New Year’s Resolution: Contract AIDS/HIV

I wanted AIDS for Christmas but I was too sick to seek out someone who could give it to me.

I was too weak to look for unprotected sex. Who would admit to having it let alone be willing to give it to me? I shudder to think how many “exposures” it might take to, ah, “take”.

I've never liked needles, don't know any needle-using drug fiends. I didn't want to get mugged just cruising the kind of area such persons might inhabit.

As I lay in bed in pain and an exhausted stupor, I tried to think up my own Modest Proposal*. I thought about putting an ad in the newspaper, asking for someone with AIDS to come to me. I'd supply needles.

From there, the details get trickier. I would want someone with proof of AIDS. I would want the date of the test to be very recent.

I would also require that he swear he had not begun treatment. I guess I'd have to take his word for that. I would be counting on the fact that it takes a day or two after any test to get the prescription(s) and start taking them. It might even take a month or more for the drugs to have any effect. So maybe I could accept someone with a positive HIV test that was a month old.

Then I tried to think of what I might have to offer in return for the favor.
I'm living on less than $800 a month in disability insurance, so it wouldn't be money. I have codeine for pain. Maybe I could trade a month's worth of pain pills for a month's worth of needling.

I'm not sure just what to needle myself with or just how to do it. Maybe my “provider” will have suggestions. We could just scrape or scratch my skin until it bleeds and then drop a drop of the donor's blood onto my injury. We wouldn't need the needles at all.

Why would I want AIDS?

For the treatment. I would like to take AZT, Viread and Isentress asap. If I had AIDS Medicare would cover treatment and doctor visits. I've done my research and those drugs are pretty safe. Unfortunately, together they cost about $1500 a month.

Why do I want to take antiretroviral drugs? I have myalgic encephalomyelitis, erroneously renamed chronic fatigue syndrome. It has recently been proven to my satisfaction that it is caused by a retrovirus. A lab tested the drugs used to treat AIDS and found these three also treat the retroviruses found in ME/CFS.

The government calls all treatments for ME/CFS experimental, meaning no insurance pays for them. Yet those who can afford to pay for them have experienced great improvement in the few months they have taken them.

It's simple. If I had AIDS I could get treated for ME/CFS.

*1729 satire by Jonathan Swift, suggesting that the starving Irish eat their children

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009948