Aging Grace: Facing the Uncertainties of Growing Older With HIV
January 29, 2008
By David Evans
On the morning of January 6, readers of The New York Times awoke to a sobering headline: “AIDS Patients Face Downside of Living Longer.” The article highlights the stories of two fifty-something HIV-positive men, both of whom boast a disheartening list of ailments more typically found in much older people. Both men seem uncertain about how they might navigate a bleak future filled with illness. The article credits antiretroviral drugs for giving one man back his life and hopes for the future, but poses the question, “at what cost?”
Some readers recognized their own struggles in the men’s stories and felt validated. Steven Deeks, MD, a prominent AIDS researcher and doctor at the University of California San Francisco’s General Hospital, said, “Several patients sent me e-mails saying that finally someone was talking about the important issues that were affecting them.”
Others, like Rona Vail, MD, an HIV specialist at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City, worried the article may have stated the problem of living with HIV in such dire terms that it could make people with HIV more pessimistic about their futures. “We’re already such an ageist community that I worry people will be that much more afraid of getting older,” she said.
The article clearly touched a sore nerve when it highlighted the lack of existing research that might explain how much worse the aging process may be for people living with HIV. Confronted with a limited amount of data to help predict what lies ahead, it is no wonder some HIV-positive people and health care providers are anxious about what the future may hold.
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