On Talking to Your HIV Meds, and Listening to Your Body

On Talking to Your HIV Meds, and Listening to Your Body
Part of the Series Other Sides of HIV: People Taking HIV Meds Share Stories About Side Effects

By Shana Cozad

I was diagnosed positive in 1994. I was infected in 1993. I resisted taking HIV meds, at first. It took a few years for me to want to take them. To give a little background on that: My dad was a pediatrician, a hematology oncologist. Growing up, I was like his tail. I followed him everywhere, and went with him every Sunday when he would make rounds at the children's hospital. I would see children sick, and children with leukemia and all different sorts of cancers.
In his private complaints on our drives there and back home, my father would sometimes talk about how medicine is just one huge experiment -- that the doctors and pharmaceutical companies wish that they had the right answer for every patient, every time, but they don't. He expressed a lot of frustration that sometimes what worked for one child would not work for another child, and seeing children die was very, very painful.

post