Hairy Leukoplakia

After living with AIDS for 10 years, give or take, you get the idea that you've probably heard - or had - it all. Not anymore. Just when you thought it was safe to listen to someone complain about symptoms, side-effects and the inevitable, comes Hairy Leukoplakia.

When I last saw My Therapist, we returned to his intake form where I had basically copped to every STD in the book (not all at once). Now, lest you snicker, that list is not lengthy. I had the itchy one, the leaky one, and the one that would have gotten Hitler had he not gotten himself. I have not had the one where straight people rejoice in commercials that they can control outbreaks and continue to schtup fellow attractive actors. I also haven't had any of the Hepatitis family. But not for lack of trying, they might say. I think he was trying to scare me celibate. That's not likely to happen. I'm over 40, my hairline is receding, and I'm a decade into AIDS. If celibacy hasn't set in yet, it's unlikely to develop absent a ventilator. I don't scare easily anymore. And that seems to be the rub with Hairy Leukoplakia.

I had never heard of Hairy Leukoplakia. Its name is at once disturbing and mildly amusing to contemplate. I can't stop saying it: Hairy Leukoplakia. The experts (and they are legion) say that it is not necessarily hairy in appearance. This would cause one to wonder why, then, they would call it Hairy Leukoplakia. Perhaps, Hairless Leukoplakia, Balding Leukoplakia, or simply Leukoplakia would have been less misleading. I learned of Hairy Leukoplakia in an article in HIV Plus Magazine (www.hivplusmag.com) on smoking among people with HIV/AIDS.

I smoke. I started smoking when I was 22 and teaching junior high students. When you teach junior high, you have two choices: child abuse or smoking. I chose the one that didn't come with jail time. Had someone simply stamped "Hairy Leukoplakia" on the first pack of smokes I bought, I'd have probably taken a swing at one of the snotty prodigies entrusted to my tutelage. The referenced article addresses the challenges of getting the terminally infected to quit smoking. The most common challenge, it would appear, is that once you get the big "A", it's a little hard to rattle your cage with something like lung cancer. Hairy Leukoplakia, though, is a cage rattler.

It's not even the topic of the article. It's practically a footnote in a laundry list of possible trainwrecks that could happen to your body if you're HIV-positive and smoking. (X number of cigarettes)+ (Y number of T-cells) = Hairy Leukoplakia. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that Anderson Cooper hasn't done 90 minutes on Leukoplakia, Hairy or otherwise. It's like tongue crust, if I interpret the medical imagery correctly. And even more disturbing, it changes in appearance daily. So it's a bit like Cher, it would seem. It's like thrush (had that), only it's not - in that (and this will cheer you over dinner) thrush can be scraped off and Hairy Leukoplakia can't.

If you think for a moment that I haven't already been to the mirror with an improvised scraping device, you are mistaken. I did that before I started typing.

My therapist called Friday morning to inform me that their building was on fire and, since my troubles do not trump fires, we would go without new material for a week. I noted on the Caller I.D. that he was calling from inside the building. He is either braver than I would have assumed or there was no fire and I've now been stood up by my therapist. That, combined with the specter of Hairy Leukoplakia, leaves me more troubled than I might otherwise seem.

I think I need a cigarette.