World AIDS Day

It is perhaps a testament to how far I’ve come that I woke up this morning not realizing that today is World AIDS Day. I say this because I was given an AIDS diagnosis twelve years ago.

You get this dubious honor if your CD4 count falls below 200 T cells, your body succumbs to any number of opportunistic infections, and you are HIV positive. Back then, I fell prey to pneumocystis pneumonia, a nasty lung condition that left me unable to breathe. Down to 120 lbs. of skin and bone, I was in the hospital and hooked up to machines when the doctor told me I had AIDS.

It’s been a tough battle these last twelve years: every day I take powerful drugs that keep me alive. Thankfully, I’ve survived it all pretty well and my numbers are good. But on this day, I stop for a moment to realize that I’ve lost more friends to AIDS than I can even remember. And it humbles me.

I say all this not to be maudlin or to cull sympathy. I’ve never mentioned any of this to the people here in Asheville because I never wanted to be thought of as Michael Muller, that guy with HIV. But something compelled me to share this story with you this morning. Maybe to help make World AIDS Day a little less abstract, maybe to help make AIDS & HIV a little more real.

Twelve years ago, I never expected to live to see my fortieth birthday. In a few weeks, I will turn 43. Whatever years we are given, in the end we’re all here for such a short time — the blink of an eye, really. And some of us, like me, are blessed by the occasional reprieve.

In all that, I’ve learned that the real challenge is not avoiding death: the real challenge is figuring out what to do with the precious life that we are given, whoever we are and for however long that may be.