Truvada Quotes

“And yet the doctor had warned him: under no circumstances should he take his medicine on an empty stomach, not unless he had breakfast right after. And in fact, very often, when he took his pills on an empty stomach, the first thing he did was limp to the toilet so he could throw up, holding his hands out before him like a bad actor imitating a blind man, still between sleep and waking, eyes squinted shut, mouth gummy from sleep. The acid odor of the vomit would wake him. He hoped this didn’t interfere with the treatment, he hoped the pills had had time to dissolve in his stomach and spread through his tissues and bloodstream between the time he’d swallowed them and the moment when he found himself on his knees against the toilet, leaning over the bowl, hands firmly planted on the plastic seat—because he was afraid of drowning in the toilet bowl, drowning in the water and the rejected contents of his stomach, and his body would be racked with spasms, and there would be nothing left to throw up since he hadn’t eaten, and his body would contract, arch, and twist the way you wring out a damp rag to squeeze out the last drops of water. Even if he didn’t throw up, the nausea would persist from morning to night. Often he took a nap in the afternoon. He’d get up at noon, wander around the apartment, then go back to bed at two, get up at six, and nervously wait for dark so he could go back to bed again. He had to follow the course of treatment, his body didn’t tolerate it well, and since it began his nights had stretched from eight hours to fifteen or sixteen hours per day, and the whole time he kept thinking, After all you’ve been through.”
― Édouard Louis, Histoire de la violence