Passion

Since beginning my new position at the health center, I have had to tell a handful of people that the rapid oral HIV tests we offered them had come back reactive meaning that there was a 99.7% chance that they were indeed HIV positive. Meaning that it was a preliminary positive.

I know these statistics when giving these results and if asked, which I usually am, I have to tell. When I say this number and the .3% chance there is of this being a false positive, you see something. You can feel it. I saw lights go out. The one woman shut off completely. It scared me. You could feel hope being sucked from her frame.

I feel incredibly guilty and selfish because whenever we get a reactive and I have to tell a person what this means and what steps need to be taken, I get nervous so much so that before I walk in the room to deliver the news, it impairs my function. I perspire, my stomach knots up, I feel like I want to throw up and pass out at the same time and yet, when I tell, once that person leaves, my part is over. My anxiety and fear is done, but for them it is just beginning. I have just sent them out into the world with a heavy burden that many will carry alone for a week, fearful to tell and not wanting to accept reality.

When I think about the people that I have to tell, the people that we miss from not asking about testing because of a bias we may have, the perception of risk, the people who refuse tedting because they are fearful of the results, I think about the virus and how easy, through ignorance, it is to transmit especially if we as a society, as a culture are oversexed and under educated.

It is accepted to have sex and we have begun to see engagement in sexual activity at younger and younger ages. For those of us who can remember being 13 and having kissing be a big deal, it's difficult for us to be only a generation away, with our younger brothers and sisters and see their ideals their values or rather lack there of.

That's not the point though, we all have free will and we all make judgements daily. I don't wish that people were not upset to find out their status, especially if it comes back something other than expected, but that expectations be different because of the knowledge we have, that has become universal and that you do not expect it because you are white or because you are married or that you are not a gay man because straight married black women become HIV positive. HIV does not discriminate by the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or preference. HIV does not care if you yourself are promiscuous or monogamous. HIV does not care about age. It cares simply about reality and HIV is real, we as humans are real and that's all it cares about. Everything else is perception, different to everyone, but HIV sees us as we are, human, host to its infection.

HIV is not destiny though. Knowledge is the weapon, lack of stigma, acceptance and understanding can soothe the wave of HIV and placate it to history instead of future.

I feel nervous for the wrong reasons, I should not be nervous to tell someone there is a chance to be HIV positive, I can be their tool, their weapon to fight the disease. I have the knowledge to fight the virus and to keep ignorance at bay regardless of status and the beauty about knowledge is that it is just as infectious and it is the one thing you can continue to give and never lose yourself.

Knowledge. Pass it on.