December 2008 Archives

Okay, I admit it: I haven’t been blogging much lately. Why? I've gone to the dogs! I was never much of dog person, but I suddenly find myself surrounded by them. Twelve, to be exact. Four of them are grown, three others are six months old, and five of them are four week old puppies. None of them has HIV (or CIV, if there is such a thing).

Twelve dogs. Forty-eight legs. Fiftty two if you include mine and Eva’s. Twelve dogs might seem excessive, but here on Boracay Island (in the Philippines) living with a pack of dogs seems to be quite common. I won’t bore you with a long discourse on the merits of dog ownership, but watching the puppies grow has been almost as good for my immune system as the meds we all depend on, and I’d wager that my T-cells are WAY up there now. Highly recommended!

So is this the end of “Wishihadacat”? Has the world’s longest-living hetero HIV&HCV survivor really gone over to the dark side? We'll see.

On a (slightly) more serious note, the warm climate here has done wonders for my 58 year old
body. The dry skin that used to plague me during the New York winters is no longer an issue, and the neuropathy in my feet (courtesy of DDI) has all but disappeared.

While much of my present good health is undoubtedly due to the climate here, the most significant change in my life has been Eva, my poz GF. We've now been together since August, and suffice it to say that having a partner who does not fear my HIV has been the best thing that has happened to me in years. Not all of us are that fortunate, but I am grateful that she is now in my life. As much as I did like life in the Big Apple, I like it here more.

To be sure, life abroad isn't all mangos and monkey business. Like all of us with HIV, I am tethered to my meds, and it's a rare day that I don't have some concern about or my future. But call it faith or good fortune, I know that I'll keep on keeping on.

Now if only those %*&$#@! dogs would stop eating my flip-flops...

World AIDS day is upon us, and while reflecting on the medical and social advances that benefited those of us living in the U.S., and on the lack or cost of health care, I read an editorial written by one of my acquaintances here in the Philippines.

As my friend observed, for the last two decades America's power was based on three pillars: soft power - the attraction of the American dream of wealth and freedom; hard power - the only military machinery of worldwide reach; and cash power - the US had the largest internal market of the world everybody wanted to export to, and the Americans had a finance industry that saw to it that the rest of the world wanted to make dollar loans available, to finance the demand. All three pillars are shaking, to put it mildly.

America's soft power went almost up in smoke during the Bush-administration; the hard power has suffered substantially given Iraq and Afghanistan; and the cash power is now vanishing in the financial melt down.

My friend nailed it: the U.S. economy will no longer be the global engine that drives the world’s economy, and there will be more nationalism and/or regionalism. Nationalism and regionalism have always existed.

So what does this all have to do with universal health care?

Empires rise and fall. It isn't a reach to say that the dismal state of health care in the U.S. is but one more symptom of America's decline, where the wealth of a few is preserved at the expense of the health of so many. I fear that universal health care may remain yet one more empty election campaign promise - Washington may decide that we can print dollars to bail out the economy but can't afford to spend a few dollars to keep us healthy. Health care in America may remain a pernicious form of protectionism not unlike one region preserving itself at the expense of others.

The prognosis is guarded.