immunologist who ran different types of blood tests. She told us that the elevated liver enzymes were a symptom, not a cause. She diagnosed him with CFIDS/ME: umbrella terms for people with various types of chronic neuroimmune diseases. In Ron Jeremy’s case, she was able to trace his illness to a heavy viral load and his overactive detector cells. Also, most important, he suffered from an extreme deficit of killer cells. His body did not fight infection like normal people. His immune system was broken.
As I understand it, the human immune system has three types of cells. There are detector cells, which suss out illness. There are messenger cells, which send a message that the body has been invaded with illness. And there are killer cells, which receive the message and fight off the illness. In patients with HIV, it is the messenger cells that are broken. Ron Jeremy’s messenger cells were fine. But his detector cells were paranoid, neurotic, obsessing about everything: traces of old illnesses, old colds. They were neurotic Jewish mothers. But when the neurotic Jewish mothers attempted to relay their barrage of messages, there was no one to relay them to. The killer cells weren’t there, and the ones that were didn’t do any killing.
Maybe Ron Jeremy’s killer cells were tired of being nagged and so they left. Or maybe Ron Jeremy’s neurotic Jewish mother cells only nagged so much because they felt they were shouting into the void. They were talking to themselves.
The immunologist was named Sue. Sue had been dealing with various types of chronic neuroimmune diseases since the eighties: chronic Lyme, Epstein-Barr. She told me that I was not at risk of contracting his disease—that it was not sexually transmitted. She also said that no one had found a cure yet.
Sue was willing to try a vast array of treatments—some of which had shown some effect on patients she had seen, and some of which we found on chatboards. We called her Sue the pooh-pooher, because she never got too excited about one treatment. Later, we learned to appreciate Sue’s skepticism.
If you tell a desperate person with an incurable illness that you can cure him, he will believe you. Sue never promised to cure Ron Jeremy, but others did. Some doctors were well-intentioned, just very far out there. Others oversold their own treatments, made grandiose promises, and loved the sounds of their own voices.
In the years we’ve been together, Ron Jeremy has spent thousands of dollars on treatments. He has tried everything from the most toxic Western drugs to traditional Eastern medicine to the most woo-woo hippie treatments. There was amoxicillin, Valcyte, Valtrex, Nexavir, and Provigil. I’ve injected him with human growth hormone, vitamin B12, and Gc-MAF: a protein-derived macrophage.
Though he does not have HIV, he has done a course of two HIV drugs—Viread and Isentress—simultaneously. The hypothesis with these drugs was that if one part of his immune system was compromised, perhaps the drugs that treated an alternate part of his immune system would have some effect. There was no effect.
He has done testosterone patches and prednisone, green tea extract, St. John’s wort, fish oil, iron supplements, and ginseng.
There was a heavy course of Chinese medicine with Dr. Lu: acupuncture three times a week for six months and multiple herbs.
There was the salmon and salad diet care of Dr. H, the Paleo diet via Dr. J, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and every other elimination diet.
There were blood protein infusions via Dr. E.
There was a vitamin drip, coenzyme Q-10, probiotics, some mushroom pill.
There was a coffee enema, wherein Ron Jeremy lay spread eagle on our bathroom floor with his ass in the air and I shot a pot of coffee into his asshole via an enema bag and a tube.
Ron Jeremy has engaged in mindfulness, meditation, and mindfulness meditation.
He has seen psychologists and psychiatrists, tried Effexor and Lexapro.
We moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn.
There was helminthic therapy—worm therapy—wherein we grew worms in his friend’s feces in a Tupperware container in our bathroom. We applied them to Ron Jeremy’s skin like a salve. He might have had a minor psychedelic experience, but no improvement in health.
The year 2008 was particularly bad. Ron Jeremy was housebound for seven months straight and we were engaged to be married. The day we went to pick up the ring from an antiques jeweler in Midtown, he met me there in a cab: sweating, shaking, and feverish.
It is not an easy decision to marry a person with a disease like this