax about protection, who was I not protected with, who seemed to have a death wish. The worst part was thinking about my poor parents. How awful to do this to them. The money they've spent on my education. The high hopes they've had for me. They faith and trust they've had in me, for me to go and get afflicted with HIV is like a slap in the face times a thousand. They should shun me. I should run away. I don't want them to have to tell people that their daughter has AIDS. I don't want to put them through taking care of me and watching me die. I stole glances at my mom while we waited and it broke me heart. She was stoic and strong and didn't say anything. Finally the results came. Negative. My mom burst into tears. I mustered up a few tears of my own in my exhausted stupor and felt very lucky to have pneumonia and had no problem when my doctor came in and told me they were 'keeping' me.

Now I am not so elated.

I went to the doctor today. I fell asleep in the waiting room. I fell asleep on the table. I told Dr. Lax that I don't feel any better. I don't. My mother told him that I have been sleeping more than I did as a newborn. Remember, I am no sleeper. He affirmed what the lung specialist had told me in the hospital, "you don't have gross pneumonia," and I accepted that bit of good news as I did in the hospital although it is a negative diagnosis and I want to know what I do have. He underscored that with imploring me to see the lung specialist before the end of the week and get another chest x-ray. I'm no idiot. I know they don't keep you in the hospital for four days for no reason. They kick women out of the hospital after they have babies. Then Dr. Lax said that he was taking a lot of blood and was going to test me for everything, focusing on other auto-immune diseases since I have one and having one can put you at a higher risk for another. Then he brought up HIV. He was slicker than the doctor at the hospital. He said, "I realize we've never tested you for HIV. Have you ever had an HIV test? Just want to rule everything out." I explained that they had already tested me in the hospital. NEGATIVE. But I didn't like the insinuation. I don't like me and HIV in the same sentence in the same room twice in the same week. What does he think I have? Of course after my four hour afternoon nap I was online checking out auto-immune diseases that I might have and he might be testing me for. They run the gamut from diabetes to MS to cirrhosis to different thyroid disorders, lupus; basically there was nothing on the list that I would have felt relief to have. I do want the big mystery to be solved but I don't want any of those diseases to be the big missing link. I am happy that Lax put a rush on the results so I get some answers tomorrow but scared that he put a rush on the results because what if he did it because he's that worried. He's a pro, he doesn't give any information out until he's sure. He knows how to work me so here I am in the land of unknown and freaked out. At least I am HIV negative. Sex anyone? I hear it's good for stress.