This week I am so overwhelmed with the amount of school work and personal things I have to accomplish. I have three tests, seven assignments, and I just found out that I have a lot of family coming in for Easter so that gave me a whole list of errands to do. The worst part is that I have no motivation and really don’t want to do any of it. The weather has been so beautiful that all I want to do it go lie on the beach and forget the world. It’s nice to dream, right?
Module eight has been rather stressful. Trying to keep up with all the pills and trying to picture having HIV just keeps giving me anxiety! Also this weeks QOTW made me think about my relationship with my mom and how bad things used to be between us and how great they are now. Thinking about telling my mom that I had HIV was uncomfortable. I tried to think what really would happen but my mom can be so unpredictable that I really wouldn’t have any idea how she would react. I just hoped for the best and wrote how I would hope she would react to the situation. This class makes me think about things that I normally wouldn’t think about of even want to think about. Sometimes it is a good thing because I think of how I would react to situations and I learn about myself. Other times it just makes me feel nervous and stressed. I am not going to lie. I am going to be happy when this class is over. I mean I am thankful that I have learned so much and that I keep learning but I hate picturing myself having HIV and how my life would be. I am a lot more grateful for the life I have and how blessed I am. So I guess that it a good thing!
Did You Know: Children with HIV There are many problems faced by children living with HIV. A major one is not receiving the proper drug therapy (AVERT, 2010). An estimated 62% of children infected with HIV are not receiving drug therapy (AVERT, 2010). This is because of the lack of drugs available, high drug prices, and lack of trained health care workers to treat these children (AVERT, 2010). Many of the young children have trouble swallowing so they need the drugs in the forms of syrups or powders but these are not available (AVERT, 2010). So to treat them they are given adult tablets that are broken into smaller pieces and this does not ensure that the children are being given the proper dosages (AVERT, 2010).
Reference List:
AVERT, (2010, March 11). Chuldren, HIV, & AIDS. Retrieved March 31, 2010, from AVERT: http://www.avert.org/children.htm
Image: (2010). Retrieved March 31, 2010, from eHOW:http://i.ehow.com/images/a05/67/jh/right-hiv-combo-800X800.jpg
I think I am getting sick because the past couple days I have just felt exhausted!! I hope I start feeling better soon. Other then that there is really nothing new or exciting going on in my life. As for this class I feel completely content and am no longer overwhelmed. I actually laughed at myself the other day over how freaked out I got over all the work when this class began. I have been able to do it all and I have been getting good grades as well. Ever since I got my test results back I haven’t been thinking about HIV as much and I am no longer thinking that I have it, which is a good thing.
This weeks QOTW I thought was interesting. I thought I answered it well and the whole concept of the family being not that welcome to the idea of someone who had HIV I could kind of relate to. Not in my immediate family but in my extended family. I have some family members who are very close minded and believe that they are always right when it comes to certain things. So telling them that someone who they have known for many years was HIV positive would be something that I would not look forward too and would most likely keep a secret.
Did You Know: Children with HIV
“Every minute a child under the age of 15 is infected with HIV” and every day AIDS kills 1,000 children (MSF, 2007). In 2006 it was estimated that there was 540,000 children in the world newly infected with HIV and 470,000 lived in Africa and only 700 lived in either Europe or North America (MSF, 2007).
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is more commonly known as Doctors Without Borders. Their fact sheet was very interesting and too see the entire sheet go to this link: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/hiv-aids/MSFChildrenAndAIDSFactSheet2007.pdf
References:
MSF, (2007, July 1). Children and HIV/AIDS. Retrieved March 24, 2010, from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) : http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/hiv-aids/MSFChildrenAndAIDSFactSheet2007.pdf
I had a rather uneventful Spring Break but I was happy I didn’t have to think about school and assignments. Now its back to studying and homework! I like this weeks QOTW very much. It takes on a different view and I think that since some of the people in this class actually have children the responses should be very interesting to read. Also I am in the middle of module three. It is interesting to see all the tests that can be used to test for HIV. I took a class called Quantitative Biological Mechanisms a few semesters ago. This class was all about the different tests used to test samples and in the lab I performed some of the tests we have to write about. So I have a better understanding of them, because I know they can sound confusing.
After getting my results back I was relieved. After learning so much from this class I would always wonder what if I have it, what will I do, it was crazy how much it was always on my mind. Now I am grateful that I have a better understanding of what HIV truly is and how it affects people. After seeing what so many people go through just to get through a day living with HIV, I think I have become more appreciative of life and how blessed I am.
Did You Know: Children with HIV
The best chance for an HIV positive child to have a long life is to start antiretroviral therapy (ART) as early as possible. In Brazil, Thailand, Kenya, Africa, and Asia there have been positive outcomes for children in the pediatric ART programs (Avert, 2010). In a study in Brazil it was shown that three-quarters if HIV positive children that were treated with ART were alive four years later (Avert, 2010). Also in 2007 a study was done in Africa and Asia that looked after 586 HIV positive children using ART (Avert, 2010). After two years of treatment 82% of these children were still alive (Avert, 2010).
References:
AVERT, (2010, February 4). How effective is antiretroviral treatment in children?. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from AVERT: http://www.avert.org/hiv-children.htm
This week has been a great week so far. I found out today that I am HIV and STD free!! That was a huge relief. I really didn’t think I would be positive for anything but after learning so much I found myself thinking that I had HIV and I would start to worry for no reason. I hated waiting for my results and I completely played the “what if game”, which drove me crazy. After interviewing my friends and my mom for that question of the week I was happy to know that if by any chance my results did come back positive I could tell them and they would understand and support me.
Watching the movies for assignment four has been an eye opening experience. I watched Common Threads, Silverlake Life, and The Age of AIDS. Out of all of them I liked Silverlake Life the most even though I cried the hardest. Nothing usually freaks me out or grosses me out. I wanted to be a surgeon ever since I was little so I would watch surgery constantly on discovery health. But when Tom died in the movie I couldn’t deal with it. I think it was the fact that I knew I was looking at an actual dead body and then to see how emaciated he was it was terrible. I had to stay up and watch TV for awhile so I could calm down enough to go to bed.
Oh one more thing, I am so excited for Spring Break!!
Blog Add On: People with AIDS
Anthony Perkins: He was a bisexual actor who played Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho (Laurie, 2007). He found out that he had AIDS in 1990 from an article he read about in the National Enquirer (Laurie, 2007). The magazine had illegally tested his blood sample that was used for a palsy test and tested it for HIV (Laurie, 2007). He thought he had AIDS for 6 years previous and has said “"I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life" (Laurie, 2007). Anthony died in 1992 from pneumonia that was brought on by his AIDS (Laurie, 2007).
Pedro Zamora: He was on the MTV show the Real World San Francisco (Laurie, 2007). He was an openly gay Cuban man who found out his status during his junior year of high school (Laurie, 2007). He had donated blood to the Red Cross and it was flagged “reactive” (Laurie, 2007). After finding out he was positive he became a very active public speaker about AIDS (Laurie, 2007). He died in 1994 (Laurie, 2007).
Did You Know: Children with HIV
Discrimination from HIV/AIDS not only happens to adults, it happens to children as well. Some children are teased and harassed so badly that they have to change schools. This is what happened to a boy named Michael in Great Britain (Avert, 2010). Below is a quote from Michael’s foster mother describing what happened.
"At first relations with the local school were wonderful and Michael thrived there. Only the head teacher and Michael's personal class assistant knew of his illness… Then someone broke the confidentiality and told a parent that Michael had AIDS. That parent, of course, told all the others. This caused such panic and hostility that we were forced to move out of the area. Michael was no longer welcome at the school. Other children were not allowed to play with him - instead they jeered and taunted him cruelly. One day a local mother started screaming at us to keep him away from her children and shouting that he should have been put down at birth…. Ignorance about HIV means that people are frightened. And frightened people do not behave rationally. We could well be driven out of our home yet again” (Avert, 2010).
Also children who have been orphaned by AIDS can encounter “hostility from their extended families and/or community, may be rejected and/or denied access to schooling and health care, and left to fend for themselves” (Avert, 2010).
The picture above is a poster in America from 1987 discussing discrimination against people with HIV (Avert, 2010). It was inspired by Ryan White who was a 13 years old and was barred from school in 1985 because he had HIV (Avert, 2010).
Reference List:
Web: Laurie, W. (2007, July 24). Famous People Who Have Suffered from AIDS. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from Associated Content: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/320685/famous_people_who_have_suffered_from.html
Web: AVERT, (2010, February 4). AIDS Stigma. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from AVERT: http://www.avert.org/aidsstigma.htm
Image: (1987). I Have AIDS Please Hug Me. Retrieved March 3, 2010, from AVERT: http://www.avert.org/aids-picture.php?photo_id=593
