HIV Hypnosis and a Bird--by Bryan Franks

This blog is a smorgasbord of my life experiences. My memoirs, if you will, in no particular order. My writing will depict true events to the best of my recollections. Some details may be omitted to spare the living any discomfort.

A diagnosis of HIV in the eighties was a nightmare like no other. It was the mystery of its origins and how it was spread and its lethal outcomes that set it apart from many other communicable diseases. The fact that it mostly hit gay men and IV drug users also created a stigma that was unlike other diseases.

My first clue about the disease was in the gay newspaper, The  Advocate. It was a headline that I read from the paper as it set in its newspaper box for sale on Polk Street in San Francisco. I think it was 1982 or 83, during one of my many trips there through the eighties, after having lived there in 1979. I loved the city and went as often as I could. The headlines which I cannot recall exactly was something about a “Gay Cancer". I recall being alarmed but really didn’t have the coins to purchase it, so some time passed before I made the connection. 

When I asked for a test from the doctor after the car accident in April of 1985, that I referenced in my last blog, I was only being cautious and had little worry that it would be positive. I had not done a lot of reading on the subject as I was usually working six to seven days a week at times to make ends meet. Work was really all I did with a very occasional night out at the local gay bar, either Grand Central in San Bernardino or the dive gay bar, The Skylark, by the railroad tracks in Colton, California.

So I was very shocked to get a positive result. But as things sometimes work out well, I was also on medical leave at the time for injuries sustained in the car accident. This gave me precious time to focus on my situation and look for some relief from my mounting mental anguish.

I did seek medical care for HIV from a doctor in West Hollywood, California. These doctors were very few in number. I checked out OK with only a low platelet count. I never returned and would seek no further care until the fall of 1991. I was not sick and there were no treatments. AZT, the first treatment for HIV would not be available until 1987 and even amFAR, the famous AIDS foundation in which Elizabeth Taylor was later associated with would not exist until September of 1985. 

There were no support groups, at least none I had found. Had I been sick I would have been given a hospital bed in which to die. My meals would have probably been left in the hall because hospital workers would be too terrified to enter. This actually happened to me in 1991 when I was recovering from surgery from a near-fatal exploding gall bladder. I was in the infectious ward at County Hospital and there was no HIPPA law then, so the staff knew who had the virus.   

Then-President Reagan never uttered a word on the subject until 1985 and then he just answered a reporters question on the subject, virtually ignoring the mounting crisis. It would take Rock Hudson’s and other celebrity deaths to bring national attention to the suffering. There was nothing but suffering and death for those early patients with severe symptoms. I was very lucky to have remained healthy up until 1996 when the development of HAART therapy medications really made a difference in survival. 

But in 1985 there was virtually nothing, so I looked for and found help with the mental anguish, which was really the only symptom from which I suffered. Hypnotherapy and New Age philosophies would fill the void and get me to where I needed to find peace. Buddhism was also very helpful along with meditation and self-hypnosis. These are the only practices of that period of searching that I still embrace to this day. Many of the others, crystals, psychics and full moon rituals and the like seem frivolous to me now, but they helped when I needed them so disparately. For this reason, I try not to judge those that still embrace them. We are all right where we need to be if we are trying and it’s none of my business.

I was put in touch with Sally through a referral service that was helping people with HIV connect with the few professionals willing to help at that time. She had a Ph.D. in Philosophy and operated a School of Hypnotherapy as well as hypnotherapy counseling in a tiny office on Magnolia Ave in Riverside, California. Her first words for me at my first appointment were: “You’re really feeling sorry for yourself, aren’t you?”. I was. 

She helped me confront my fears and exposed me to many other therapies and new age ideas. I immersed myself and absorbed that which comforted me. I found through her a tiny independent book store named, Ananda Book Store, near the University of Riverside campus, UCR. that was brimming with books and bobbles on everything occult, new age and all kinds of other philosophies. It was like a toy chest of treasures for the mind and body. They offered classes and lectures that expanded my understanding of my place in the universe. I also attended Sally’s state-certified school of hypnotherapy and became a certified hypnotherapist.

All of this helped me forget that which I had no control over, HIV, and I learned a plethora of life coping techniques and practices. 

So I told you about how hypnotherapy helped me cope with my diagnosis but I think I promised you the story about the injured pigeon, as well.  

I don’t think I completely understood the role the pigeon played until later, but he or she was there on my front porch deck shortly after Rick left, please refer to my last blog for reference. It was injured, a pierced breast and was not going anywhere. I thought, what do I do with this sick bird hindering my ingress and egress. I can’t just kick a pigeon off my very high deck, so I let it stay for over a week and I fed it and it made a huge mess I could not clean because I could not disturb an injured bird. This was all before I found counseling. 

The care of the bird took my mind off my troubles and helped me with my perspective. There were many people and animals in trouble out there, I was not alone in that. This is life, suffering happens and sometimes someone lets you stay awhile and get better. That’s about the best one can hope for and that bird got me through a few more days and I, in turn, returned the favor. He flew away having healed, ready to live more birdlife. I was about to do the same. 

I don't know why I survived until science caught up and saved my life in 1996, partly luck and partly the actions I took when I found out, is my guess. I didn't fall into a state of hopelessness, or at least I did not stay there and that was probably helpful to my immune system.  I'll never know the reason I survived and so many beautiful deserving people perished. I will not say that AIDS was helpful in my personal growth, or that it was what I needed for my growth. I would have, I'm sure, found a potentially less lethal catalysis.  I can't give a plague that power. I just got lucky and a few people let me stay awhile and I survived to fly another day. 

Bryan

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