Decent Day Anxiety...

 

I don't have that many "good" days.  I'm lucky to have decent, OK days.  I don't like talking about them, especially while the day is still occurring.  They make me anxious.  I can't remember a day in the last year that was going alright that there was an almost immediate case of fuckery.  Not something me or my roomie caused, but something beyond our control that was screwed with us;  car issues, power outages, internet issues, seriously bad weather...

Yesterday was being an OK day until around 6 then the water pressure all but died.  Some fiber workers broke another water line again.  The water was luckily restored in a few hours, but it's taken a lot longer than before.  Then all the lines have to cleared of yick, off-colored water, including the ice maker.  Was it a big thing, no it didn't turn out to be this time.  Was it something we did or caused?  No, it was not.  Still, it caused stress, anxiety & trashed what had been an alright day.  

Bad days are bad days.  But it's gotten to the point where I'm almost afraid of having good days.  Too much is just waiting to happen.

Take care.

Cya...

Trying To Get Labs...

 

It's that time again.  As much as I dislike getting labs drawn, I hate the process even more.  Every once in a while things go smoothly.  Those are the flukes.  Normally, I have to make several calls to chase the orders down.  I wish I could just order them myself & skip this step.  I hate the hoops.  I'm waiting to see if this gets in this morning or if it will be a tomorrow thing.  

I saw an article on HIV literacy.  That should've been an interesting piece.  It turned out to be a basic vocabulary list concerning HIV.  I'm not sure if it's a case of poor writers or that the authors think the readers are too ignorant to supply a better piece.  Either way, it's annoying.

That's all for now, take care.

Cya...

Faux Clutter...

 

There are a lot of "not" or faux articles out there.  They aren't recap or rehash.  They aren't false.  They just aren't.  They're unnecessary filler pieces posing as not only the real thing, but as promising pieces.  There's a piece with a provocative title & when you look at there's a lot fancy words, possibly graphics, that say nothing.

I saw a piece this morning promising an article over the best med regimen for people with advanced HIV.  I expected some comparisons, some reviews, some reasoning, but got none of that.  The piece touted the most miniscule point that a certain medication type was superior & should be the 1st line of drugs of chosen to for a patient.  The information was old, debatable & bound to change as new meds develop.  There wasn't a list of meds for people to research.  There were no reasons given for these choices so patients might pursue new avenues.

There was nothing that hadn't already been known.  This piece & those like it are worse than the rehash & recap.  They promise new information & possibilities, when they're just hollow.  It'd be bad enough if these things were on pop-sites, but they occasionally show up on serious medical sites as well.  People don't need filler pieces.

Rant's over. Take care.

Cya...

Irritating Conclusions...

 

There have been articles lately purporting anxiety & depression may be impacting HIV viral suppression.  I'm not posting links to these for 2 reasons; none of them were clear of what they were actually discussing & nor were they clear on causality or correlation.  

Meaning, none of these pieces were clear on what was causing what.  Is there a relationship between anxiety & suppression?  Is there non-adherence or is the mental state affecting the body to the point of suppression interference?

Another point, many doctors & researchers treat anxiety, stress & depression as merely mental issues.  Any of them can be mental health diagnoses.  However, sometimes life is & continues to be stressful, depressing & anxiety ridden.  Not all anxiety or depression is due to a mental disorder.  Many meds can induce anxiety or other factors like sleep interference or emotional reactions.

Until definitions are clear & direction of correlation or causality is shown, this research is at best a discussion point.  Putting abstracts out like these does no good.  It supports a hunch & may put further stress on patients trying to maintain suppression.  IMO, unless there is more not shown in these articles, these should not have been published at this time.  At this point, they came across as jargon supported conjecture.

Take care.

PS - we had 7" of rain in 24+ hours.  We passed our average & made up for October.

Cya...

Vague Articles...

 

I've seen quite a few articles lately touting insight into  new forms of HIV treatment in development. I think development is a strong word.  What I'm reading sounds more like intense research than development.

I saw a piece this morning dealing with gene  therapy & treating HIV.  It threw some terms & concepts  around, but nothing that haven't been written about before & in more detail.  This article offered  little.  Cell therapy may someday be of great importance to HIV, but not now.

Take care.

Cya...

Here We Go Again...

 

I saw a couple of pieces that should've been interesting.  The 1st was over a conference at Boston University over sexual delayal, condom use & stigma.   Could've been a good read, but it basically discussed the fact the conference had happened,  not what was discussed.

Thee next was a piece titled a resistance primer.  With that title, it should've been an informative piece concerning HIV meds & drug resistance.  Could've been very helpful.   But, it turned out to be barely 10 paragraphs of general info.   So, not very useful. 

It's another busy morning for us.  We have some errands & then we get our 1st COVID vaccination shot  I still need to get cleaned up.  This is it for now.

Cya...

Article Issues....

There are a lot issues with blogging over HIV articles.  Finding them can be the biggest problem.  Then there are the repeats, rehashes & the OpEd's.  There are a lot of paywalls.  Which I find offensive when dealing with medical information.  

I guess the most annoying, is the non-article.  A piece that promises something & never delivers.   It's an abstract, too brief or merely the barest brush over of an interesting topic.  I find an example of the latter.  It was a piece over HIV & children's cavities.  It was supposed to make the point that suppression of oral biota was the causal agent not HIV, itself.   The article was too brief to make a good point, to support its argument or deal with the fact HIV is probably what caused the decline in oral biota that led to the cavities.  It could've been a good read.

Finding well written articles isn't easy.  They aren't as common as they were & even less so with COVID happening.   Still, keeping up to date is important when you're HIV+.

Cya...

Oh Please...

This "article" is about a university professor who claims Craigslist contributed to an over 15% increase in the spread of HIV, because people used it to arrange meetings for sex.   I have a lot of problems with this.  1st off, duh!, people use Craigslist for hookups.  That's probably it's most common use.

The man seemed shocked & offended people were use this site for cruising.  What rock was he hiding under?  His "morality" was overly apparent.  The alleged study was done by a information science prof, using business-esque models.  This was not an overly scientific study nor was it even published in anything relating to health or medicine.

This study looked at a single factor, hookups arranged via Craigslist & didn't even do that well.  It didn't distinguish between orientations or genders.  This "study" is by no means conclusive of anything.  It didn't take into consideration other factors occurring during the time, understand it's population or take into account, Craigslist was only 1 of many such hook up sites.  

Today, this site is too outdated for most.  Its been replaced by other mobile apps.  Where's the big outrage against them?

I really hate these articles that think they've found something big.  When all they really did was bump into something, that was already known.   Often they misinterpret the data because of issues with sampling.  That seems to be the case here.

Crap article.

Cya...