Just reading Borrowed Time (a few years back) left me with strong feelings of a painful and dark epoch, I can't even imagine how harrowing it must have been to live through it and come through to the other side. Godspeed and long live to him.
It may feel like the country is going to hell and the world is fucked sometimes (though I think the trends are actually more positive than people think :) ), but at least in this one area the last twenty five years have produced miracles. A death sentence has become a manageable chronic illness and, with PrEP, you can even avoid seroconversion in the first place. Wow.