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Tapestry, 2000.Tapestry
from a conversation taped May 11, 2000
Tapestry: I no longer have HIV; I have AIDS. I found out a month ago. I've been sick. I was in the hospital with stomach parasites. I ran to the bathroom every five or ten minutes. I couldn't eat. It's confusing when you can't understand your own body. Is this because of HIV? My new AIDS status? Change of weather? Bad water? The doctors ran blood tests and pulled tissue from all kinds of places and everything came up negative. When the doctors have no concrete answer, you get worried. You don't know where to point a finger; you're not sure what to do.
For the first few days it was heavy. T-cells: 137. I have AIDS. I was really attached to those numbers and not very attached to my body. I put all this significance in the numbers until I realized that once I got over the parasites, I'd be fine. I don't feel back to normal, but I feel good, in many ways stronger since I've gotten ill, especially mentally. I have no intention of dying from this, these four letters so graciously given to me. It seems like a silly thing to do. Having an AIDS diagnosis means I'm going to have fun living for another 40 years, completely upsetting the medical establishment.
I learned the mortality issues I thought I had dealt with a long time ago are still here. In fact, Pedro, my first boyfriend who died, came up a lot. There are times when I feel like he's the person who lay in bed beside me when I was sick and made it OK to be there... I never explained how he died. He was famous for borrowing the car and one time he got into an accident. A pole punctured one of his lungs. He spent 6 months in the hospital while they drained one lung and tried to repair the other. He was conscious for the first three and a half months; then he faded in and out. He lay in bed with tubes and machines all around him, and I still didn't believe he would die. Then, I was sitting in the room with him, holding him in my arms and I saw it come on his face that it didn't hurt anymore. I used to think his death had prepared me for my own mortality but it hadn't. It just helped me with the possibility of having to let somebody else go.
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