I have been negotiating a large turn of the great wheel of my HIV care... after twelve years on the same regime (Kaletra – which includes a daily dose of that hideous, damned, nasty Ritonavir, that everyone hated so much in the late 1990s; Efavirenz/Sustiva, and Abacavir/Ziagen) – a regime that has become archaically dusty: apparently hardly anybody in Newcastle is still on these old medications – I've been moved over to some New Stuff.
Experimental, designed for long-term survivors: I'm keeping the Sustiva, but changing the other two for Maraviroc and Raltregravir. (Don't those two new ones suggest that the pharmaceutical companies are having trouble coming up with names?... if the first one sounds like a clumsy science fiction character name from a 1970s television series, the second grates, with that weird 'ravir' suffix – a badly spelled variation on the more etymologically correct, and more familiar, 'rivir'. But probably pharmaceutical staff don't have, you know, real educations.)
Without going into too much detail, I will say that it has absolutely altered my body's patterns of tiredness, elimination (!), food and chemical processing, energy... all of which is frankly weird after a decade spent aging on another pattern. On the good side, this is obviously far less toxic: it's already much more convenient – I don't feel as though I need to be near a bathroom at all times....
No, I said I wouldn't go into too much detail. All right then.
But as a result, I'm clearly going to gain weight, and appetite. Energy, too – which is great: is it even possible that a general shift in mood could be happening so quickly, only ten days after changing pills?... Of course, as everyone knows, the combination I've lived on, ever since the fall of 2000, is depressive. Among other things.
But I will suppose I will need some exercise, and a lighter diet: or I'm going to look like an aging hippopotamous.
Well, okay: more like one, I mean...
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