FEATURES 15)

 

ax, HIV, and Drugs

an-Pierre Perusse talks about living with the human-immunodeficiency virus

 

 

 

By Dave Weatherall, CUP Québec Bureau Chief

MONTREAL (CUP)—The man sitting across from me
doesn’t look like the photo I saw of him on his website.
The full, freshly-shaven smiling face in the photo is
replaced by a more concerned, thoughtful look. He’s lost
weight, there are frown lines across his brow, and he has
a grey, white, and black beard. Almost 10 years of living
with the HIV virus has taken its toll.

Jean-Pierre Pérusse is open about his HIV. He’s seen
a lot of friends die from the disease and he’s been living
with it long enough for it not to be a taboo topic of
discussion. But he’s worried about younger gay men.

“Some of them see people like me last 10 years with
the HIV virus and they think, ‘oh I can deal with taking
a pill in the morning and evening, but they don’t always
realize everything that comes with those pills,” said the
40-year-old Pérusse, a gay actor who has been living with
the HIV virus since 1998.

Pérusse’s first round of medication caused a chemical
imbalance in his brain that plunged him into depression.
After seeking advice from a psychologist about the side
effects of his HIV medication, Pérusse embarked on
a steady diet of Prozac. It was then he discovered that
none of the medications to help an HIV-infected patient
deal with the side effects of HIV drugs are covered by
medicare. And it can get expensive, the HIV drugs run
Pérusse about $1,200 a month, which is covered, but
he said the Prozac, the Gravol for the nausea, and other
ailments all add up financially. Personality-wise, they can
take an even heavier toll.

“When I was on Prozac, I became a zombie. I just
didn’t react to things going on around me,” he said. “As
an artist, I can’t live like that.”

The HIV medication also restricted Pérusse to four
hours of regular activity a day. The rest of the time
he spent feeling nauseous, enduring diarrhoea, and
sleeping, After a few months, he went back to his doctor,
exasperated.

“T told him this wasn’t working for me. I told him that
if this was what the rest of my life on meds was going to
be like, I’d rather be dead.”

So Pérusse began a new round of different HIV
medication. It was relatively successful in treating the
HIV—Pérusse is now in remission—but the depression
and, as a consequence the Prozac, continued. It’s gotten
so bad that Pérusse takes what he calls “vacations” from
his medications. Once the medication forces the HIV
into remission, Pérusse stops taking them for a couple of
months. When the HIV returns, he goes back on.

The miserable catch-22 of HIV drugs is that no
one really knows the long-term effects, but none of the
patients, Pérusse included, want companies to withhold
the drugs until they know they’re completely safe. By
then, they might be dead.

“We’re guinea pigs when it comes to HIV medication.
What you get depends on what doctor you go to and
which conference he/she has recently attended. That’s
why it’s so important to get a doctor you trust and who
will listen to you,” he said.

For Pérusse, being HIV positive has meant becoming
a specialist in what HIV drugs he takes and how they
might interact negatively with regular prescriptions he
receives. In January, Pérusse contracted pneumonia.
When he went to the hospital, the doctor who saw him
didn’t have his file and so wasn’t aware of the other
drugs he was taking, He said getting tested isn’t difficult,
but the waiting lists for knowledgeable doctors can be
excruciatingly long.

“The doctors are so tired; they are so overworked,” he
said.

Pérusse contracted HIV from his partner when a
condom broke during sex. He knew his partner was
positive before having sex with him and said now that
he is positive he is open with sexual partners about his
disease. That openness has meant rejection.

“There was one man I told, he left the room to
think about it, came back and said ‘you know what? ’m
not ok with sleeping with you,” said Pérusse. “That
hurt, nobody likes to be told no, but I was happy later
because at least he’d taken the time to think about the
consequences of an action he was about to take.”

That act of reflection is something Pérusse is trying
to encourage amongst the next generation of gay men
in Montreal. Because of his openness about being HIV
positive, Pérusse said young men often accost him at bars
with questions about HIV. He said his message is always
the same.

“T tell them to play hard, but play safe,” he said. “I just
can’t understand why anyone would ever go bareback. I
mean, why would you not wear a condom? Why would
you want that little voice in the back of your head asking
‘am I really safe?”

The consequences of contracting HIV initially
damaged Pérusse’s professional career as an actor. In
1999 Pérusse was up for a part in a commercial, but once
the producers found out he was HIV-positive, he was
denied the part.

“There was a kissing scene,” he said. “So they wanted
someone who didn’t have HIV.”

Pérusse said that kind of open discrimination is
much rarer these days and government awareness
campaigns have helped dispel myths about HIV and
lower the infection rates among gay men, but he remains
concerned about the possibility of a generation that
doesn’t know the reality of living with HIV until it’s too
late. He’s critical of the government awareness publicity
that showed headstones in a cemetery of people who
were killed by AIDS.

“A headstone means nothing to a young person—
they’re young, they think they are invincible. I know, I
was young and | thought I was invincible. I still think I’m
invincible!”

Pérusse said he believes the one-on-one interactions
with gay men about AIDS/HIV ate far more effective
at eliminating society’s emotional response to HIV and
replacing it with a rational one.

“They owe it to themselves to think,” he said.