Part 7: KT – Fighting the Best Fight
You know how sometimes you meet people for the first time and there’s something there that just CLICKS? That was how it was when my husband met SC for the first time. Soon after, SC invited my husband and I over to his house for dinner with him and his partner KT. Their beautiful home was adorned with stunning canvases that KT had created. A professional artist whose work is in high demand and displayed in luxury hotels, corporate head quarters and high-end galleries, KT gave us the tour of his walls and we were stunned by his talent. But more importantly, that night we realized how much in love SC and KT were.
These were two highly committed life partners who’d been together, at that time, for more than 15 years. And the four of us got along brilliantly. We saw them with some regularity, often joined by another couple of friends. It was at dinner one night at these mutual friends’ house that I saw KT taking A LOT of pills and talking about the health benefits of eating kelp. When I asked, a little uncomfortably, what the pills were for, he responded, “They keep me alive.”
My husband and I didn’t realize that KT was HIV positive until that night. Over the next year, we learned how KT and SC hadn’t had sex with fluid exchange for many years, and that SC was HIV negative. This aspect of their monogamous relationship certainly didn’t appear to affect the love and devotion that they clearly felt for each other.
We also learned that KT was one of the earliest diagnosed HIV patients in North America, and continues to be one of the world’s longest living survivors. This is in large part due to an incredibly positive attitude. KT is determined to fight this disease with every fiber in his being, to live with passion and to care for his body the best way he can.
This care takes its toll. He is committed to working out ever day, cycling year round, monitoring every piece of food that enters his body and ensuring that not only his he getting the best nutrition but also that he is eating foods that have beneficial immune-boosting properties. At the time when we saw him popping medication at the dinner table, he was taking 80 pills a day.
But the wicked thing about HIV is that at some point, the drugs stop working and you’ve got to try another combination. Having a good doctor is key to your survival. It was about 3 years ago when KT’s health was in rapid decline that his doctor, one of the world’s foremost experts on HIV, told him about some new drugs that were being tested in another country but weren’t yet approved for clinical trials in ours. He and his doctor mounted a campaign with the government to allow KT to take these new drugs. The government argued that taking the treatment had not yet proven to be safe. KT and his doctor argued that he’d exhausted all other treatment options in the 22 years since he was first diagnosed with HIV, and that if he didn’t take the new drugs, he’d be dead within months. They won their challenge and the new drugs saved his life.
Now, 25 years after contracting HIV, KT is looking fit and healthy. He and SC are still in love and together. They married and have been together more than 20 years. Who knows how long KT will be with us, as he brings us more incredible art and a brilliantly positive light into the lives of all who know him? But, I can say, that KT shows us all how to fight the best fight.
[...] Part 7: KT – Fighting the Best Fight [...]