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The UnSeen, The UnCounted, The Undiagnosed Network |
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| Suddenly, your life changes in an instant. You are just told by your Doctor that you have a life threatening disease. He tells you not to worry, that you still have many options available to you. Your life just stopped, you still hear the words but your mind is racing. You are thinking about what you had, what you will lose, what will happen. Everything is changed. The day that started off like any other day, is now different. While the Doctor tells you not to worry, that we can bet this. Your mind is telling you that you are going to die. The Doctor tells you about the latest treatment options, that we can beat this and not to worry. You begin the treatment, you are believing now that there is a chance. The treatment continues, its hard, it takes its toll both on your body and your head. Finally, you believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel and you are going to beat this. Then that light suddenly turns into a locomotive headed right straight for you. This is the roller coaster world that you have now entered. But the bottom line to all of this is that you are still the same person you were one year, two years ago. Just everything has changed-but you are still the same person. Just like when you throw confetti into the air (those pieces are you), there are still the same pieces when they fall, just arranged differently when the land on the ground. While many Doctors believe that they are God, unlike God-they cannot foretell the future. They may be able to tell you what MAY happen concerning an illness, they cannot say of any certainty that this WILL occur exactly as they say. Do miracles, yes. But the reason they are called miracles is that they do not always occur. Sometimes, God's answer is NO. Nothing is promised to anyone in life. Whatever cards you are dealt, will be the ones that you have to pay with. No re-deals, no re-shuffle. You play with what you have. Are you still the same person, YES. You still have the same talents, skills that you had two days ago. You are that confetti waiting to fall to the ground.
From his HIV diagnosis in 1985 until his death in April of 2009, Cass Mann was one of the world's longest-term HIV-positive survivors. He founded Positively Healthy, the UK's only HIV/AIDS charity staffed exclusively by openly gay men, which provided HIV services including education, support, and peer counselling. These videos now archive his wisdom and insight for future generations. Here he talks about how people sometimes feel suicidal when they think they're about to test HIV positive or have tested HIV positive, and why suicide makes no sense. A person who is diagnosed HIV positive today can with intelligence expect to live a full lifespan with a good quality of life so long as they follow medical advice and take care of their health and nutrition. People who commit suicide after an HIV positive diagnosis probably already had other serious issues in their life other than HIV. There were many gay men with AIDS who committed suicide during the "first wave" of AIDS in the 1980s. Anyone who contemplates suicide today after an HIV diagnosis hasn't examined all their options intelligently and coherently. There are various forms of suicide. One is when you take your own life by a specific act of commission. But those forms are rarer than "long-term suicide," a suicide that occurs over months or years that happens when you stop caring whether you live or die, and you take on behaviors that will result in your death but over a longer term. They're still acts of commission, but they're less dramatic. They take longer, but the result is the same, and you are still responsible for your suicide. That's a very painful suicide because it takes so much longer. A lot of the gay men Cass has known who committed suicide lacked a network or support system to catch them when they needed it. No one knows they're alive, so no one notices when they die, and that's dangerous. Gay men should get a support network in place at the outset so that they have it when they need it. You want to have people in place who you can share concerns with if you feel depressed, suicidal etc. Drugs, depression, and isolation all increase the risk of suicide. People have "deathstyles" that replace "lifestyles." People suffering from depression or suicidal feelings need immediate treatment. For more information, visit http://www.posh-uk.org.uk/ and http://www.AIDSvideos.org/. This video is freely downloadable from http://www.archive.org/details/ifITes... . [Do you want to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS? Are you fluent in a language other than English? Then volunteer to translate this video into another language! Click http://AIDSvideos.org/translate.shtml to learn how you can help!!!]
We are here if you need us.
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