Yeast Ain't Just for Baking

As I reported, the other day, I have been having fun with thrush, a yeast infection of the mouth. As a result, I have been eating tons of Stonyfield Farms natural yogurt to help combat the infection, which has helped a bit. Otherwise, I received my latest AIM injection, this past Monday, and all is well. The initial site reaction was very severe, this time. Fortunately, the swelling, heat and hardness all but went away within 24 hours. The first night, on the other hand, was a literal pain in the butt! During my visit on Monday, Dr. T indicated that things are right on track, and that my most recent viral load was probably artificially high due to the AIM injection I had received just a few days before the blood draw.

As for the thrush problem, Meridian gave me some heavy-duty acidophilus/pro-biotic supplementation (HMF Replete). In addition, she provided me with a borax homeopathic remedy. The combination seems to have accelerated the healing process, but I was a bad boy. There was cake at work, today, and you guessed it -- I had a small piece. As you probably know, sugar is yeast's favorite din-din. It was weird. Within minutes of eating the cake, I felt my tongue start to tingle, and the thrush-related symptoms went up a notch. I know, I know. Damn sweet tooth!

Otherwise, my only real complaint, lately, is that I feel "foggy-headed" much of the time. Several weeks ago, I had written about HIV dementia, and I mentioned that Dr. T thought I might have had some early signs of that condition. It wouldn't surprise me that, as the virus is being leeched from its various hiding places, the dementia symptoms would also increase. I am pretty confident that this is a temporary problem, but I will keep you posted.

Until next time, wishing you a beautiful holiday season.

Thrush a'bye baby

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday break, I got a call from my infectious diseases doc. He was calling with my the results of my latest blood work, which was drawn the week before. As my primary care physician and infectious diseases docs are not at all affiliated, the ID doc didn't know about my 150K VL spike, last month. (And no, I didn't offer up that tidbit, either.) When the ID doc called, I could tell he was a bit concerned -- especially because he usually just appends a short note to my labs and sends them via snail mail.

As predicted by Dr. T. (the inventor of AIM), though, my viral load has begun to come back down. It's still up there, comparitively speaking, but almost half what it was, a month earlier. I suspect my viral load would have been even lower had I not just received another shot of AIM, four days earlier. So, here are the latest stats:

VL: 76,000 (159,000 last time)
CD-4: 254 (262 last time)

The ID doc's biggest concern was my CD-4 count. He stated that it's around the 250 mark that he generally likes to begin a "regimen," as his goal is to pre-empt any opportunistic infections that might try to take advantage of the weakened immune system. Fortunately, though, he didn't panic. Instead, he asked me to have my lab work repeated in about six - eight weeks to determine whether or not this set of results was a fluke.

All of that said, though, I have also begun to experience my first real (make that "classic") HIV-related symptoms. Lately, my tongue has been sore and, at times, it has been difficult to swallow. I didn't think much of it, reasoning it to be the result of allergies or of a mild cold bug. However, yesterday after Thanksgiving dinner, I was teasing my daughter and stuck out my tongue at her. Her response was, "Eww, what's that brown stuff on your tongue?" At first, I thought it might have been residual stains from the hords of black olives that I had been feasting upon. Yet, when I went into the bathroom, later, to have a look, I was shocked to see the classical signs of thrush, which is essentially a yeast infection in the mouth. The brown stuff was really more of a pukey yellow, but sure enough, it was there. I immediately started rinsing with listerine, and then started spraying my mouth with Dr. Schweitzer's forumla, which I get from Meridian. I later visited WebMD, where I learned that one can try to treat thrush with live cultured yogurt. That'll be my next step.

Wishing you a joyful respite this holiday weekend.