Mike lamented. He worried about his legacy. “It’s begun to dawn on me that some people misinterpret my message of hope to mean that everyone with full-blown AIDS won’t necessarily die of it. I have never said any such thing! Instead, what I’ve wracked up 180,000 air miles trying to explain is that no one diagnosed with AIDS needs to die on cue! That’s a very different message. Long-term survival is possible; my own life proves it.”1 Unexpectedly, he thought for a time that he might even beat KS of the lungs. He put out an all-points bulletin on the PWA grapevine asking if anyone out there had survived pulmonary KS for more than two years. No one replied yes. The sole response he got—both from PWAs and from his doctors—was that chemotherapy was his only option. But he was already doing chemo, and he hated the way it made him feel. After a long internal debate, he decided that quality of life was what he valued most, and he made the decision to stop additional chemo treatments.
