Whimper

When I was 22 years old, I was working three jobs, saving up money for ... something. I dunno. I must have had big dreams then. I was barely getting any sleep, but I felt strong and there just didn't seem any reason why I couldn't go on pushing myself forever. Then, one night while I was working the graveyard shift at an answering service, I started to have some odd tingling and a little pain, and then some itching in my right hand and arm. Within a few hours, a rash had started to appear and the pain was considerably worse. Though I was scheduled to be at my day job waiting tables, I decided to call in sick and go to the emergency room.

The doctor who examined me told me I had shingles and he asked me if I was a homosexual. It seemed pretty weird he wanted to know, but I said I was. Then he looked over the rest of my body and found a spot on the bottom of my foot and one behind my knee. He recommended I have a test for syphilis and also for HTLV-III (that's what HIV was called back then). I was really scared. I'd only heard of one person with AIDS and he wasn't even anyone I knew. I just couldn't believe that the doctor thought I needed to be tested for it, but he said since the shingles weren't confined to one place, it meant that I had a problem with my immune system. Here, all this time, friends had teased me about being so old-fashioned and not going home with guys who liked me. Most of the time I could barely even look at someone in a bar without blushing, but I was about to find out it doesn't matter how many times you have sex: It only takes one time to become infected.

I went across the hallway to have my blood drawn and while I was waiting, I remember thinking of those line from T.S. Eliot:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I asked the nurse how long it would be till I knew the results. She said she thought I'd get them in the next day or two. Then I paid my 25 dollars and went home. Within two hours I was in excruciating pain and I called the doctor to prescribe pain medicine. He called in a script for Tylenol-III (which frustratingly came in a child proof bottle I needed help opening) and I waited for the results of my test. I let all of my jobs know I couldn't work - I was contagious - and every couple of days I'd call the hospital and ask about my blood test. Finally someone said, "Oh, I think THOSE kind of tests take a couple of weeks" so I made an appointment for two weeks from the date of the test to see the doctor. When I showed up, he'd been called out for an OBGYN case so another doctor was assigned to me. I was so relieved when he said my test results were negative. I asked, "And the syphilis was negative, too, right?" He said, "That's what I was talking about. Your syphilis test is negative. Did you have another test run?"

I was so frustrated. Fortunately, a friend of mine from one of my jobs worked in the HR department of her second job and arranged (somehow - who knows how) to have me covered on her insurance with another hospital and get another blood test. When the test came back positive, the doctor called me on the phone with the news. He said I might very likely have as long as three years to live. It was quite possible, though, that I would die within a year. And that's about when everyone else started dying around me.