Memories of 9/11 and Mikel

I tried to tell this story over in Twitter-land, but 140 characters just would not do it.

Since the "anniversary" of 9/11, I have been flashing back to this one central chunk of memory:

The day after the towers fell, I went to visit my best friend, Mikel, who was in hospice care after fighting the "good fight" with HIV and AIDS. There were so many times that we all thought we were going to lose him over the years that we had so much trouble (I know I did) accepting the fact that this time he was really going to die.

Anyways, when I came into his room, he had the small television (that I guess came with each room) turned onto the news (just like everyone did those first few days), and the light from that small box mixed with the afternoon light that escaped through the half-pulled drapes to give his skin an ashy glow.

He had lost so much weight by then. His six foot-five inch fame just couldn't fill out the hundred some pounds making him look like the proverbial skeleton-man

As I walked in, he turned his head to greet me.

"Have you been watching this, Brian?" he asked.

"Sure," I answered. I even told him that I had been watching the BBC news (on the BBC America channel) to see what the rest of the world was saying about this. He nodded, an then looked at me hard,

"Crazy times, " he mumbled, and then he gave me a look of pity, as if he was glad to be passing away now before anything else happened, and at the same time, I could feel his sorrow that I would still be here to experience it all.

That look he shot me haunts me sometimes. I remember his eyes, and the few short weeks he stayed with us, until passing that Halloween morning.

So every 9/11 I think about him, and that afternoon in his hospice room. And I wonder if he is still glad that he left before things "got worse."

The Time Has Come. . .

During the past couple of months, I have been getting some answers from all these medical tests (MRI, X-RAYS, you know the drill) I have sat through. It seems that my early years of HIV are again coming back to haunt me. . .

During my first three to four years of being positive, I volunteered for a few drug studies as my way of helping "make a difference" (and since the various drug companies were paying for everything, I felt that I was saving taxpayer dollars too).

I was considered drug-study "naive," because I was not on any medications yet, and I think that is why I was in the "control" groups for a couple of them (I would find out what group I as slated in at the end of the study), so I only took placebos and AZT most times.

I am sure AZT has its uses, such as preventing the spread of HIV from a mother to her unborn child (last I heard, it cuts the rate to less than five percent, but I may be a little off), but as with many drugs for the treatment of HIV, AIDS, and many, many other illnesses and conditions, no one has done any sort of long-term study or whatnot on the effects of these new "wonder drugs."

All I know is that at the age of 35, I was diagnosed with Osteoperosis, and later had others conditions (like neuropathy) morew akin to nerve degradation. . .

Anyways, I have a degenerative disc in the lowest part of my spine, and along with that (and possibly in relation to) a small bit of bon is jutting out from the spin and may also be pinching on a main nerve.

If I stand longer than 5-15 minutes, my right leg begins to go painfully numb, as if it is decaying while still attached. Sometimes it is my left leg, and one it was both, but mainly it is my right,

So now I have a cane. Even though it looks very very cool. It haunts me. Thes are the changes that I feared. The ones that kept me withdrawn into myself.

Thers are so many times that I wish I did not see my best friend, Mikel die. Even though I know each person/patient is different and all that, but you cant hekp but use him a a gauge sometimes. . .