Bumped, Bruised and Battered - But Still Here

by Gary Petonke
(Ft Lauderdale, FL)

A simplier time at 5 years old

Born and raised in Ohio, my journey began in 1949, at my birth. Living in the small northwest Ohio town of Fremont, I had a very typical childhood, if somewhat upscale; you see we had a second home on the lake, where we spent our summers.

After high school, where I was fairly popular and had many friends, I went on to college and graduated.

But all through this time I held a dark secret, you see I was gay and suppressed those "feelings".

After college, still with my secret, (which I had never acted upon) I went back to Fremont to find work. At this point, I could no longer suppress my gay side and finally decided that I had to come to terms with my sexuality and had my first gay experience and after that, never returned to the "straight" side of my nature.

Visiting the larger towns near to where I lived, Toledo and Detroit, MI. I had several lovers in each of those cities, this was in the late 1970's and HIV/AIDS became a part of the gay world.

I lived with this knowledge, but believed that I would not contract the disease, I was wrong. In 1988, I was diagnosed with the disease and was devastated!

I struggled with the knowledge and tried to figure out how to deal with this death sentence.

Eventually, I found a job working with POZ magazine, a publication about living with HIV and from there on went into teaching others on how to avoid HIV and deal living with HIV.

Feeling good about myself, I was again devastated by another diagnosis of Prostate Cancer in 2002.

Since then I have been working with individuals with HIV and cancer and how to deal with those two difficult diseases.

I have always looked at things as a glass half full and decided that I was a part of nature and that these diseases were just a part of nature and I was a part of them.

I always try to Seize the Day and get everything I can out of every moment and work to get others to do the same. Whether they have any deadly illnesses or not, we can't waste our time here, since we only have a limited amount of life on this earth.