WeAreHIV.org - The Social Support Network for People Living with HIV and AIDS

Joanna

In Northern

17 months ago

Joanna

I had some problems with my computer and my comment was posted before I could even write it. So here I go agian. In Northern New Jersey where I lived when I first learned of my status I had people support groups, coalitions, concerned and  caring  friends. I went to colleges and highschools speaking to the young adults letting them know that like me it could happen to them. I felt like I wasn't alone and since living in Florida the past 13 years I have felt very alone and isolated. The people I work with who of course do not know my status often say stupid things about HIV and people living with HIV and AIDS. Stupid ignorant hurtful things. So I get them back by asking them every year to support me in the AIDS walk and taking their money to help the very people they are so afraid of. ha! I get sooo mad that people will show empathy for a cancer patient who has smoked their whole life but will only show fear of a person who has HIV or AIDS not even listening to how they became infected before judging them as social deviants. People who talk about sex so casually after all it couldn't happen to them. Cause no matter how many people they sleep with they are too clean too good for that. ha! MAKES ME WANT TO SCREAM.....IGNORANCE = DEATH PEOPLE WAKE UP!!!

17 months ago

Broken-Winged

Good question.  Well, let me try and get this discussion off the ground by suggesting that it all depends on which little pocket of society is under the microscope.   A couple of weeks ago I went for a special test, to do with my HIV, at a busy Sexual Health Clinic in a major city.  I was struck by the openness and matter-of-factness in that clinic.  There was a kind of camaraderie amongst everyone there, patients, office staff, nursing staff, and medics.  This contrasted greatly with the experience I have had in my rural retreat!  My doctor tells me I am the only patient that the clinic has who is HIV.  I suspect she almost meant to say I am the first the clinic has EVER had with HIV!  And it shows.   Some time ago I needed a special blood test because of a gastro-intestinal problem.  The waiting room was full, with about 20 people waiting to see the three doctors usually on hand there.  All of a sudden the nurse appeared in the room, called my name, I answered, then she glared at me as if I had the ebola virus!  It was facial expression caught somewhere between abject shock, fear, and disgust.  The other patients in the room may well have picked up that something was unusual.  Anyway I followed her, expecting that she would then take my blood - this is the sort of thing that the nurse normally does at my doctor's practice.  She took me to a room and presented me to one of the doctors.  He was standing there with rubber gloves on.  His pupils dilated as he set eyes on me for the first time - I've always seen one of the other doctors.  Anyway he sat me down, said little, and prepared to take my blood.  The nurse seemed to have fled.  I then sat in the chair and witnessed the spectacle of this doctor lost in a nurse's room where he didn't know where anything was.   He was rustling through the cupboards looking for the right bits of equipment - the syringe, the phials, the cotton wool, the bandages, and so forth - and he became exasperated as he couldn't find what he wanted.  Finally he went to the door, red in the face and puffing, and shouted down the hallway to the nurse.  She came back and sorted him out with the things he needed, and then she fled again.  I just sat there thinking, "Oh, my god, these folks think this is big cheese, a major event, and they've drafted in the chief doctor to take my blood either because they think this is a matter of extraordinary seriousness or the nurse is terrified out of her wits to touch me.  It's laughable!"   So I decided to make small-talk with the doctor to get across the idea I wasn't one big horrid virus.  He wasn't making any effort to make any small-talk with me!  I thought, "Let's teach the old buffer that I'm just an ordinary human being!"  After the experience was all over it occurred to me that if they think I am the only person who has been through their doors with HIV they are most probably quite wrong.  And the nurse is probably wrong if she thinks that she's never in all her life taken blood infected with HIV!   Statistics show that there are many people walking round with the virus who have no idea they have contracted it.  This practice I attend may be in an isolated rural area but folks,. particularly young folks,  in this area love to jet away to hot and sunny holiday locations for sun, sand, and sex (and sometimes plenty of drugs) just as much as many city folks do.   I've often thought since that one day, when I have time, I'll ask to see one of the doctors at the practice just for a chat and I'll tell her all of the above and suggest she discuss it with the rest of the practice.  They need to wake up and get real . . . and treat people like us with dignity.

17 months ago