I decided we need a fashion blog at POZ, it’s ONLY New York Fashion Week Spring 2009, the POZ offices are across the street from the Byrant Park Tents (as they are called,) and who better to write a fashion blog than moi. Of course, Regan Hoffman, our fashionista Editor-In-Chief, would probably do a spectacular job writing a fashion blog, but there’s a reason she’s called the Editor-In-Chief of POZ Magazine...HELLO. In actuality, this blog is more about fashion as metaphor, for the ups and downs of life in an HIV-positive world.



Last week I had a blissful birthday escape to Martha’s Vineyard, only to return to New York City and be diagnosed with a case of pneumonia. It started last Wednesday afternoon with the swelling of my ankles, and a feeling of being very light-headed. I was totally convinced that I needed to have intravenous immunoglobulin therapy (IVIG), which I wrote about in a blog featured on my site in May 2007. On Friday, I had a sharp pain in my left lung, in addition to my swollen ankles, as I stumbled in a Sudafed haze past the tents returning home from work. Why am I always sick on a weekend? I knew I would end up in the ER, and I’m not talking about the show (ER is so 90’s, it’s all about Grey’s Anatomy these days.) I got ahold of my doctor that day, after being connected to the answering service; it was already after 7pm, and he’s not even in the office on Friday anyway. My doc has no bed-side-manners, but I stick with him because he’s excellent at what he does, and he has saved my life more than once. My doc is all about numbers: T-Cell up, virus load down. If I need a shoulder to cry on there?s always my therapist, my psycho-pharmacologist, or my mom! My doc said that if my temperature exceeded 100 degrees, I should go to the emergency room. My temp at the time was 99.2, and normally I have a below average temperature of 97.1. I spent the night tossing and turning, coughing with my head shacked up like the Elephant Man, and decided to go to the ER the next day, whatever my temperature was. I slept until one in the afternoon, ate, took a shower, and packed an overnight bag, including a spreadsheet of my current meds. (This ain’t my first time at the rodeo!) Tropical Storm Hanna was hitting New York City on Saturday, ruining a perfect tanning day, so why not be proactive!

WAIT...do I sense of pattern of turmoil in the universe? I few of my facebook friends were having some similar problems (you must understand that facebook is my only connection to the outside world...only joking!) One threw his back out, and another who works for an internet television company was having technology issues with his office in India, AND I was diagnosed with pneumonia, NOT PCP (Pneumocystis pneumonia). I’m already on meds for PCP, since 1996? it never goes away, just lays there dormant....nice! My allergies had gotten so much worse from the liver disease, because of the diuretics (water pills,) and it just so happened to cause a case of pneumonia. Just my luck! Maybe Mercury was in retrograde?

I tried to find something off kilter regarding New York Fashion Week Spring 2009, but everything was so boring (because of the economy) except Marc Jacobs, perhaps. I?m posting this before Fashion Week closes, so it?s possible with one more day of shows that the models? hair-spray could be replaced by pink non-removable paint, or large tent could collate right in the middle of a prêt-à-porter extravaganza with Anna Wintour trapped inside, or?you get the picture. I could find some older tidbits of trouble from Paris and New York. Mercury was definitely in retrograde during Fashion Week in Paris in 1993, went Naomi Campell (who everybody know as the ?beat-your-maid-with-a-cell-phone-super-model?) fell on her $10,000 arse, while wearing a pair of 10-inch platform Vivienne Westwood’s shoes. Thirteen years later, the term of ?did a Naomi,? happened to a not-so-well-known-model at the Proenza Schouler Spring 2007 Collection. Proenza Schouler are two young men and talented designers who graduated from Parsons School of Design, as I did. The duo was asked by Target to design a women?s wear collection for its store. I have no connection to Target...yet.

This was clearly as stretch, but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m already through half my antibiotics and getting better every day. Isn’t it better to look at being HIV+ as Mercury in retrograde, or a fashion faux pas? Sometimes that?s all we can do, that’s ?my glass-half-full comment? for this blog.

XOXO...

Edited by Ms. 90120 Herself, considers tanning an excercise because you have to turn over ever 30 minutes, and at 16 she two cars one for school, and one just for weekends in Malibu, Dr. Aimee Kilbane

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