WEBVTT

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<v ->I think in terms of dealing with this disease</v>

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and the nutrition and exercise

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and getting support and everything else,

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to me, adherence to drugs is absolutely mandatory.

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And I know some people have more problems with side effects,

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with certainly much more serious side effects

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than maybe what I've had, or just can't handle the drugs,

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or sometimes they don't work as well.

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But I am a real advocate for adherence

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because I believe that if you do stick with these

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and if you stick with the regimen,

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you don't miss too many doses,

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you don't stop and start, you stay with it,

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if you have problems you can change.

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There's other medicines now that you can

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change and switch to if you're having problems.

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So to me there's no reason not to adhere to it.

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It's not anywhere as difficult as it used to be.

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When I first started on my first regimen,

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I was doing about 90 pills a day.

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And now I'm only doing, for my AIDS meds,

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I only do nine pills.

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I do about 20 other pills for other things

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and the neuropathy and the osteoporosis.

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But I'm only doing about nine a day AIDS meds

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and I have many friends who are only doing

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three and four pills a day 'cause they've combined,

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there's about three or four different combo drugs,

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Truvada, Combivir, Trizivir,

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where they've combined and formulated

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these drugs together and some of them

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are just one pill a day, some two a day.

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I have several friends who are only doing

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three or four pills a day now.

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Which is an easy regimen.

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Getting 20 pills down four times a day

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is not an easy (laughs).

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But I did it, I mean I did it.

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I made myself because then we really thought,

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okay this is it, this is our only chance.

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We don't wanna mess it up.

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'Cause we knew there weren't many other drugs out there.

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After AZT, we only had two others for three or four years.

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So I think adherence is mandatory

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and it's so much easier now, as well, than it used to be.