11/10/2025
World AIDS Day: A Half-Life
by Rob Toth, longtime CAB member
No one "gets" AIDS anymore. Google said as much. "AIDS, an outdated term. AIDS is a manageable disease." AIDS has evolved into: outdated, manageable. New drugs and new drug delivery systems: subcutaneous (under-the-skin), once every six months, one pill-once a day, have made HIV infection manageable. So, plan ahead.
But, what IS AIDS, you ask?! Here's a primer: you have an AIDS diagnosis IF your T-cells (a marker of immune health) are at or below 200. (They should be at least 500), and because of your compromised immune system, you'd contracted/developed one or more of these opportunistic infections: pneumocystis jirovecii P.C.P. in short, or kaposi sarcoma, a kind of skin cancer, or cryptosporidium, etc. Suffice to say, developing AIDS isn't fun. Now with the new drugs, the diagnosis classification of AIDS in America will, hopefully, fade like the red ribbon for HIV/AIDS Awareness, has faded. Yet, by medical terminology, "Once you've developed a diagnosis of AIDS you will always be a person living with AIDS," said my HIV doctor. I was taken aback a bit. I'm a senior citizen survivor living with AIDS, always.
In a 5/24/09 article by Regina Brett asked, "How Many of Us Die Unnoticed?" Neighbors found dead a week after they'd died? Will I be like that article or like my two relatives?! Found alone, dead for a week?! We may be "outdated, vintage" but we're not dead yet! Reading the 11/9/25 FORUM article, "From Taylor Swift to the Garden of Gethsemane" by Terry Pluto. "Many people go through a period in which they feel they don't fit in" begs the question: Where do we belong? Who will be our Velcro? Long-term survivors living with AIDS have experienced many a "dark night of the Soul, alone. Now, in our old age, we ask, Where do I/we belong?!
For years, we've had to answer the innocuous enough question: "So, what do you do [for a living]?!" With grace and alacrity we're "retired." Lanyards and name tags show our community engagement, our "worthiness," our trying "to belong." After living 37 years with AIDS, my lanyards & op/ed clippings are my half-life. Long-term survivors can remember previous World AIDS Days, friends greeting each other, marching, singing "That's What Friends Are For." No more AIDSWalks, at least here in Cleveland. Yet, we persist.
Our needs are different from your "regular" senior citizen. At AIDS 2022 in Montreal, we wrote the "The Glasgow Manifesto": "Our bodies, hearts, minds and pocketbooks reveal scars earned building the modern HIV response. As we age, many of us are living with multiple chronic health conditions, coping with frailty, disability and/or cognitive changes, becoming more isolated, and experiencing ageism in addition to HIV/AIDS stigma and other forms of discrimination. Our independence, quality of life, and longevity are compromised and yet the HIV response has not evolved with us."
This World AIDS Day 2025, it is MY hope that we can re-engage our youth. We need new activists - thank you, Act Up Cleveland. Recently diagnosed with cancer, I don't have the time nor energy to "show up" all the time. Yet, showing up is what I do for Pride because WE are all, . LGBTQ+, survivors living with AIDS. It is my hope we can rise up, for one day, one World AIDS Day, even if it's just within our own circles and unapologetically without shame & state our HIV/AIDS status. So, on World AIDS Day, your friends and family can say, "I do know a person living with AIDS."
Robert Toth
Lakewood
