 All right, so finally, yay. Well, finally. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. Yeah, for sure. So what's the most pressing thing on your mind right now? Well, so there's, I'll tell you there's some good news. You know, I called you maybe a week ago or something. And I told you kind of what was going on. And then I texted you and I was not in the right mind because I had received word from my medical board representative that I had been recommended for full medical board for the Air Force to try and fight to stay in, you know, like I met with my VA, the Veterans Affairs Administration. I met with them right yesterday because I have to go through the claims process so that in the event that the informal board, if they decide that I'm not fit for duty, then it goes over to the disability rating board from the VA and that's where I'll get my disability rating. And that's for anything, any kind of medical problem that I have incurred since I entered the military. So all the way back to 2014 June. Is that where they determine whether you're eligible for disability? Yeah, but I'm, you know, I met with her yesterday and I'm really hoping that if I do get discharged, that I hit that 30% mark because that means I get medically retired, which means I walk around almost as if I served for 20 years. So I get stipend for the rest of my life. I get to enjoy the commissary and the BX for the rest of my life. I get full health care coverage, access to medicine, that kind of stuff. And there's some really cool opportunities like they provide education benefits. So I can get, I can get a master's degree through the VA and that kind of stuff. But the goal is to not get discharged. The goal is to actually go in and, you know, fight for my career. If the informal board does come back, there's two options. It can come back with discharge, recommend discharge, and then they'll recommend some kind of disability or they can say return to duty. That means the whole process is over. I go back to living doing my life as normal. If they do come back with a discharge, then I can say, no, I don't agree. And then I appeal that to the formal board. If the decision comes back and say early, or I'm sorry, late April, I have 10 days to decide whether or not I agree with that. As soon as you submit the appeal, it's usually about 10 days before you go to San Antonio to Randolph Air Force Base and you spend five days down there where you actually are provided with legal counsel through the office of Airmen's Council because the medical board is an actual formal board almost like a courtroom. And you can essentially plead your case with your lawyer and then the three physicians and then you wait for their decision. And if that comes back, they can come back with a return to duty or they can come back with a discharge recommendation. If they come back with discharge recommendation, you can appeal it one last time and that's to the Secretary of the Air Force. Her counsel and her could always say yes or no, we don't concur. And then if you do get returned to duty in any of the process, living with HIV in the military is not, it's not like easy peasy because you still get what's called an assignment limitation code, meaning I'm deployable with a waiver. I can go anywhere with a waiver and then the anywhere is kind of got an asterisk because there are still a few countries you can't go to. And mostly that's located in central commands which encompasses all of the Middle East because there are still 18 countries that don't allow entrance to their country if you are HIV positive. I mean, that speaks to how far we still have to go with everything. I mean, if you think about it, most of the world followed, United States actually had a ban on travel up until 2010 for those living with HIV. It was though, I mean, really and truly the US has As recently as 2010? As recently as under is under President Obama. So we've made a lot of, and the world kind of followed suit after we did that. But I mean, it just shows you how recent though things are still in place. And I think that speaks to a bigger issue which is still the stigma of HIV. And there's nothing medically that bars me from service in the military. The medical community says, Hey, this kid has HIV, but his viral load is zero. His CD4 count is over 800. Really and truly what it comes down to is because here's the thing, the military just made some policy changes. So in February, 2018, the Trump administration put out a policy which was the deploy or get out of policy which said if you were not deployable, so deployment eligible within 12 months then you were to be administratively discharged. Then I think what happened though is they said, oh crap, there's a lot of people who weren't deployable, like technically deployable. So they came out with a memo and a new, a memo and a dodie. So a dodie is what's, it's called the Department of Defense Instruction. It's what we have to live by at the Department of Defense level, how to handle people who were not deployable based on this deploy or get out policy. Because the deploy or get out policy really and truly in and of itself wasn't meant to kick people out. It was what we call malingerers and it was more so hit at people who were like, their PT test comes around, they take their PT test twice a year because they don't hit the 90% or higher threshold. So their PT test comes around and they're like, ooh, my back hurts. Let me go talk to the doctor and they get put on profile, so they can't. So when they get put on profile for like three months, well, they don't take their PT test for three months. They're limited to PT, they can't deploy. And so there are people like that still everywhere in society, but they're in of course are people like that military and they just draw paycheck. So it was more aimed at those kind of people, but at the end of the day, it still like it kind of hit everyone. So that Doty then came out and said, hey, this is how we're actually gonna handle deal with people. And then there was a memo that was published and I'll read it to you. There was a memo that spread, it came out from the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force and it was postmarked on June the 6th of 2018. And it's a memo random for the Air Force personnel center which is down at Lackland. It's also down, it was also given for the Air Force Medical Standards Branch. The Air Force Medical Standards Branch is the one who determines whether or not a member with a certain condition is going to go to a medical board and go through the whole process. And they said, this memo will provide guidance for the Air Force Personnel Center Medical Standards Branch in the Medical Service Officer Management Division for the Evaluation for Fitness for Airmen with Asymptomatic HIV. In order to treat every airman equitably and with dignity and respect, the appropriate treatment and medical evaluation of Fitness for Continued Service for Asymptomatic HIV Airmen will be accomplished in the same manner as any airman with a chronic and or progressive disease in accordance with the Doty 6485.01 which is, excuse me, human immunodeficiency virus and military service members. Dated back to 2013. Asymptomatic HIV alone is not unfitting for continued service. That's the biggest, that's my biggest issue I've got is because you've got a Doty which states symptomatic HIV alone is not unfitting for continued service. You've got an official memo dated June 6th of 2018, which states asymptomatic HIV alone is not unfitting for continued service. You've got an AFI Air Force Instructions that Air Force members are delivered by. It's from Dr. Okulich, who is the Chief Infectious Disease Doc for HIV. The AFI he wrote also says, Asymptomatic HIV alone is not unfitting for continued service. But yet the Air Force is saying if you've got HIV, we're picking you out. So where is the disconnect? Where is that breakdown happening? Where is this stuff, isn't it? Who's basically deciding, okay, yes, we have all this stuff over here that says it shouldn't be an issue, but now we're gonna discharge people. That's honestly the biggest question everyone's trying to ask. No one knows why, no one knows where this is happening. Who's initiating the whole process of reviewing you, who flagged you? So I was diagnosed on December the 7th, then about a week later I got a phone call. 2002? Yeah, so then I got a phone call but a week later from a guy named Walter Micah. He's a guy that is the community health nurse down at the Infectious Disease Clinic at the Brook Army Medical Center. You can also call out San Antonio Military Medical Center. If you're diagnosed with HIV in the military, you have to go down to see the ID doc for an initial visit. They check your blood work, they check a lot of different things, you go through classes, just about essentially how to deal with living with HIV. And honestly, I think it's really awesome. I think the military honestly does a better job at dealing with HIV than the civilian side. It's just because the military is so structured and rigid that you have to do it anyway. So once I left San Antonio and came back out to California and back to my job, about a week later, I got a phone call from my military rep from the medical board that said, hey, what they call the Air Force Medical Clearance Board has looked at your case and said they recommend a return to duty. From there, it goes to the medical standards branch. The medical standards is the one who says you're gonna review return to duty and you're fine or your return to duty with an assignment limitation code or some kind of limitation, or they can say push it into what we call IDES. It's the informal disability process. It's the informal disability evaluation system, but that medical board process. And so it all starts at the medical standards branch. It works its way through, but the problem is there seems to be a disconnected, kind of in my opinion, this is my opinion and not an opinion of the Air Force, the US government or anything, but my opinion is this. There's some kind of disconnect at the medical standards branch. There's some kind of disconnect at the medical board and there's also some kind of disconnect at the secretary of the Air Force level. Because my thing is if I as a military member have to follow Dodie's official memos, orders, AFI's, then why shouldn't everyone else have to? And that's precisely why there are lawsuits. Again, honestly, that's why there are lawsuits at the level that they're at right now. They're fighting for the fact that, hey, this is what the Dodie and memo and AFI say, but here's my discharge notice which states you're being discharged, medically discharged because of HIV. And that's the only thing that they're being discharged for. I mean, it sounds like the fact that these lawsuits are happening is necessary and it might be the catalyst that finally gets everyone on the same page. That's what I hope for. Is there anything that has transpired or come up in the last week? You've been getting information and things have changed here and there almost daily, so I don't. When I got the phone call that, I was gonna be going through the full medical board process. I sprung into action because I was like, heck no. I'm not gonna be found unfit. I mean, heck, here I am as a kid who does CrossFit. I'm training for my marathon, like my ninth marathon. All these things, I'm a very, I eat healthy. I'm just a very fit person. I run 26 miles for fun. And what's your rank? What do you do in the Air Force? I'm a second lieutenant. I am a logistics officer. There's a lot. So you've obviously earned this position yourself through your merits. I mean, I'll tell you, it didn't come without a lot of hard work because I went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It's one of the four federal service academies. You've got West Point for the Army. You've got anapolis Naval Academy in Maryland for the Navy and the Marine Corps. You've got the Coast Guard Academy for the Coast Guard, and you've got the Air Force Academy of the Air Force. There are a few ways to commission, but that's, in my opinion, one of the, how shall I say hardest, crappiest ways to do it is just, because every day is, you're having to do something and you're having to work hard every day just to get through. And the way that translated to now is, I didn't work hard every day at the Academy for four years, 26 June of 2014 to 23 May of 2018. I didn't suffer in some way, shape or form every day to get here and just give up, you know? I don't know, that's why I've decided to fight. That's why I decided that I'm not just gonna lay down because I do think it's imperative that the stigma of HIV changes because the problem I think really with where this disconnect comes from is stigma because, you know, I've heard stories where you've got people who freak out because they've got a subordinate who has HIV and, you know, they get counseled, right? They have doctors call them and talk to them and they say, hey, this person is completely fine. And they're like, well, he's gonna give it to somebody else. And they're like, his viral load is zero. He could literally cut your arm and you could cut like, cut his. And he's not gonna pass it to you. And it's like, you know, and it's like, well, HIV. So I think that's the biggest problem we're still facing in today is that even people that are living with HIV, like you and I, they still feel ashamed that they have HIV. They don't wanna talk about the fact they've got HIV. They don't wanna... Also, I think, I can't assume, but I would imagine that HIV is still so much associated with LGBT being gay men. So that's also carries that stigma as well. And it wasn't that long ago where gay and lesbian service members could be open. So I'm sure there's still that stigma and then wrap that up into this disease, this virus. And it just like doubles down on that fear and the irrational bias. I will say on the good front though, aside from the Air Force, I know that the Navy and the Army are actually making some really good progress. The Navy just said that there has been discussion about letting sailors go back out to sea on ships without getting a waiver, which is kind of a big deal. Cause when you're on a ship, you're considered like deployed. They wouldn't even let you be on a ship. And then they opened up to the point where it was like, okay, well, you can have a waiver and that's still kind of a hard process. But now there's even discussion of not even needing a waiver to get back on a ship. That's big progress. It was out in the news recently too, which I think is incredible. The Army is also now about to begin allowing soldiers in infantry units to deploy downrange with their infantry units. Now they can't actually be in combat, but they can still deploy with their infantry unit but being like a supporting role. What does that mean downrange? Like deployed in a combat environment. So that's pretty big too, that they're gonna actually allow HIV soldiers to deploy with their infantry unit. Oh, but they're not gonna be in their unit actually shooting people, but they're still gonna be in downrange with them in a supporting role. But I can imagine like being someone in that position and all the literal blood, sweat and tears you put into doing what you have to do and then like these guys are your family and you've bonded with them so intimately. And then to be told that you can't go out and serve alongside them has gotta be like soul crushing. I'm sure that's such a huge deal for those guys to be able to at least be out there with them supporting. So I definitely agree with that. I mean, I've heard two sides of the argument man, like this is great, cause it's a big step in the right direction. But I've also heard some soldiers be like, well, man, that's still kind of sucks, because it's like, I tried for the job, I wanted to be out with them. But I look at it as, okay, we're still moving in the right direction. That's all we can ask for really. The Air Force needs to catch up. I'm sitting here thinking, man, I joined the Air Force because you always hear the jokes about the different branches and you always hear in the army, don't join the Air Force if you want a good life. Those are all the jokes you always hear. This is the most bougie, and then to get here and realize, man, like why are the heck are the other branches making progress and we're not? Cause what doesn't make sense to me is that we historically have been the most progressive branch of the military medically in regards specifically to HIV. But it's like now we're like, I don't know, it's like we're almost progressing while everyone else is progressing. All we can wait for is to see what happens with the lawsuits. Do you know when those started? Was it last year? Yeah, sometime in the middle of like mid December. What's the next step for you? Are you waiting until, was it March or April? Yeah, the next step for me is going through all the medical visits I've got to do for the veterans affairs so that I can have a disability packet actually stamped by a doctor. So the way that works is like when all the medical records get sent to the informal board, the VA also has the medical records for me from the military side, but also from the side of the house where in the next few weeks I'll be going to different like appointments to get checked on by a civilian doctor for things, you know, like I broke my foot when I was at the academy. So okay, are there any lingering issues because I broke my foot? If there are, okay, cool, that's gonna be like claimed on my veterans benefits. Do I have back problems or neck problems or anything? They'll check for anything that's, so it's pretty extensive, but it's good because they try to make sure that you get the most up to date and most things on your disability status. Really and truly it would be great if I could just get a return to duty right away, you know, from the board. But on the bright side though, I've got, you know, you always wanna have a plan B in the event that life surprises you. I'm looking at like honestly, probably selling all my possessions and just taking whatever the VA gives me. If I, once I fight all the way and I do still get discharged, just cutting everything, selling everything I have except for the few minor things and going and like teaching English as a second language in Southeast Asia. Yeah, I'm young and my boyfriend is young. We're both young, like we're both on point that we want. Like we've always talked about going to Vietnam or China or whatever to teach English as a second language. But I am starting something soon though, you know, when you're diagnosed with HIV, you have to, aside from taking your medication, they do recommend that you take care of your health on a better level, eating better, you know, watching your sugar intake. I'm gonna start a, I'm actually gonna start a nonprofit here. I've been working with another friend of mine. We're gonna start a nonprofit. It's gonna be endurance athletes for HIV. So they've done a lot of studies in that show that endurance athletes, whether you be a triathlete or you know, cyclists, marathon runner, whatever, their body actually responds better as a person living with HIV. Like for example, back in the late 90s when, you know, medicine for HIV was like a cocktail of like 20 pills a day, you know, and the medicine was still real toxic and stuff. And there are stories out there of people that were like going out and still doing crazy things like doing Iron Man's. And their bodies have responded, what their bodies responding well. So what I think really is really awesome about that is, you know, I'm a big proponent of running because it's what I do most, that's what I do most. And I have a love-hate relationship with a book that's called Born to Run. But I really am truly of the opinion that we were as a people, as humans, were born to run. And that's because you see it in African cult, like African tribes, indigenous tribes around the world. The most studied tribe is the Tarahumara tribe in Northwestern Mexico. I mean, you literally, they literally run to exhaust their prey. And so I'm of the opinion that there's a reason that if we take care of our bodies and kind of live the way that our bodies were designed to be treated and live the way you're supposed to live, that our body will just work in better harmony. And so I think that as a person living with HIV, already having to, just as a normal person, should be eating right and exercising. But now you have this chronic condition. So now you really kind of truly should be living right. And I think there's a reason that endurance athletes tend to fare better on ARVs because of how they're living. So that's why we're starting that nonprofit. So it's gonna be endurance athletes for HIV. One of the goals I have for this nonprofit is, yeah, we're gonna raise money for HIV research campaign, but it's also gonna provide a network for HIV members who are already athletes like myself, or maybe who are guys that have been recently diagnosed or have been diagnosed for a while, but they've all just kind of seen, well, can I run a marathon? Can I run a half marathon? I get questions like that all the time and about bodybuilding too. And that's one thing. Most people's doctors, when they get diagnosed, will tell them, okay, eat right, be healthy, blah, blah, blah. Go off into the world. And people are like, okay. So I think that's so awesome because then you're gonna have this outline of what to do next. And a whole community of people who are like, we've been there, we know what to do, we're gonna help you, we're gonna guide you. I think that's freaking awesome. But there's also that transition of, okay, when the doctor tells you, like on December the 7th, when the doc said, hey, I know already know you're healthy, but like just keep doing yours, keep doing you and eat right, exercise. All right, cool. Okay, well, to a person who doesn't truly know what they're doing, they're gonna be like, well, crap, what does that mean? Quite frankly, this is a lot of misinformation that happens on Google. I typed in, is marathon running good for your body? And you get all these mixed messages. Oh yeah, it's great. And then you get all these horrible things like, no, you're gonna be dead by the time you're fifth. And then the worst thing I hate the most is, like I actually had someone ask me this question yesterday and he was like, well, how are your knees feeling? And that's the worst question I hate getting asked because so think about all these kind of things that you have in your mind, right? And then imagine now being diagnosed with HIV and then the doctor says, hey, go eat right, hey, go exercise. And then maybe in the back of their mind, they're thinking they've always kind of toyed with the idea of yeah, I'd like to run a half marathon or a marathon. And then you go on Google and you're like, is marathon running good for you? The kind of a whole goal of this endurance athletes for HIV is gonna be providing a network to where you can connect with people that are living with HIV that are new to the endurance athletics world that have been doing this thing for a long time or in all in between. And then we're also gonna provide you so you're gonna have that connection with people that human face-to-face interaction, online interaction, however wherever you are. And also you're gonna have access to people who are coaches who can help you get to a spot where you are comfortable to help you get to a place injury free, to help you get to a race that you wanna do and also have outlines of, hey, this is how you should take care of your body anyway through healthy eating. Okay, but here are like extra requirements you might wanna, you're gonna have to think about now that you are training for an endurance event. You are an endurance athlete, you're eating healthy, but you also have HIV. So here are a few extra things you might wanna think about too. So just providing an opportunity for people to say, let me live my best life.