The Big Pink Pill

One of the challenges in going to New York and doing our show is the fact that our performance schedule is going to be somewhat erratic, and this was going to interfere with my pill-taking schedule. For instance, we are going to do a late show on Friday nights, given the fact that the Actor's Temple is, well, a Temple!

They are a working synagogue with a congregation. So, on the Sabbath (which begins Friday at dusk), they will hold their regularly schedule services in what will be our play space. And we've decided to do a late night performance of Big Voice afterwards. (We thought we might do that anyway just to give all the working theatre professionals in New York a chance to see the show, anyway.)

This was going to disrupt my pill-taking schedule, however, because one of my pills -- the famous "Chevron-shaped pill" alluded to in The Last Session -- has to be taken 12 hours apart. And one of the others, Sustiva, is a pill that zings me out, mentally. So, my normal schedule is 10am/10pm (after which I go to sleep unless I'm already asleep and Jim has to wake me up).

But just in time comes Atripla! It is a combination of three once-a-day drugs which has been created by two drug conglomerates who joined together to make this single pill. When I got it the other day, I saw that it was a big, pink horse pill.

I began taking it just a couple of days ago and, so far, no side effects. (I was already dosing two of the three drugs in this combo, Sustiva and Viread, so I was only concerned about the third, Truvada). Now I don't have to worry about the 12 hour dosing. I can just take this one pill a day right after the show. Isn't science grand? (I still take a ton of pills for other things, but for HIV therapy, this is fantastic. Jim and I were remembering back when I had to take 12 pills a day spaced out over four time periods of eating/not eating. What a disaster THAT was!)

TAGS: AIDS, HIV, Atripla, dosing, THE BIG VOICE