You will never know until you have lived with it

99.5% of the time I am alright.  Maybe even forgetting my so called “situation”. 0.1% I meet everyday when I take my medication.  The 0.4% happens in rare occasions like last week.  I woke up with a rash all over my body.  My mind was racing, automatically the rash = new medication = Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.  I have met this fellar before as my cousin nearly died from it. I panicked, I worried and raced to the doctor who eventually diagnosed me with a food allergy (citrus allergy).  That is the difference between me and a person living without a chronic illness.  A small thing like a rash can strike the fear of death to me to someone else its just a rash – scratch it and get over it.  Try as I might to forget, to pretend, the truth is I am Mano, I am HIV.  Until you walk with the virus everyday you will never know the million things I worry about in silence.  But yet still I rise everyday, with a smile on face and the courage to face another day.

Mano