guyzzerino

 This is “Linkie’s Story” as we first presented it in 1997:

There is mystery and confusion in how I contracted Hepatitis C, and even how long I’ve been afflicted.  None, some or all of the life experiences I relate here caused or contributed to my illness.

1967, at age 13, for various reasons I began to experiment with drugs.  Pot and beer at first as a rebellion to my mother’s domineering upbringing.  Both my mother and my father… as well as me… are full-blooded Sicilian.  With that blood, how could I not rebel?  My parents, with their old-fashioned morality made it hard not to.

1969, at the age of 15, I was seduced by the “hippie” culture (fuel for my rebellion).  So, there I was, hair down to my butt, sandals on my feet, flowers in my hair and beads around my neck… doin’ my own thing.  Now I was trippin’ on acid, experimenting with uppers and downers and anything that would make me feel good and remove me from reality.

At this same time, the boy down the street and I fell madly in love.  He was my Romeo, and I was his Juliet.  Remember now, this was the era of “make love, not war”.  We made love, he went to Vietnam.  While he, Fred, was in boot-camp, I found out I was pregnant.

Being young and naive, I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was four months along.  Obviously, this didn’t set well with my parents.  But, I wanted this baby and so did Fred, who was now my fiance.  However, my choices were limited.  As much as Fred wanted to, he could not leave boot camp to come home and marry me.  I couldn’t run away because I didn’t know where I could go.  I was feeling a wide range of emotions.  I was ashamed, yet happy.  I had always dreamed of being a mother.  My parents though, in their infinite wisdom, were determined to crush my dream.  So, the only choice I had was the one my parents gave me.  That decision was to have an abortion… to kill my baby.  That was the beginning of my downward spiral, my road to self-destruction.

1972, at age 19, I began my long struggle with heroin addiction.  In those days, syringes were not readily available to drug users, so we made our own - out of eye-droppers and baby bottle nipples - and everyone shared the same needle, not even thinking that we could be passing around deadly diseases.  And guess what? I got real sick.  I started turning yellow, I lost my appetite and I had no energy for at least four months.  Thinking I just had a bad case of some long-lasting flu, which did eventually go away on its own, I felt it was unnecessary at that time to see a doctor.

Months later, seeing a doctor for an unrelated health problem, my blood-work turned up an unexpected surprise.  The doctor told me that “tests show that you have what we call ‘Hepatitis; NON-A, NON-B’, and it looks like you may have chronic Hepatitis”.  That was the first indication that I may be very sick, and it scared the shit out of me.  At that time, the doctor wanted to do a liver biopsy, but a week before he was to do the biopsy, my liver enzymes went down, and he called it off.  Whew… what a relief! I was not looking forward to that.

Time passed…

1977, at age 24, I moved to San Francisco.  My heroin addiction continued to escalate out of control.  I lived in the “Mission District”, a hot-bed for heroin users.  In order to support my habit, I learned the “world’s oldest profession”… prostitution.  I worked the streets of San Francisco for many, many years, until I learned that it was easier to support my habit by dealing the drug.  Eventually, I moved to North Beach, one of the hottest tourist spots in the city.  I wound up being one of the biggest and most successful drug dealers in that area.  As the years went by my addiction to heroin grew more and more out of control, and as an added bonus, I began to develope a profound addiction to cocaine.  And, even after all of that, I had not yet hit bottom.

During all this time my life-style afforded me many memorable experiences.  15 months jail time for prostitution, and 12 months jail time for drug dealing.  Non-concurrent.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, my then boy-friend discovered an even better way to make quick money.  Robbing banks.  Although he started on his own, it was easy for me to be drawn into it.  I ended up driving the “get-away car”.  But, it was only a matter of time, and after 30 (maybe more) robberies, we got caught.  Because he was the one who did the actual robberies, they had little interest in me.  He wound up doing 15 years in a federal pen, and I wound up going back to my parents’ home.

Finally, FINALLY, I had hit rock-bottom.  A light went on in my head and I realized that I was either going to die from my abuse of drugs, or I was going to spend the majority of my life in a correctional facility.  Neither was acceptable.  And although I wallowed in a certain amount of depression for a time and continued a bout with alcohol.  In time, even that came to an end.

1991, at age 37, I enrolled in the local methadone program.  Not the first time I had tried to quit with methadone, but the first time I had been succesful at it.  But, even though I knew I had to give up heroin, I was still unwilling to drop my other destructive addictions.  I was having a hard time accepting that in order to “survive”, I had to make a complete life style change.  I continued to hang out in bars and date the type of men who only thought of themselves, and would support my habits rather than support me in my recovery.

I was very fortunate this time to hook up with a counselor who really cared.  Dennis recognized that I had the potential to beat this thing, and that all I needed was the proper guidance and counseling.  Almost immediately, Dennis and I developed a good rapport.  After a lot of tears, anger and self-pity, I began to understand what my recovery was all about.  I actually began feeling sorry for Dennis, he had a tough job ahead of him.  This time I was determined to make it work. Lord knows I didn’t want to be dependent on my parents for the rest of my life.  I wanted to be independent.

As time went by, I started doing better, and better and better.  By this time I had completely stopped all my drug use.  On a whim, I placed a personal ad in a local paper.  At first I played it off as a joke, but I began getting responses from men I felt I would like to meet.  “Nice” men who I thought would support me in my recovery, and accept me for who I had been.  There was one man in particular.

That is when Guy answered my ad.  He was everything I thought I wanted in a man.  He was a working professional.  He was kind and gentle, and had a great sense of humor.  We got along great.  After dating for a couple of weeks I decided it was best to be honest and tell him about my past.  I told him EVERYTHING… I left nothing out.  I knew it was necessary and that I couldn’t have a relationship with him based on lies.  After I unloaded my horror stories on him, to my surprise, his only question was “But, have you ever made love to small farm animals?”  I was shocked.  After all that, he could joke about it.  I can’t say he wasn’t phased by it, but I knew then he would accept me for me.

1995, Cinco de Mayo, Guy and I were married.  That same year, the methadone clinic was testing all clients for the Hepatitis C virus.  Over 80% tested positive for Hep C.  And, unfortunately, I was one of them.  However, the results of the test answered so many questions.  Why I was constantly tired.  Why I had so many aches and pains.  Why I couldn’t find my car keys.  The dragon had reared it’s ugly head.  It really scared me knowing I had a serious liver disease.  And then finding out there was no cure scared me even more.  But, after all I had been through, there was no way I would let this ruin my life.  I was finally happy.  I had married a great guy, I lived in a nice home, and we had adopted an adorable little dog named Data (our son).  Life was good for me.

1997, at age 43, I look back on my life.  You can see the mystery in how I contracted Hep C.  I was in ALL risk groups.  Prostitution, I had two blood transfusions in the early ’80’s, I was an IV drug user, and I was a barber.  But it doesn’t matter how I got it now.  I have it, and I am dealing with it.

I love life now and every day is precious to me.  I’ve learned to live each day to it’s fullest.  I will continue my fight to live.  This is where my story ends.

“Life to Be Continued”