Tea began as medicine and morphed into a beverage of choice!
I don't quite remember when I fell in love with tea but I do remember the most 
Until recently I had never drank Peppermint Tea made with loose leaves. And Honestly, I will probably never go back. The freshness of loose Peppermint Tea cannot be denied. When I open the can of 
I love to read! Inside a book I escape into someone else's life. There is something wonderful about turning to the next page of a wonderful story. Something intoxicating about the smell of the book and the story it brings to life. Reading brings me joy, and these days with my health in the balance, I find solace in my books.
While people are supportive, you still wonder what they are thinking about you having this aggressive herpes and HIV. I can almost image it, she got herpes and AIDS, damn who was she screwing?
And Lord knows I wonder if a man will ever want to really date me. It's one thing that I have AIDS, but I also have this scary ass herpes and to make it worst, I had to go and tell it all to the world. Even if he accepts your illness, does he want the world to know he is dating a woman with HIV and Herpes? That's a lot of collateral damage. Let's be honest, you can't help but wonder. It's been a long journey for me and you can read about the history of my herpes infection Here to get you up to date.
So here I go again, yep, this week I will start IV medication to treat herpes yet again. In the last 6 months I have been on a medication called cidofovir. It's once a week for 6 hours at the hospital. The side effects are extreme fatigue, nausea, diarrhea and kidney failure. I also had to take another medication to protect my kidneys, and it has its own side-effect. And it has been a super bitch. Without failure, after 4 to 6 weeks of treatment, the herpes came back within two weeks like clock work. I have spent my entire summer dealing with this and I'm exhausted!
So this week I start again, but I'm going back to the original IV medication that I took to treat my herpes, Foscarnet. We are trying this one again because it seems to work better, meaning the herpes would come back every 4-6 months rather than 2-3 weeks. The only reason I switched was because there was a national shortage of Foscarnet and there was NONE in the US. This reads like a saga doesn't it? But it's all true.
So I will get a pic line in my arm this week and set up a make shift hospital in my house and the way we go; 3 hours a day 2 times a day; Yes 6 hours a day, everyday until I heal. And yes, the side effects are basically the same, except that I will have them everyday, rather than 3 days a week. For sure I wish that it was different, but it's not.
But it is not just genital herpes, the doctor believes that herpes also attacked my nervous system this summer, which caused the nerve pain that I experience in my hands and feet. There are some days when it hurts to walk and I can barley use my hands. For sure it has all been a challenge both physically and emotionally.
But the shame of it all still seems to have a hold on me. When I have to tell someone that I'm on IV medication and then the cause, in my heart I wonder; I wonder about the judgments. I can see the discomfort in their body language and I hear it in their voice as I explain why.
And to have doctor after doctor look at my vagina, cut my vagina for a bioscopy and culture my vagina to determine the level of ressistance to medications. I remember the two times that I was hospitalized for herpes, it was all so overwhelming when I had to spread my legs for the team of 10-15 doctors to look. It has all become so much for me.
I must somehow forgive myself for the choices I made about my body. I must embrace the goodness that lies within me and not let the bad consume all of me. I must find the strength to continue to live with dignity in such an undignified illness.
Even with dating, I have to believe that there will be someone who will want to be in an honest relationship. Don't be confused, men still want to have sex with me, they just don't want anybody to know that they are with me and I'm NOT having that.
