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satchboogie
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what were the most noticeable sides of the disease and how long after infection were they felt?
much thanks and my deepest prayers for a cure!
much thanks and my deepest prayers for a cure!
I might not be the best one to answer that because of the very short time I went from being HIV+ to having 'full blown' AIDS. My first sign was a discoloration of my tongue, followed by a single Karporsi's Sarcoma spot on my foot, to having PCP in the hospital. The LBM loss came in the hospital and i've been battling it ever since. This is caused by a virus, so there is little chance for a cure in the common use of the term. If we could treat it like some people treat high blood pressure, it would go far enough in my opinion within my lifetime.
NorCalBdyBldr
New member
I had the primary HIV infection in 1984 and it lasted about 10-12 days for me and I was violently ill. I started getting sick on a Friday afternoon and went downhill at work all afternoon. I barely could stand the commute home and it was all I could do to shed my clothes and head to bed. I ended up flat on my back in bed hardly able to move for the entire primary infection. Symptoms were beyond the worst flu that I ever experienced. Every bone, joint and muscle in my body hurt and ached. Even my eyes ached. I had roller coaster fevers and chills. One minute, I couldn't pile on enough blankets and was freezing to death and shivering and then the next minute I was drenched with rolling sweats and couldn't get enough off of me as I was burning up. This would alternate on twenty minute cycles or so. After what seemed to be many days of this, the fever broke and I had lost 15 lbs of body weight, 5 of which was water.
The primary infection is not the same for everyone, however. It is entirely related to how your body responds to the virus. Some people go through it completely "asymptomatic" and therefore never even have any idea that they have contracted HIV. In fact, a random testing study over a ten year period was just completed last year in the U.S. It found that of the people that tested HIV positive in the study, fully 75% had no idea that they were HIV positive.
After the primary infection, the disease seems like it goes underground and I seemed to have "recovered." However, the most notable difference was that my energy level was not high anymore (I used to be extremely high energy) and everything seemed to be more of an effort to do. I also tended to get fatigued and run down easier. Over time, I also seemed to have more digestive problems too. This relatively "quiet" period went on for about nine years. Towards the latter part of this period, I started getting skin problems like ecxema (sp?), dry skin, fungal infections of the skin, particularly in areas where I sweat a lot, folliculitus (infections of the follicles--resembles acne), among other things.
After about nine years of this, I developed Kaposi's Sarcoma (Cancer), oral thrush (fungus of the throat, mouth and tongue) and full blown AIDS. That was in 1993. By 1995, I had a viral load of 3.18 million viral particles per ml of blood and the immunologist said "why are you still alive?" I was still working full time but struggling and still managing to hop my self up on stimulants so I could at least manage to workout as my energy was just off the bottom of the charts-so this was all very hard to do.
One thing to remember is that studies show that once a person is infected with HIV, their immune system, on average, removes between one billion and two billion viral particles every day for the duration of the infection. Since the immune system is not designed to operate fully "on" for a permanent duration but rather fights an infection, clears it and then quiets down, this becomes a war of depletion and malnutrition. Also if you consider what your energy levels are like when you have the flu (minus the symptoms) this may give you an idea of the "fatigue factor" even in assymptomatic HIV disease, let alone full blown AIDS.
I think what held things together more for me than for many others is that I have always been fairly intense and hardcore when it comes to working out. When my energy was too low I would pop caffeine tablets or ephedrine tablets (in the form of primatene tablets which can be purchased over the counter but you usually have to ask the pharmacist for them as they limit how many you can buy at a time) so that I could energize the workout. I also had to learn to be a lot "kinder" to my body in terms of rest and diet as well.
The primary infection is not the same for everyone, however. It is entirely related to how your body responds to the virus. Some people go through it completely "asymptomatic" and therefore never even have any idea that they have contracted HIV. In fact, a random testing study over a ten year period was just completed last year in the U.S. It found that of the people that tested HIV positive in the study, fully 75% had no idea that they were HIV positive.
After the primary infection, the disease seems like it goes underground and I seemed to have "recovered." However, the most notable difference was that my energy level was not high anymore (I used to be extremely high energy) and everything seemed to be more of an effort to do. I also tended to get fatigued and run down easier. Over time, I also seemed to have more digestive problems too. This relatively "quiet" period went on for about nine years. Towards the latter part of this period, I started getting skin problems like ecxema (sp?), dry skin, fungal infections of the skin, particularly in areas where I sweat a lot, folliculitus (infections of the follicles--resembles acne), among other things.
After about nine years of this, I developed Kaposi's Sarcoma (Cancer), oral thrush (fungus of the throat, mouth and tongue) and full blown AIDS. That was in 1993. By 1995, I had a viral load of 3.18 million viral particles per ml of blood and the immunologist said "why are you still alive?" I was still working full time but struggling and still managing to hop my self up on stimulants so I could at least manage to workout as my energy was just off the bottom of the charts-so this was all very hard to do.
One thing to remember is that studies show that once a person is infected with HIV, their immune system, on average, removes between one billion and two billion viral particles every day for the duration of the infection. Since the immune system is not designed to operate fully "on" for a permanent duration but rather fights an infection, clears it and then quiets down, this becomes a war of depletion and malnutrition. Also if you consider what your energy levels are like when you have the flu (minus the symptoms) this may give you an idea of the "fatigue factor" even in assymptomatic HIV disease, let alone full blown AIDS.
I think what held things together more for me than for many others is that I have always been fairly intense and hardcore when it comes to working out. When my energy was too low I would pop caffeine tablets or ephedrine tablets (in the form of primatene tablets which can be purchased over the counter but you usually have to ask the pharmacist for them as they limit how many you can buy at a time) so that I could energize the workout. I also had to learn to be a lot "kinder" to my body in terms of rest and diet as well.
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