Living Within Samsara

Don’t you stay annoyed with those people who muster the courage to do something, either by their own volition - but usually because they feel so strongly that they HAD to or they were coerced - and then they try to convert the world over to their way of thinking due to their own version of enlightenment?

Remember my mother and the Amtrak ride? The cigarettes? Yeah…the “Ex-Smoker syndrome.” My Mother’s one of these. My grandmother [R.I.P., Mimi, July 30 2004] died from emphysema and complications due to lung cancer, smoking 2 packs a day ’til the day she went into the nursing home. I still smoke. I am non-plussed. And what does this have to do with the scary HIV test?

Thursday August 4th I went back to the doctor for her to check me over, see how the medicine is working, and all such things. From Monday until then I was a mess and had decided to not ask for the results of my tests. I didn’t want ‘em! My life of denial comes and goes and in this case, kinda stayed. God did for me what I couldn’t do for myself however, because she read the results without asking my permission. Okay, well I’m negative in all things. Heck my blood culture didn’t even show any bacteria. My white cell count was 22,000 [and I shared with the doctor that at 24,000 they removed my appendix at age 12.]. As she ran down the line, “Hepatitis A,B, and C. All negative. HIV. Negative. Chlamydia. Negative. Gonnoreah. Negative.” I am sure she said more, but the STD check was due to the PID I’d been diagnosed with.

It’s also in my file that I am currently going through a divorce AND have a new partner, who is going through a divorce and how I expressed concerns earlier that I didn’t know where anyone had been except me so I’d already had the standard tests a month prior, thinking HIV was a standard one. What I want to say about discovering my HIV status… (Yeah, easy for me to say since I’m negative, right? After all, if you are currently where I was a week ago, you don’t know but you’re hoping for the best.

You don’t want a test because you couldn’t bear the wait. Thinking you probably don’t have it, but not really knowing so why not continue on with unsafe sex. Or with denial. Or how could you live knowing you have a still stigmatized virus? Could you trust to tell anyone so you could get some support? Or maybe you fear that you’d be outcast or judged? Or how about, my favorite, “What’s the point in finding out if I’m going to die?” Clue time: You are going to die irrespective of your HIV status. Resting in today is the importance of living.) I understand. I’m right there. I’ve been there. And so have hundreds of thousands of others who are HIV negative. You are not alone. Let me try to go point by point in telling you what my plan of action was or how it was I dealt with some of the above that seemed to keep me sane until my results were discovered.

1) The test only took 3 days for the results. Alleviated the long wait and crazies.

2) I have a new knowledge of my body that today I feel more protective over.

3) Increase in self-esteem in knowing I loved myself enough to go through with the test.

4) So sick at the time not caring if it was HIV, I just wanted treatment to not be in anymore pain.

5) Knowing that earlier detection can have me living for upwards of years and years past what people used to be able to live. OR, I could be hit and killed by a MAC truck tomorrow HIV negative anyway. Proper perspective: We all die. How are we feeling in living today?

• Once the primary or acute infection is over, most people do not experience any visible symptoms for another 8-10 years. Left untreated, the immune system becomes increasingly weaker and the disease progresses to AIDS. The next symptoms experienced by individuals infected with the virus are often associated with the “opportunistic infections” that target individuals with AIDS such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and toxoplasmosis. http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/hiv?page=basics-00-02

6) More compassion for those who are living with HIV. Stigma reduction of the problem. One person in the solution increases the solution. I have that power and so do you.

7) Had I been positive I found some great websites I discovered, that had addresses for support systems for white women living with HIV. [Still a not talked about much sect since not the majority of people living with HIV are white women non-IV users.]

• “I was living in New York City, the center of HIV healthcare, but my doctor never tested me for hepatitis,” says Becky Trotter. “He tested other people for hepatitis automatically, but made assumptions about my life. It was my doctor in Maine who told me I had hepatitis C as well as HIV. I cried.” http://www.thebody.com/bp/apr99/women.html

If you have a story on your HIV test, please, I invite you to post a comment. What did you go through, how did you feel?