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dementia, the more medications he took, and the further away he got. Finally, he was physically here, but not mentally. He would just be sitting at home, staring off into space.”
“I can remember one day going over to his house. He was sitting there in front of me – the lights were on, but nobody was home. All of a sudden he got as clear as I had ever seen him, and he said, ‘You know, Jeff, you’re my best friend, and you’ve been like a brother to me. I’ll be waiting for you.’ So the good news is that I have somebody waiting for me.” Jeff laughs to ease the pain. “Maybe he’s putting up a pair of curtains or something while he’s waiting.”
“Everybody I knew that got sick from AIDS were heavy partiers – drinking and very much into the drug scene. And everybody I have known that has died of AIDS has been on AIDS medications. Back then it wasn’t the ‘nice’ HIV medications like protease inhibitors; it was the massive doses of AZT that would make them really sick. Today, the HAART drugs can make you pretty uncomfortable, but you might not realize or feel like you’re dying, until one day your liver just stops working and you’re gone.”
“I remember it so well how the people on AZT would be vomiting and so deathly sick from the medication they were taking that they would tell me, ‘I’d rather die of AIDS than take this medication.’ But they kept doing it anyway. There was a lot of pressure back then to keep taking AZT.”
Why didn’t Jeff take the HIV medications? You might say it was pure luck. Jeff was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in the early 1980’s, and strangely enough, it is the Hepatitis that probably saved Jeff’s life.
“My doctor knew that AZT – the drug of choice to fight AIDS in 1995 – would damage my liver, and he didn’t want to give me AZT while I was fighting Hepatitis at the same time. He said, ‘Let’s wait until we can get your Hepatitis under control before we treat you for

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