Preface for the second edition of Goodbye AIDS!
One year after sending the book
'Goodbye AIDS'
for publication, I found out that It
was not so easy to say goodbye to AIDS completely
since I had to face the AIDS establisment again when I had a health
problem.
In particular, on
July 2009, after I had successfully quit the AIDS doctors and
medication for more than two years, I faced a severe respiratory
problem that nobody could explain. Was it
asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia? It didn't look any of that but we had
to do something, for I could not breathe. I went to a general
hospital as anybody would do, the doctor said Sorry, we cannot help,
you have to go to an AIDS center". Another
doctor there, a lung specialist,
said “It's not a severe problem, I could give
you antibiotic treatment for atypic pneumonia at once, but I'm not
permitted to do so due to your AIDS record. You should go to an AIDS
center” he concluded as well. “Excuse me for saying that, but you
will die in the roads. Go to an AIDS center”, the doctor of the
Journalists Association almost begged me when he saw me for the third
time before him.
So the story could very well happen
again. Whatever I write in this book that I left behind, I had to
live them all over again. This time things were different though. I
knew better what it's all about and the others knew that I know. I
went to the most central AIDS hospital of
Athens where I was automatically diagnosed
with PCP – the so called pneumonia of AIDS. “I was told the same
on 1995 and the symptoms were totally different” I said while they
were putting an oxygen mask on me. “On 1995, they were wrong, now
it is a clear case of PCP” the answer came and the relevant
etreatment started the next day - two
antibiotics and cortizone. “Don't worry, Maria, we will
take care of the breatking problem and then
it will be you who will decide what to do next”, the head AIDS
doctor politely reassured
me. He suggested on his own to release me from hospital after
the first week of treatment and give me the
medication to continue at home.
I got better pretty soon, thanked
everybody there and left hospital after the first week, but what to
do then at home? Should I continue full
treatment, half of it, not at all? The
first antibiotics, I immediately quit – it destroys the bone
marrow, I read – and they had given it to me “preventively”!
The second I meant to continue till the end, but it caused a terrible
allergy, so I had tostop it also. I remained without doctors, drugs,
or diagnosis. Following the advice of my alternative health
practitioners, I started regaining energy with
a healthy diet and exercises. It was history soon
and we may never learn what it really was. 'Whew!
Good thing it wasn't AIDS!', Karri Stokeley
wrote to me in Facebook.
So that's the situation for the ones
who want to say "Goodbye AIDS", and I won't blame those who
hesitate to do so. Especially for the people who cut the toxic
antiretroviral treatment, it's not a simple matter of going off the
drugs. Damage done has to be repaired--the body needs help to heal.
We are looking for naturopathic doctors to cover the nutritional and
healing side of the equation and we have to proceed to sentimental
and intellectual detoxification also. AIDS doctors are the last thing
that we need at that point. However we may meet again. We have to
incorporate them in the process.
As an
offset to that aberration of the medical system which wants us
enclaved into a box, we are not alone or desperate anymore. Apart
from the websites in Internet which give full alternatives schemes
for "recovery after AIDS", there are now groups of people
formed down on earth. Here in Athens, our
HIVwave friends are lawyers, doctors,
architects, therapists, managers, hairdressers, engineers,
"seropositives" or not, people who have met a few months
ago and have become inseparable. The first blow that AIDS has
inflicted on society was to weaken
the social tissue. That we have recreated
in part here. And it gives us strength far
beyond our box.
While I was still at
the AIDS hospital, July 8, 2009, my
lawyer Christos Parissis filed a lawsuit against the Greek State for
all the trouble and misery that they caused to me for 24 years,
requesting 6.000.000 euros for
compensation. The news had not reached the
outer world yet. Doctors and nurses were busy with me as I
was preparing to leave the hospital. "If
I get sick again, I will come to you", I said. "We want you
not to need us again", the head AIDS doctor said to me. "We
wish you succeed in the fight that
you are giving"
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