November 3,
1987: My Big Day!
 That's
the day I walked into the counselor's office of the Health
Department of the County of San Diego, California. He invited me to
take a seat, opened my folder, reached out for my hand, and with the
saddest look on his face told me that I had tested positive on the
HIV Antibody Test. I smiled back and said, well, then that means I
don't have to take the test over again. Quizzically he asked me what
I meant by that. I told him that quite frankly with the lifestyle I
had led all my life, had I tested negative I would have asked to be
retested. Looking back, I think the shock on his face came from the
fact that nobody had ever received the news that they had tested
positive in such an accepting way.
Ah! Another challenge in life to
face! How am I to survive this -- if in fact I am to survive?
I was referred to the Early Intervention Program at
the County of San Diego and from that day forward I was "Edward
#062". I was assigned to one of the most lovely, loving, caring
people I think I have ever met, a nurse who would for several years
handle my caseload, Carole Norman.
In addition to having my blood work analyzed four
times a year to see how the status of my T-cells were doing, I
attended four or five group sessions where the newly positive-tested
people would receive instructions on proper diet and nutrition and
how to change our lifestyles to accommodate our newly found status
of HIV+. Every quarterly visit thereafter as well as having my
bloodwork drawn,
I talked to a nutritionist and a psychologist, discussed methods of
safe sex, and reviewed how I could lessen unneeded tension in my
life.
Of course, right at the get-go, I was offered the
opportunity of taking AZT, the drug "du jour" for the treatment of
HIV/AIDS. I had seen how so many of my friends fared taking the drug
that I decided that I would forego this AZT stuff. I felt fine. They
certainly didn't. If they didn't have one problem one day, they
seemed to have it the next. Besides, I had something else going that
I didn't want to mess around with.
 I
knew my liver was in pretty poor shape from being an alcoholic for
33 years, and I didn't want to tax my liver beyond its limits by
having it have to process the
drug AZT.
I finally started on my road to
recovery from alcoholism in January, 1986. On Super Bowl Sunday that
year I did my normal routine of while driving home from work
drinking three beers. I stopped at my favorite bar, had five or six
more beers and watched part of the game. I then left, bought a
12-pack and went home to finish watching the game. By the time the
game was over my beer was gone and it was all I could do to make it
to bed, fully clothed. I woke up during the night and had, for the
first time in my life, lost control of my bowels while being passed
out. The stench was beyond belief. I knew it had to be the smell of
liver bile.
The next day, Monday, I returned
to my favorite bar at noontime to get one of their super hamburgers
and a beer. I couldn't drink the beer. I couldn't even bring the
bottle up to my mouth, the smell was so repulsive. That was was Day
One of my sobriety. I knew right then I had to make a decision --
continue drinking and die or live without alcohol. I thought it
might be kinda neat to see my 50th birthday on April 11, which I had
never really believed I would ever see.
At about the same period of time when I smoked
marijuana I would first get the chills so badly that I would almost
convulse. I would hop into bed and cover up with all the blankets I
could find, but I couldn't stop shivering. When I finally did, then
I would go into sweats. The third time this happened to me I had the
foresight to grab a thermometer. When I had the chills my
temperature had fallen by three degrees. When I started sweating, my
temperature had risen to 3 degrees above normal. For two days after
I would be so worn out I could hardly drag myself from my bed to the
bathroom, let alone trying to eat or work. I knew my body was trying
to tell me that it had had enough.
Now, nearly thirteen years after being diagnosed as
HIV+, here I am still alive! And well! All my friends who took AZT
and all the subsequent drugs have either been dead or are suffering
from side effects of the drugs. During the first year of my finding
out I was HIV+ I took almost every vitamin and herb I could down. I
spent a fortune on them. But nothing ever happened to my T-cell
count. One time they would be up, another time they would be down,
but nothing ever very significant.
So I quit those too.
About three years ago my nurse at SDCHD, Carole
Norman, went into retirement. I transfered my caseload to the Owen
Clinic at the University of California San Diego. My files were sent
to them from San Diego County and for the very first time I was
given a viral load test. Negative. No replication of the virus could
be found. So instead of being assigned to a doctor (since at that
time they saw no need to recommend my getting on the "majik
cocktails" of protease inhibitors), I was assigned to a doctor's
assistant, Kathy McCormick. Well, she proved to be a pretty good
substitute for Carole. She is really a very caring, loving person,
too.
 After
two years of quarterly visits one of the viral load tests did show
up finally with "negligible" postive findings. I did some thinking.
Why am I doing this? Why am spending four and five hours sitting in
a clinic waiting room just to be told that nothing was happening
since my last checkup? Besides, I had already made up my mind that
if they ever did say that it was time for me to take any of the
protease inhibitors I would not take them anyway. So I simply
stopped going.
It was not until August 28, 2000,
when I read the cover story of Newsweek - a scathing article on
Christine Maggiore of Alive & Well, Los Angeles, entitled "The HIV
Disbelievers" - that I was not alone in resisting taking drugs for
my HIV+ condition. I looked Christine up on a search engine on my
computer and emailed her asking if there was an Alive & Well Chapter
in the San Diego area. Within hours she had emailed me back telling
me that no, there was not, but there was a similar organization
called HEAL (Health * Education * AIDS Liaison). I contacted the
local founder, Mark Conlan, and he told me that the next monthly
meeting would be September 19. I went. I was home! This was just
what I needed. I used to feel like I was out here in the world
alone; now I know that the suspicions I had harbored on my own were
in fact widely held beliefs. I knew and had heard that there were
many people who were considered to be "long-term survivors", but I
had no idea that they were ORGANIZED!!!!!
Now, approaching my 65th birthday
(April 11, 2001), I have a whole new meaning in my life: to tell
others my story. I'm surviving and I'm HIV+ and I don't take any
drugs!!!! Not only that, but I'm alive and well, and I'm working
hard doing part-time work to supplement my Social Security
Retirement Benefits. And I'm never sick. And it's been eight years
since I've even had a cold!
I'm volunteering my services with
HEAL - San Diego. On Sunday, October 1, 2000, I started by
leafleting the San Diego AIDS Walk and 10K Run. I helped to
distribute literature and talked to folks. If I can reach one person
each day and inform them about the HIV=AIDS=DEATH myth, then I have
spent my time fruitfully.
People who volunteer their time by counseling
people who are HIV+, people who devote their time and energies in
helping to raise money at AIDS fundraisers -- these are my family.
They are truly devoted and are caring, loving people who want to
help in the best way they know how. Many of them have had lovers,
friends, relatives who have died from what they believe to be AIDS.
They firmly and emphatically believe that their loved one's life was
prolonged by taking the drugs simply because they have bought hook,
line and sinker all the propaganda that the drug companies, the
government and the popular press has spread about. They have
accepted as fact the conclusion that HIV does in fact become AIDS,
and that AIDS does result in DEATH. For many people, to even
question that premise is dangerous psychologically for them.
It's a very difficult thing for
someone to admit that they may have been wrong all along, that they
contributed in some way unbeknownst to them at the time to their
loved one's death by urging them to take the drugs. I can relate,
being an alcoholic, to their situation. They are just not ready to
admit to even the possibility that they might be wrong. Until such
time as they are ready, they must be handled gently, and with love
and care. They are guilty of nothing. They are at the most guilty of
one thing, and one thing only -- they didn't ask questions! They
accepted as fact what higher authorities had told them. They are
going to have to hear over and over and over again that they've been
duped by the profit-making drug companies into believing that
something is fact when in reality, it is not fact. Someday they may
listen, but it will not be until they are ready to listen. Some may
never listen.
 I
know of a mother who was in a car accident and her four-year-old son
sustained injuries to the point of having to have blood
transfusions. He was tested afterwards and it was discovered he was
HIV+. Here was a woman who was in the state of panic, of feeling the
depths of guilt, feeling it was her fault that her son was injured
so badly in the car accident because she was driving. Now she is
being told by the doctors that her son has to immediately start
taking AZT or he will surely die. Can she say "No! I won't allow him
to take those drugs!"? She can't. The pressure is on. She is being
told if he doesn't take the drugs he will die. And then she will
have one more thing to feel guilty about. She succumbsto the
pressure, and he starts the drug regime. Her son died at the age of
13 never having attended formal schooling. He'd been too sick with
one thing and another and never had any more than two or three days
in a row where he felt good at all. Through all this her doctors
kept reassuring her that the drugs had allowed him to live longer
than he would have ever lived had he not taken those drugs. Now she
has no son, but she also has no guilt, because she has been led to
believe she did the right thing. How can this woman all of a sudden
admit to herself that the drugs were responsible for son's death?
Nearly impossible, because all of a sudden she would start having
those guilt feelings again, that she, after all, had done the wrong
thing by allowing him to take the AZT. It's difficult for her to
hear that her son would be alive and well today, be in college and
possibly on the football team, dating, and leading a normal life.
It's something she is not yet ready to admit -- that she is not
guilty -- that she has been duped. Will she ever be able to change
her outlook? Maybe, maybe not. But I would tend to believe that only
when she can do so without feeling the pain of guilt, will she do
so! In her own time. In her own way. In the meantime, she needs to
be treated with the utmost respect. After all, she did do what she
felt was right at the time given the circumstances in which she
found herself.
I have anger at what has been and
is happening regarding this "AIDS" crisis. But there are deeper
feelings within me that takes precedence -- sympathy and empathy.
From these feelings comes the realization that we are all victims!
As such we need to love each other and find a way to support each
other with kindness and not meanness. I have the same common goal as
those who support AIDS fundraisers and those who volunteer their
time to help those people who are facing the immediate crisis of
being diagnosed as HIV+. But my method is different. My method is
trying to educate people that they are being fed a pack of lies by
profit-making drug companies and politicians and the popular press.
I firmly believe the HIV-related drugs are killing
people. There is not one shred of evidence that supports the premise
that the drugs are doing anything other than killing people. People
must learn for themselves how to take responsibility for their own
lives. ASK QUESTIONS, A LOT OF QUESTIONS!
If after exploring for yourself all of the
possibilities, all the pros and cons, you still maintain that you
are right -- then you must act accordingly. I urge that you
not accept as truth ANYTHING unless you have personally educated
yourself to all sides of the argument. Then come to your own
conclusions and decide what is best for YOU!!
I am not alone in continuing to live healthy
without drugs. Why are so many people
dying after taking the drugs?
Ed Sherbeyn 10/2000
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