However, we (I, Jim and my doctor) were fools. Trusting Jim's negative status to a prior test and because we spent those years worried about my health, we neglected to have Jim ever retest again. For over four years, Jim accompanied me to my ID doctor appointments, yet my doctor (a truly kind and competent doctor) never once mentioned that Jim retest either. Our foolishness caught up to us in 2008, and though we all bore the brunt, Jim suffered the most, and paid the ultimate price.

Though healthy as a horse (Jim never even had cavities!), during February, Jim became ill with an unexplained on-again off-again fever. Over several weeks, we made trips to StatCare and Jim's doctor. When the fever eventually refused to drop, his GP doctor sent him to the hospital for tests. For six stress-filled, fever-racked days and nights, we waited for the doctors to bring back a diagnosis. Scans showed several (3) large tumors, which subsequent tests revealed to be non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; and though we still had to wait on a western blot to confirm, Jim's low t-cell count and extremely high viral load proved an AIDS diagnosis on top of the cancer.

Those last three months of Jim's life were something no one should have to endure. Being nearly starved to death (by accident) in the hospital before coming home for a weekend; being left alone, in a dark corner of the ER for 8 hrs; being moved from room to room till he was literally driven mad ("hospital psychosis"); being told over and over to wait "just a few more days" for a turnaround, which never came. Spending 50 out of 52 days in the hospital, Jim received numerous transfusions, suffered serious edema that bloated his legs and caused problems with his heart and lungs (putting him into ICU for several days), was seriously ill on the vast amount of antibiotics he was given, and lived through the side effects of two rounds of chemotherapy. No one should have to endure such atrocities.

A few of my friends and family thought Jim "gave up" too soon at the end; but I dared them to experience what he did, to look at the reality of the situation, and not lose all hope. I am sure that Jim and I made the right decision in bringing him home when we did. For days, while waiting for results of the chemotherapy, Jim had begged me to take him back to the home he had lived in for over 40 years - the home he had inherited upon the early untimely death of both of his parents (his father passed away from a heart attack at 43, and his mother died from cancer at 56).

Once again, just a few weeks shy of it being exactly 14 years later, I took my dying partner back to our home, and called upon Hospice Care for help. Eerie coincidences with both men's illnesses surrounded Jim's hospitalization and decline, only intensifying the sadness and inevitability of the situation that descended on Jim and I, along with our friends and family.

Finally back home, pneumonia settled into Jim's lungs and the fever returned. (Later his doctor would inform me that the chemo hadn't worked and the tumors had still been growing, thus the fever during his final days. On learning that, I am certain, beyond all measure, that coming home when he did saved Jim another month of hell in the hospital before passing away anyway.) Caring for Jim was the hardest thing I have ever done. Randy's decline has stretched out over 18 months, and before his final days at home, we had reached some peace with what was happening. Jim, however, quickly became seriously ill and had been very close to death since early March. No where had we ever had time to truly grasp the reality of our impending tragedy. In a final bout of the uncanny coincidences, Jim slipped away after a mere nine days of hospice, in May (5/1/08), at 5:55 am - just as Randy had.