Fortunately the therapies for HIV infection are orders of magnitude better than they were a decade ago. However that doesn't speak to their expense (I don't know off hand), or quite frankly the pain and suffering you are experiencing. Good luck.
So, a little birdie told me that Truvada is considered a specialty drug. You should expect to pay about $100-150 a month in the US depending on your insurance, and will need a prior auth from your prescription plan. There are a few foundations that can provide assistance if you can't afford it out of pocket, especially if you, for instance, have copays since it'll likely retail for about a rather large sum of money I'm not comfortable disclosing. If you're in the US and have concerns about paying for the drug (or any specialty medication), I may know of a way to get the costs down no matter who carries your insurance.
TL;DR: It's pricey, but there's help. Hit me up if you're in the US and need to know where to look.
My current plan through Aetna covers a three month supply for $120, so $40 a month.
The bitch about Truvada is they aren't certain of the side effects yet, so my doctors I've spoken to are all helpful but hesitant. There's bloodwork and all that jazz you have to go through first before they'll put you on it. One of the known issues is liver complications, so they give you the judgy eyes when you discuss how much you drink a week.
There's also an injectable working its way through the FDA right now, but that's in trial phases and much like Truvada we have no idea what its long term side effects are, beyond 'Well, it beats the long-term prognosis for HIV'. I think there are a few other drugs on the market too, and of course the cocktail we've had around since the eighties can stave off most of it if it's caught early enough. All of which has help available for those who need. Usually through the manufacturer, like Gilead should be able to pick up the $120 tab mentioned above.
EDIT: Also, to add to the caffeinds discussion, anyone in a customer service or warehouse job. There are people who do it without coffee or tea or energy drinks, but I tend to think those sorts of people are either superheroes or secretly demons or both.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
They are the people I have to try really hard not to throw through windows at 9 am.
"WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT TALKING TO ME BEFORE 11:00, JANET?! NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR YORKIE OKAY."
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SylandraJoin Queue for Mafia GamesThe Last Mafia Game
Lost my car keys on the bus when the bug treatment is today. Fml. /waits to be picked up so she can finish preparing
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
There's also an injectable working its way through the FDA right now, but that's in trial phases and much like Truvada we have no idea what its long term side effects are, beyond 'Well, it beats the long-term prognosis for HIV'. I think there are a few other drugs on the market too, and of course the cocktail we've had around since the eighties can stave off most of it if it's caught early enough. All of which has help available for those who need. Usually through the manufacturer, like Gilead should be able to pick up the $120 tab mentioned above.
EDIT: Also, to add to the caffeinds discussion, anyone in a customer service or warehouse job. There are people who do it without coffee or tea or energy drinks, but I tend to think those sorts of people are either superheroes or secretly demons or both.
Luce is talking about these pharmaceutical company financial assistance programs.
And it's not just HIV medications that have discount programs. Many pharmaceutical companies have them for a variety of their products.
For example the HPV vaccine GARDASIL (Merck) that is recommended for 18-26 year olds to attenuate the spread of four strains of HPV, two of which are a significant contributor to cervical cancer cases in women, has financial assistance here:
I like to see the cervical cancer and anal cancer rates drop, which is why I occasionally put on a professional hat and talk about GARDASIL.
As for TRUVADA in general I haven't thoroughly read the literature on the trials/mechanism of action so there is little I can say definitively. However I just wanted to mention in general that if someone says they are taking TRUVADA this doesn't mean they are HIV positive.
Evidently TRUVADA was approved in July 2012 in the US by the FDA for pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV-1 infection, which is a big BIG fucking deal, why wasn't I paying attention to the HIV literature, oh yeah Crisper-CAS9. *shrug*
When it comes to HIV infection in humans yes @Celina the liver is watched very carefully. Coinfection of a patient with HIV and HBV or HCV (Hepatitis B or C virus, respectively) significantly complicates prognosis. I would have to review the literature in detail to say how significantly but yeah.
Point being, be careful about your liver gay dudes.
However I just wanted to mention in general that if someone says they are taking TRUVADA this doesn't mean they are HIV positive.
I only just realised the way I phrased my post may've suggested I was implying otherwise. Thanks for pointing that out.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited January 2016
Closed my computer and went to bed last night. Get home from work and the screen won't turn on.
Never buy a Lenovo. This thing is less than a year and a half old and it's inexplicably broken down on my three times.
edit: After shutting it on and off 8 times, it decided to turn on. WTF is this demon machine.
Maybe the connection to the monitor is loose. I've had that problem, then I figured out if I squeeze the area around the monitor in a certain place/shake the monitor I can get the monitor to turn on again.
I am tired and having a headache because my dear flatmate decided that it would be a good idea to rearrange the furniture in her room while listening to Barbara Ann in an infinite loop on full volume....till past 1 am. Apparently, even hearing the first few chords of the song makes me kind of angry now.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
i have to ask: do big cities where any of you are living have the kind of social self policing that involves the court of public opinion and is usually only seen in small towns and rural areas (or so i've read)?
e.g. you do or learn X, gossip happens and people disapprove because it doesn't fit in with their notions of what's right. they're coming from a perspective that's totally alien to yours.
X does not involve drugs or booze or wild behavior, just a task or a skill that's slightly unconventional.
i have to ask: do big cities where any of you are living have the kind of social self policing that involves the court of public opinion and is usually only seen in small towns and rural areas (or so i've read)?
In my experiences, yes. Big cities have too many people from differing background and clashing perspectives for this to happen in a meaningful way. In the biggest cities, you can probably walk through some neighborhoods while wearing your underwear as a hat and people won't even turn to bat an eye. Seen all that nonsense already, not interested.
Having done both: depends on the neighborhood in the city. Some of them are just as gossipy and annoying as small towns, most are not. As far as I can tell, as the percentage of people that get seen each day that are strangers increases, the amount of apathy also increases. So the less insular the neighborhood, the less people care.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
Did a 6 hour round trip today to meet my parents and hand over my boys to them for a holiday with their grandparents - which is super rave worthy! Except when my daughter vomited in the car an hour in going down a mountain range with no safe place to pull over. The smell is still burned into my nostrils I think.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
In big cities, its mostly social policing according to neighborhood.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited January 2016
WORK RANT TIME.
We work in "pods" at my office, which is basically another name for team. We're all clustered together based on the territories we run.
For the past 4 months my team has been short staffed and we received little to no help from outside teams. We managed to still be the number one producing team, and even though we wanted to throw our phones at times, we made it and we are back to being fully staffed.
Now that we are fully staffed, we are being forced to "power pod" aka cover for another team because they are 1 person short (we were between 2 and 3 people short). For the entire month of February. We all voted no because they aren't a great team, they just look good because they receive massive discounts to their goals (which we partially absorb and still outperform them). We don't want them talking to our clients and mucking things up. We were overruled.
I cover the Northern tip of Virginia that borders DC. They cover West Carolina. The clientele are wildly different, and I just know they're going to piss someone off, much like I'm going to piss one of the West Carolina rednecks off because I don't want to talk about how they ran over their dog with their tractor.
Some days there isn't enough coffee and wine in the world
got yelled at (not the customer yelling because they're upset, them actually yelling at me) for twenty minutes last night because I'm not allowed to help them install malware that they got scammed into buying so they can breach youtube's terms and download videos from it.
We work in "pods" at my office, which is basically another name for team. We're all clustered together based on the territories we run.
For the past 4 months my team has been short staffed and we received little to no help from outside teams. We managed to still be the number one producing team, and even though we wanted to throw our phones at times, we made it and we are back to being fully staffed.
Now that we are fully staffed, we are being forced to "power pod" aka cover for another team because they are 1 person short (we were between 2 and 3 people short). For the entire month of February. We all voted no because they aren't a great team, they just look good because they receive massive discounts to their goals (which we partially absorb and still outperform them). We don't want them talking to our clients and mucking things up. We were overruled.
I cover the Northern tip of Virginia that borders DC. They cover West Carolina. The clientele are wildly different, and I just know they're going to piss someone off, much like I'm going to piss one of the West Carolina rednecks off because I don't want to talk about how they ran over their dog with their tractor.
Some days there isn't enough coffee and wine in the world
Apart of me reading the first sentence twice because I read something about @Celina murdering the production team, I must say this kind of crap is so widespread it's really scary. There's only human 'units' these days and they are shuffled around as they are seen fit and usually management decision on such things go one to one with the state of the weather, state of the moon and the flight of the birds and some dice rolls went. At least there's days where it feels like that. (Of course, theres' really good management too, but I feel like they get rarer every day and are replaced by people rolling dice :-( )
My shop got broken into. Again. Third time in as many months. Realllllllllllly wish we hadn't just signed another year's lease in December, neighborhood is getting worse by the day.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
Comments
EDIT: Also, to add to the caffeinds discussion, anyone in a customer service or warehouse job. There are people who do it without coffee or tea or energy drinks, but I tend to think those sorts of people are either superheroes or secretly demons or both.
"WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT TALKING TO ME BEFORE 11:00, JANET?! NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR YORKIE OKAY."
Tonight amidst the mountaintops
And endless starless night
Singing how the wind was lost
Before an earthly flight
e.g. you do or learn X, gossip happens and people disapprove because it doesn't fit in with their notions of what's right. they're coming from a perspective that's totally alien to yours.
X does not involve drugs or booze or wild behavior, just a task or a skill that's slightly unconventional.
Apart of me reading the first sentence twice because I read something about @Celina murdering the production team, I must say this kind of crap is so widespread it's really scary. There's only human 'units' these days and they are shuffled around as they are seen fit and usually management decision on such things go one to one with the state of the weather, state of the moon and the flight of the birds and some dice rolls went. At least there's days where it feels like that. (Of course, theres' really good management too, but I feel like they get rarer every day and are replaced by people rolling dice :-( )