Question
Am I fooling myself or is a long life really possible?
4 December 2008. Related: All topics, Living with HIV long-term, Starting treatment.
Are you fooling yourself if you try and like HIV to diabetes, to make yourself feel better? It feels like I am kidding myself when I think of HIV like any other long term/chronic condition. Also, when you start meds are you likely to feel poorly?
Answer
Nowadays HIV-infection, if managed properly, is really a chronic condition. Of course, sometimes there may be complications like with every other disease. The life expectancy of somebody who is recently diagnosed is also very near the one of an HIV-negative person.
As for side effects from the medications, they may or may not appear. If they do, in the majority of the cases they are mild to moderate and usually disappear within several weeks. Again, sometimes more serious side effects may also appear, but in those cases they can be dealt with by either switching to different medications or taking other drugs to help dealing with the side effects.
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