Why Am I Expected to Think?

It's happened again! I have come home with the wrong kind of pills. 

Why I am expected to think and scrutinize when I am out shopping for my painkillers, I simply cannot understand. I really do have more important things on my mind.

Packaging of medications shouldn't be so confusing that I can mistakenly pick up the suppository pills instead of the ones that I want, which are to be taken orally. 

To add to the confusion the pharmacy have both kinds next to each other on the same shelf, dammit! And naturally they will not take them back after I have left the premises, who know in what way I - or some really crazy person - could have tampered with them.

European Commission Approves Truvada

On August 22, 2016, the European Commission announced that it approves Truvada as PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV) in all 28 EU countries.

Truvada is the first antiretroviral drug to be licensed in all 28 countries of the European Union to reduce the risk for HIV infection, subject to national regulatory authority approval of required pharmacovigilance materials in each country.

Two major studies (iPrEx study and Partners PrEP trial) demonstrated substantial reductions in the risk for HIV-1 infection when Truvada was used as PrEP. Both studies linked better adherence to daily Truvada to better protection against HIV-1 infection.

Experts believe that it will be available on the pharmaceutical market in the next six months. Even now PrEP plays an important role, together with other measures, in HIV prevention.

PrEP is relatively costly (universally recognized is $1,539.90 for 30 tablets) if it is not reimbursed by health insurance and is affordable by very few people. Now many hope that alternative PrEP becomes available in the market and that this very effective method of prevention will be available to many more.

It is not yet clear when PrEP will be available in Sweden and at what cost.

In addition to the European Union, Truvada is also authorized for PrEP in the United States, Australia, Canada, Kenya, Peru, and South Africa.

Setback

I´m not quite sure what happened, but suddenly and quite unexpectedly - for me at least - I am back in the dumps. The medication I am on have now so limited the scope and depths of my feelings that everything seems connected with "tired". "Happy and tired", "doing fine and tired", "sad and tired", "bored and tired" and sometimes even "tired and tired".

Even I get bored with myself, its no wonder that others do too.

Photography by Peter Marlow

The way I know if I am feeling better or worse is if I wish contact with others or not. Right now I just avoid contact, I can easily do that in first life by turning off the cellphone or simply by refusing to answer, in SecondLife it´s not that easy, so I am staying away until my mood changes.

A Strange Day

Photo GETTY

As I woke up this morning I had the feeling this was going to be an awful day, but in hindsight it turned out not so bad. That should teach me!

So even if I overslept a little, I got to my work place in time for my meeting with one of my staff members. We were going to discuss a few problems in his performance lately. As he sometimes has a tendency to shut off all lines of communication when he feels pressured and just respond with "yes", "no" or "I don´t know", much like a teenager in a bad mood ,even though he is thirty-one years old I had been making plans on how to handle this.

Amazingly enough we had an open and honest exchange of views and after that could reach an agreement on how to move ahead.

After that I had to rush to my doctors appointment and got there just in time. Usually they let me right in but this time no one came for me so after fifteen minutes in the waiting room I mad inquiries. As it turned out my doctor had moved to new offices and had forgotten to inform me about me. When I made a telephone call to his offices the nurse was very sorry about the oversight and gave me a new appointment in the afternoon and the new address.

The meeting with my sweet Hungarian doctor was swift and good. Have I told you earlier that he is one of those very rare kinds of doctors that actually listens to what the patients are saying?

Well I told him about my strange mood swings and that I felt that my mood curve had a declining trend. I also told him about my occasional problems falling asleep. He increased my dosage of Cipralex and allowed me the flexibility to choose what dose to take between 10-20 mg depending on how I feel. I was also prescribed a non-addictive sleeping medicine I could use on those occasions.

I had some difficulties getting my prescription filled for the sleeping drug. Sweden used to have a well-functioning chain of state-owned pharmacies up until a few years ago. The conservative government in their infinite wisdom decided to carry out a pharmacy reform in which "pharmacies would be improved and made more efficient by increasing competition". As a result of this reform anyone with certain qualifications can start a pharmacy and some of the earlier pharmacies have been privatized.

The big benefit of the reform is that you today can buy the most common nonprescription drugs at gas-stations and supermarkets but for the rest it has resulted in a big mess where the pharmacies now only carry a few of the medicines and look more like cosmetics stores than pharmacies.

Earlier every pharmacy could tell you where you could go to get your prescription filled if they did not have the medicine themselves. Now you have to drive around yourself to at least three different of the new chains and check if they have it. Usually the new private chains don´t have many medicines, I am suspecting they only sell the thousand most common prescription drugs, while they leave the rest to the old state-owned pharmacies.

Finally after asking at six different pharmacies in two towns I could get my prescription filled, by the state-owned chain of course.

Good News

In hindsight I don´t really understand why I thought that my kind Hungarian-Swedish doctor would cut me off from the medication I feel I still need, perhaps it was because many have told me that two years is a long time and that they were cut off much earlier.

My doctor is actually one of only three doctors I have met in my life as a patient who doesn't only pretend to listen but proves again and again that he hears what I am saying - and sometimes even what I am not saying. I notice that by the questions he asks me.

Well, at our meeting today I immediately blurted out my worries. He just looked kindly at me with a small smile and said, "My dear (Bock), I have no plans whatsoever to cut you off from medication that you feel is good for you." With that out of the way, we had a good long conversation and he gave the results of all the blood work and tests which apparently indicate that I am in the best of physical health.

Thank for the support guys and girls, big hugs!

P.S. Please also read my friend Butch Diavolo´s post "Life without pills?" on his blog "Butch Ramblings". As I tell him in a comment there, it gives me hope for a future without medication.

Bock: "2012 Will Be Wonderful!"

"Farm in fog", photography by Gary Hamburgh

OK, I felt the pressure building up inside me as the end of the year came closer.

Just as we watch the fogs slowly lifting over the farmhouse in Gary Hamburgh´s beautiful picture, here are my predictions for 2012.

Universal

1. The universe as we know it will still be here
2. We will have made contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence. However, they decline any further contact because they think we are dumb asses.
3. The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything will remain 42.

Global

1. The Arab spring will continue with baby-steps and a few set backs, it will eventually also turn into a Persian spring. There will still be no Chinese spring in sight
2. The Internet will remain free, power mongers must realize you cannot put the genie back in the can once it is set free.
3. Barack Obama will be reelected for a second term as President of the United States of America

SecondLife

1. SecondLife will still be here, things will improve inworld when Viewer 1 has been dropped
2. Linden Lab will remain as owners of SecondLife and their financial situation will slowly improve
3. Mesh will...  ugh lets wait and see, my answer on this one is 42

Metaversal

1. The blog "Tinas universum" (Tina´s Universe) will be up and running again, the oldest Swedish avatar known to man cannot hold back long
2. "Bock in SecondLife" will most likely still be here, lets say 42 on this one
3. As for the rest - 42

Personal

1. I will be 42 and Bock will be 5, but we will still look like 32 and act like 12
2. I and Bock will have had sex again with another human being and/or avatar. Finally!
3. I will still be on antidepressants but vastly improved

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That´s it folks! All in all, we have a wonderful and marvelous year waiting for us. Enjoy 2012!