Subscribe to this blog's feedI just received my first labs since dropping the Combivir and starting Truvada and the results are encouraging. My CD4s went from 519 w/ 24% to 651 w/ 26%. All the other labs were in the normal range and my doctor commented that on paper, I look like a fairly healthy man for my age. So that got me to thinking, had something about me, stayed fairly consistent over the years, which could somehow explain my continued survival and current good health?
I've been poz for 21 years and during that time I have been married, single and partnered, for varying amounts of time, so no constant there. I worked the first decade of my infection and have been on disability in the second decade, so again no constant there. My health has ranged from decent to DOA minus 2 weeks, so still nothing constant. As I kept thinking of attributes, or influences, nothing seemed to fit, until I settled on one very important constant. Ever since I tested HIV positive I have further refined my positive outlook on life and the resulting positive energy that it provides.
I took the term: positive energy, from one of my favorite posters, because I think it best describes the one primary influence that I have nurtured in my life, since my infection. A positive outlook or positive energy; so what exactly does that mean? To me, it means believing, truly believing in yourself and your outlook on life. It straddles a very fine line between delusional expectations and realistic optimism; it is being able to find that silver lining, in even the direst of situations, because often one exists. And many times you can follow that lining to a better place.
It enables you to believe that your medications are indeed helping you, even as you are vomiting from some drug-induced side effect. It helps you to formulate reasonable expectations and modify them, as reality dictates, without crushing your spirit. It can provide a very supportive crutch at times when it seems that you have little else. It's realizing that you can shape and control your own outlook on life and that maybe you can create your own positive energy.
It's surrounding yourself with people who contribute to your well-being and you being just as comfortable in projecting and in receiving that energy from others. It can certainly be found by helping others, because no matter how much energy you expend in doing that, the positive energy will be returned and amplified usually when you least expect it, yet need it the most.
Or maybe it is being realistic about your approach to life, balancing the scale so as not to become either a victim or worse yet, a martyr. It helps you to know that it is all right to be afraid and fear the unknown, yet refusing to let that fear hold you captive. It's believing in your ability to manage your own health and realizing how much power you truly possess over your health. It's learning how to recognize positive energy and harnessing it for your own use.
For me, it's paying more into the universal Karma bank, than what I withdraw. Optimism comes naturally to me. I still believe in the inherent good of people and no matter how depressing the world looks at times, I refuse to become cynical. I believe that positive energy begets the same and that it can be shared. I even believe that not all nice guys finish last.
It allows me to enjoy all that surrounds me and to temper my dreams and hopes with reality, yet unbridled hope always remains. Believe me, I understand my reality; my limitations and I have no delusions that my life is going to get any easier. I do not reside in an Ivory Tower and my feet remaine firmly planted in reality. But I will always have the power of choice. I choose to view the glass of life as half-full and in doing so I control my perceptions and reactions to my surroundings. I like positive and it seems to work well for me.
I believe that a positive outlook or energy, or whatever you want to call it, has enabled me to eventually thrive with HIV. Trying to see my current life without the effects of HIV is fruitless, so I strive to see myself realistically, yet I refuse to give up hope. Given the challenges and the journey for the first 21 years, I can't think of anything that has been more instrumental in getting me this far, than the power of positive.