Living the AIDS nightmare in Philadelphia "If the disease won't kill you, the medicine will" is now the cry of many people that have been living with the AIDS virus for many years. In an attempt to educate the general public about the present day problems that people with HIV are facing, I will point to the outwardly appearence of many people that have been taking anti AIDS drugs for a long period of time. We are marked, mistakenly so, as crack addicts or just drug addicts in general. We are skinny, our faces sunk inward, lacking checks, as if starving. Or there are thoughs with humps on their backs, something to laugh at by others. Or there is the huge stomachs that seemed to develop over night. All these symptoms are called metobolic disorders or lipodystraphy. There is the cholesteral levels that may reach as high as 800. There are triglycerides levels that go into the thousands. There are the heart attcks, heart stents. Diabetes and insulin, in pills and vials. Mostly, there are bills. If one is responsible and pays these bills, there is not much money to do much else and that disability check goes way to fast. And the food stamps are nice, but the diets we are forced to go on eat those stamps up fast. Sugar free and low sodium cost plenty, as does eating fresh to avoid unwanted salt. Go get a job, you bums, one may think. But who will hire a person that looks like he or she is obviously on drugs? Do we go for work after the diabetes scare, the heart attack, the open heart surgery? Many try. What is fear? The Mazzoni Center is giving away a new procedure for facial wasting. It is a time consuming and tedious job of injecting a product called Scuptra in the face. This is a series of up to 60 injections to the face which introduces a milk/plastic substance beneath the derma to immitate fat. Great Idea! However, this is just for the gay "Boys Club". This procedure has been secretly operational for at least two years, and most area doctors know nothing about it, unless they work at Thomas Jefferson proper. It is a compasionate care program, where the makers of Scultra give those that are the neediest of the HIV community the treatment vials. The Mazoni Center applies the injctions for free. However, there are way too many recieving this treatment that never swallowed a anti AIDS medication, both positive and negative, both with good and low paying jobs, just look at the people that work in these AIDS agencies. The "Boys Club" rules here, and no one else is getting in. As a home owner, I ask, being on AIDS medication for 12 years, wasting severly, having a stent next to my heart, diabetes, paying about 12% of my $625.00 a month disability check on property taxes, why can't the general HIV, low income population have access to this treatment? Why are forced, once we find out about the treatment, to seek a privite doctor to fix our faces at the total of three to four thousand dollars, to fix the side effects of our medication, to make it possible to be presentable for work? That is up to $4,000, after the makers of Sculptra give the patients the treatment vials. I don't believe giving the AIDS agencies more money will solve, but worsen the problem. These agencies should be investigated, not by AACO (Aids Activity Coordinating Office), which would be the police investigating the police, but by an outside source, as this type of abuse is constant in the AIDS agencies in Philadelphia, for years.
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