The VA hospital veterans survey I took yesterday was such a pleasure. They've got a young, blue-eyed, blond researcher to do the intake. After living with grizzled, butt-ugly veterans for three weeks and having nothing more elegant to look at than hairy necks and sidewalk-scraped knuckles, it was a real treat to lock eyeballs with a pretty woman, even if she was only interested in my body . . . the inside of my body.
Last week when they ran blood tests to find out why my face was glowing like a flashing red traffic signal, they threw in an HIV test. I'm negative. It was just my redneck upbringing cropping up on the wrong side of my head.
So now they want to study the health records of a HIV negative veteran compared to the health records of a HIV positive veteran.
They find my doppelganger in the VA system, a veteran just like me; same age, same weight, same record of homelessness, just like me except with HIV, and they run the medical histories side by side for the next 10 years ( if we live that long ).
I'd like to meet my doppelganger, you know, to see if HIS dementia has kicked in yet, but it's a double blind survey, so he might be locked up in Houston or Vegas or anywhere where they scoop up veterans off the street.
I wish him well, but I'll really be pissed if he outlives me. I've got lots of service connected illnesses:
Contact PTSD
I.Q. Leakage
Flaming Colon
Shit On A Shingle Arteries ( a chow hall disease)
Root Rot
Jungle Fever
Fonda Rage
V.A. Antipathy
Chronic Invisibility
Kittycumbooty Predilection
Acute Ranktophobia
and a host of others. But the V.A. is treating me for MAD (maladjustment disorder--aka characteropathy), SAD (social anxiety disorder), GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), BAD (bullshitter's anxiety disorder) and any other cute acronym they can make up, so everything will be okay.
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