1. I had just come off of two years on the Navajo Nation. I was deeply affected by the issue of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. It had been in my face those entire two years.

2. One night, I went to bed.

3. I woke up several months later, and was shocked to see that I was in ICU in a hospital.

4. Three doctors were looking down at me and they were extraordinarily grim.

5. “You have AIDS,” one of the doctors said. “And you are going to die. But before you die, we need to know how we are going to get paid.”

6.) I did not have health Insurance at that time because Cobra was and is so fucking expensive. I did not need hugs. I needed money.

7. I knew what I would have to write, and I knew how and where to sell it.

8. People focus on who I was and who I was not.

9. YOU try paying for antiretrovirals. I needed about $120, 000.

10. I went home (a nurse came with me and stayed about 6 months).

11. I wrote a book featuring Fetal Alcohol Syndrome which is a FACT (read the book) even though I new I would be outed. It would only be a matter of time.

12. The book won award after award. I was not prepared for that. Walking quietly off into the sunset was now less and less an option. But I refused and refuse to die quietly.

13. The shit hit the fan.