I'm a 61 year old interior designer who was raised in Fresno California, moving on to Beverly Hills and then on to New York City.  I came home to Fresno in 1987 to take care of my folks until their deaths.  I remain here in Fresno and have many clients in this area now, but due to health I was forced to retired much to early.

I have survived aids since 1985 and brain cancer since 1998 and I'm a positive survivor with what my doctor tells me, the best attitude a survivor can have.  I have had many ups and downs through my years of survival and have been given extra problems like loosing most of my hearing in my right ear due to radiation damage when having treatment for the brain tumor.  I have terrible neuropathy due to side effects with one of my cocktail med's and suffer pain in the ankle side behind my toes.  I have to be very careful that that I do not injure my toes, because I have no feeling in the tips of my toes, they are totally numb. In fact I'm going through healing of a big toe that was injured (do not know what happend, because I could not feel it) and had to have all of the nail cut off.  I have problems with my eye sight due to some nerve damage from the radiation treatments.  I think after all the terrible things that I have gone through with my trials with two ugly diseases, the thing that bothers me the most is the pain that I have in my feet at night.  I dread having to get up to go to the bathroom, because it is hard to get back to sleep because of the pain.  But, you know what, this is such a minor bleep in my health compared to all the rest I have been through.

I belonged to a cancer group and became a navigator to new patients, helping them deal with the fright of cancer and then due to some health problems with aids I had to stop for awhile.  I was asked by our group leader to come back, as there were some new patients who really needed some possitve support from a cancer survivor.  I have gone back and the people seem to wait for those fun Murray remarks that make them realize that no matter how ugly it is, the laughter at times is one of the best medications one can get.

I do hope that sometime in furture you will have a show that deals with aids.  We cannot forget, even with the wonderful medications that allow us to survive, this ugly disease is not going away.  I feel that the media has drawn away from this topic because they feel the doctors have everything taken care of.  Wrong, the ugly side of this disease is that it never goes away and there is constant trials with your body rejecting the med's and then you have to pray that the new combination will be accepted by your body.  I worry about the young people and the fact that this loaded gun of a ugly disease is still out there waiting for a new body to attach to.  I have spoken to a youth group at a local church about aids and they seemed to think that it was something that if you get it all you have to do is pop a pill.  Well I took out my week in advance of all the pills that I take daily and took the top off and slammed it up side down on the table with all the pills all over the table and said "this is the pill you have to pop!",

Thank you for listening to me doctors and know that you have a long term survivor of aids and brain cancer who would be willing to give any verbal support on survival with these ugly diseases,

Murray McCann (#559-834-2618)