Alright folks, for once my paranoia was unfounded…For those of you who read my short blog about being approached by a focus group who was conducting interviews for a drug study…here\’s the upshot of that…As it turns out , Advanced Focus, a national marketing research company did a "blanket"  ad on sites like our hiv tribe, The Body.com etc…..It was a general ad or in entertainment terms, a "cattle call".  So no private information had been given them…It was merely conicidence that I am taking Viramune as part of my regimen….Advanced research was teh go-between for a Drug company called BioVid or something like that….A. R. set up the interview and the intervier called me promptly at 3PM yesterday…After asking me basic information to verify that I was indeed the person who had opted to be interviewed he asked my permission to tape it, explaining that after the iformation was gathered by teh company , the tape would be destroyed and also that during the interview I would be refered to by my first initial or my last name only… It went very smoothly and I have to hand it to the guy for being a very good interviewer and modirater, nudging me back on track if I got too off topic or verbose in my responses ( who ME?)…

I got the idea that the company was really trying to find out several main things about people who take Viramine : 1 : Side effects/drug reactions; 2: drug regimen adherance or any deviance from my regimen since I started; and 3: any suggestions for making the regimen any easier for people….I told him that I couldnt think of an easier regimen because I took mine every night before bedtine to avoid the few side effects such as light-sensitivity and visual perspective being squed a little….To be honest I don\’t know if this comes from the Viramune or the Truvada that I take….also, I completly forgot to tell him that I have a tingling and slight numbness in my feet that comes and goes…Seeing that I was hiv poz for 22 years before I started meds and never had that during all that time, I think it\’s a little more than just coincidence that it had happened in the last year sice I began hiv meds….I totally missed the chance to bounce this off of him, but then again, he was payimg ME for information , not visa-versa…

Again, it went very smoothly and was all wrapped up in about 45 minutes….

I have to say that it was the easiet $75 I had ever made since I was 15 years old and hanging out with sailors down at the shipyard… although not nearly as much fun.