Agonising tests Living with AIDS Programme 368
It is 04h34 on Monday morning the 08th of September 2008. Usually at this time I will be catching up on my emails and preparing myself for the day ahead. But today is different. I am anxious! I have a doctor’s appointment.
I am going to do routine medical tests as part of my HIV monitoring. I will do a CD4 and viral load count. The last time I went to do these tests my CD4 was above 500. However, the viral load had gone from less then thirty thousand to almost three hundred thousand copies.
A CD4 count is a test done through blood tests to measure how strong your body’s immune system is against HIV. The higher it is, the stronger your body is against HIV. A viral load test is used to measure the amount of the virus in your blood. When your viral load is too high, you run the risk of getting other infections.
In the past ten years, my CD4 only went below the 500 count once. I have done these tests many times before. By now I should be used to doing them. However it is always a catch 22 situation. Every time I do them, I wonder if it is the day when the results will show deterioration in my health. I wonder if it will be the day when I start worrying about dealing with more than HIV. I mean, from HIV it will be AIDS.
It takes two to three days to get the CD4 and viral load results back. This is when you are using a private laboratory. Two days is not that long. So, the wait should not be that bad.
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