HIV/AIDS Blog Central: Perspectives From the HIV/AIDS Community

Here it is a new year and I have finally returned from a five-month absence.

My odyssey began on Oct. 21, when I made a rookie mistake while riding my new bike. A car cut me off in traffic and I grabbed the front brake in a panic and went down in traffic badly breaking my left leg.

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The three condom rule myth has finally been laid to rest by the D.C. Metropolitan Police. In a press release from The Women's Collective in Northeast, the Police Department has begun to distribute cards that will explain that citizens are allowed to carry as many condoms as they wish in the District. Demands from a local coalition of HIV/AIDS advocates prompted the department to clarify the "rule."

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Yesterday, March 10th marked National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and March 8th marked International Women's Day. We at the Positive Women's Network USA (PWN-USA) are filled with the simultaneous promise of hope and sadness at lost opportunities.

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As you get older things come back to you out of the blue. They do. Unannounced, unexpected and unwanted most of the time and usually in the quiet, more contemplative moments when you just want to switch off and not think of anything. When you're young, you're busy building up libraries of experiences and memories and filling your head and heart up with trivia and absorbed knowledge. When you're older, your memory banks are stuffed to the gills and although you may not be able to remember what you did yesterday, your childhood and later years will burst out of dusty memory files, in spontaneous clips of recollection and without apparent rhyme or reason.

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At our last couple counseling session, "Accept and Acclimate" was the phase my partner used in reference to living with HIV/AIDS. He went on to say that as a society we are defined by our status. To him, it was just another form of oppression. Our way of life. Our fact of life.

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It has been over a year since I have written a blog. Why should I? What allows me to sit here and continue writing about life with HIV when I face so many struggles every day? No one wants to hear about my crap, right? Everyone wants to hear me tell my peers to take their meds and be safe right? How can I tell anyone to take meds and to take care of themselves when I have been struggling with it myself? Who am I to tell someone to be med compliant when I have built a resistance against Atripla because of my own foolishness?

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Today was my eighth anniversary with HIV. I was diagnosed in a small town doctor's office, all alone and terrified, eight years ago today.

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Yesterday, the National Institute of Health released results from the trials of three antiretroviral-based strategies intended to prevent HIV infection among women in Africa. The results were presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta. In spite of high hopes, the strategies did not prove to be effective in preventing HIV transmission. The trials were a part of the the Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE) study, which was launched in 2009.

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I have been raising the 'battle-cry' about the church's response to HIV for so long, and it just makes my heart sing when I read about congregations testing and getting tested. It makes me so happy to know that someone has actually taken the time to look into their communities and recognize an issue that needs to be addressed. It can be gun control, hunger, the children, education, whatever! Just do SOMETHING, besides 'gathering the assembly' and sitting in the pews!

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So we've made it to March already! Where has the time gone? I know for me this year has been non-stop health issues. I've been trying simply to keep my head above water. Honestly, today I can say that I'm starting to feel a lot better!

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