Wake Up World...there's a phone call you need to answer

Well the semester is ending and as I look back I think about the fact that this was a hard semester for me. I signed up for classes that have nothing to do with my major because all the other classes were filled. So that set me back a little in graduating. I got into an accident and tore the hamstring in my leg so for about two weeks all I could do was hobble around everywhere. When I was going to the women's panel I got into a wreck and messed up my pelvis my shoulder and the same leg I already had a torn hamstring on. I went to the health clinic and got a prescription for a muscle relaxant...apparently my body doesn't like muscle relaxants and my legs swelled up so badly that I could barely get out of bed. I was out of school for two weeks. As I was thinking about everything that happened this semester on top of me being new to Orlando I think about how much harder it would be for someone with HIV to go through all of that.

Having to worry about after the wreck the medication you want to take because your bodies in pain, but then having to make sure they don't conflict with the medication you're already taking, and then instead of just having their legs swell they could have a blood clot develop, heart failure, and many other things. It makes me thankful for my little amount of swelling.

This class has made me wonder more than any other class about people and what the underlying stories could be. For the world clock to say that there are now 34,499,083 people living with HIV and probably half of them dont even know it, is scary. It makes me want to tell everyone I meet to go get tested and everyone I've met so far I've asked them if they've been tested and if they say no I ask why not? Most of them say because they have no need and I usually bug them until they say they will get tested. I just think there's a wake up call that the world needs to get about this disease that it just hasn't received yet....and we need to hurry up and answer the phone.

Did You Know....AIDS in Africa

At the end of 2007 there were over 2 million children living with HIV. 2 million people died of AIDS in 2007. Of those 2 million one in every 7 were children. Every hour, 31 children die of AIDS.

Africa already had a high infant death rate, but over the years the death toll started to decrease, when AIDS spread throughout Africa it sent the infant death rate back to an increase. The transmission rate from mother to child has been almost eliminated in high income areas because of their ability to get the antiretrovirals needed. This is not the case for those in Africa in low income areas who are barely getting the medication needed for themselves.

9 out of 10 of the children living with HIV are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Mother to child transmission isn't the only way that children are getting HIV. There is a myth that was circulating in Africa that the way to cure HIV was to have sex with a virgin, which led to multiple rapes of young African girls by HIV-positive men. Also teenagers are having sex at a younger and younger age. 15% of those surveyed reported having sex at 15 and younger.

Lack of proper healthcare and the unwillingness to educate people in low-income areas about the risks and how HIV is transmitted, to me are the biggest reasons why so many people are getting HIV and we can change that if we just take the time to educate everyone on something that can happen to and affect anyone.

Did You Know....HIV and the unborn baby

So for some unknown reason, avert.org does not want to work for me today. Every time I go on the website it tells me that safari cannot find the server. So today I went to about.com for a more in depth look into HIV and newborn babies. As a recap HIV can be spread to a fetus one of three ways:

Sharing a blood supply: which is when the mother's blood circulates within the fetus and the baby is infected that way.

Infection during delivery: which is why most HIV positive women have a C-section.

Breastfeeding: for this reason women are asked not to breastfeed if they have another choice.

The risk of passing HIV to an unborn child with proper prenatal care and the use of proper antiretrovirals can be reduced to as low as 2%.

Did You Know....Process of Screening newborns

So I was just perusing the internet trying to see what else I could learn about HIV transmission from mothers to their newborns when I realized.... I know how transmission occurs and what happens once they're diagnosed with HIV, but I don't know how they determine whether a newborn has HIV or not.

According to the National Academies Press, article HIV screening of pregnant women and newborns, screening newborn babies can provide for earlier treatment if detected that young, it prevents horizontal transmission (from the baby to the nurse) and other things. Which got me on the subject of horizontal transmission.

There are two types of horizontal transmission. The first type is anterior station, which is when something is transmitted by a bite. Then there is the posterior station, which is when someone is infected by coming into contact with infected feces.

Law & Order along with the pregnancy game

So while I'm looking around Avert.org's webpage I stumble upon the games section.

There's this thing called the pregnancy game where you get asked questions about pregnancy and learn more about it as you score higher.

http://www.avert.org/pregnancy-game.htm

You start off with 5 lives on Level 1.

So what I learned is that sperm can live for several days in the body, but for only 24 hours outside of the body. Also, many women suffer from acne while they are pregnant.

I love the show Law & Order: SVU. There was an episode where a mother had 2 children who both turned out to be HIV positive. The whole time she was pregnant she didn't use any antiretrovirals because a doctor that she went to told her there was no evidence that HIV lead to AIDS so she had nothing to worry about. As a result she died because she felt no need to take medications to control her HIV. A question that was posed that I'm still wondering about is, is the doctor truly at fault when it is posted everyone that it is a widely-known belief that HIV causes AIDS. The doctor gave his professional opinion but it was up to her to choose to take the word of one doctor opposed to hundreds of doctors that believe the opposite.

Did You Know....

I walk around every day and see so many different pregnant women and find myself wondering does she have HIV?...How about this one? or that one?

Am I odd for doing this? I don't think I am but then again I have a bit of a biased opinion.

According to avert.org the CDC let out a statement saying that at the end of 2007 571,378 people were reported for having HIV. You still have to think about the people who have not even been tested for the disease. Also one in every five estimated people who have HIV have not even been diagnosed with that disease.

How many women are walking around with this disease and don't know they could be passing it on to their child simply because they haven't been tested for it.

In 2002 there were only two states that required women be tested for HIV once they discovered they were pregnant and that was New York and Conneticut.

Today, in the US and the UK there is an opt out where a woman is automatically tested unless she specifically states that she doesn't want the test.

Did You Know....

I always wondered how would women who are HIV positive try and have their children. I guess I just figured that they'd always be with someone who like them was HIV positive too. It never processed in my mind that there are people who are HIV positive and are with HIV negative people. When that's the case doctors use artificial insemination, which is when a man's sperm is placed inside a woman's uterus.

If the man is the one who is HIV positive then the only way that they can have a child is by sperm washing. Which is where they take the sperm and separate the sperm from the seminal fluid before doing in vitro. It's a very effective procedure but it's only offered at select clinics and can be very hard to get done.

Me, personally I would be scared to try and have a child if I was HIV positive. Even though there are ways to lower the chance of your child contracting the disease anything above .000% is still too much of a percent to me.

All information was gathered from Avert.org under the tab transmission and testing.

The Correct Way

Ok so the test results were negative. So at the moment I'm hanging out at a friend of mine's house and just asked him the questions that we were supposed to ask for the question of the week. I can honestly say that I was surprised by some of the responses and we started talking about how we should ask people that when we first meet them. Does anyone have any good ideas about how to ask people you just met whether or not they've been tested for HIV without it coming out offensive? I told him that sometimes you may just have to come across offensive because it's your safety your talking about and they should respect and understand that.

D-Day

Ok it's 1:30 in the morning. The reason that I'm not already asleep is because 1) Im a teenager it's what we do 2) Sleeping is boring and 3) I just drank a 44oz. cup of fanta, the red one. So I was supposed to go get my HIV test results on friday, but like the smart person I am I forgot so I'm going tomorrow and my roommate is coming with me. When I went to get the test I was feelin all well "I know I don't have HIV so I'm not worried about the test." The truth is I'm a teenager I'm not sexually active in a way that I'm bouncing from one guy to the other but once you think about the times that you could have been more careful or done one more thing that could have ensured that you were safe. When the truth is the safest sex is no sex at all.

Which has me thinking are there ways to contract HIV without having vaginal sex? Not counting the breast milk, needles, etc.

So according to avert.org there are other sexual ways to contract HIV without having vaginal sex. I have to be specific about the kind of sex because I have friends who think that oral sex is not considered sex even though the word sex is in the title.

Anal, Oral, and Vaginal sex are ways that HIV can be transmitted. If someone has an ulcer in the mouth or if a girl is on her period than the risk for transmission is higher because it's easier to get in the bloodstream.

Avert.org states that "If used correctly and consistently, condoms are highly effective at preventing HIV transmission....Condoms are effective at preventing HIV during both vaginal and anal sex and can help to reduce the risks during oral sex too."

I don't know how much of that I believed specifically since according to Trojan "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and former Surgeon General Koop, along with many other health professionals, have advocated the use of latex condoms as the best available protection, other than abstinence, against the AIDS virus. When used properly, latex condoms also help prevent the transmission of other STDs, including gonorrhea, genital herpes, chlamydia, syphilis and hepatitis-B. The FDA, which regulates condom packaging, states that it’s important to read the condom packaging to determine if the condom will help protect against STDs."

So at this moment they are the "best" alternative we have. They won't prevent it they will only reduce the risk and since when is anyone who's having sex going to stop and read a condom package to "determine if the condom will help protect against STDs."? Our minds are somewhere else at the moment like getting the condom out of the package. But, just so I wasn't only using Trojan for my mini research I decided to find out what Lifestyles had to say.

And let me just say before I even got to how protective a condom is against HIV I liked the Lifestyles website. They have an area where there are statistics about STDs and AIDs, HIV, and I learned from their website that women are 5x more likely to contract HIV. So here are some more of their statistics:

"Only latex condoms provide the best protection against STDs." So no lambskin

"The worst place to carry a condom is in your back pocket; a shirt pocket or protective case is better." We're college students we're broke so most guys don't carry a wallet and just stick it in their back pocket.

So from condoms like I've said we have the best AVAILABLE protection but do we really want to settle for just the best available option right now? I'm guessing that since HIV/AIDS and STD rates are so high that we are.

Works Cite:

http://www.avert.org/howcan.htm

http://www.trojancondoms.com/Product/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=48

http://www.lifestyles.com/facts.php

Did You Know....Piercing and Organizations

So I consider myself a pretty random person when it comes to doing things in my life. So today I was at Mark's Caribbean restaurant looking through the coupon book and found one for $10 off any piercing so I figure...why not? The coupon expired today so I got an industrial piercing. The reason why I'm talking about my piercing because I was talking to the girl who was doing my piercing and asked whether or not she pierced people who were HIV-positive. She said she didn't really have any issues doing the piercing and that she's done piercings for HIV-positive people before. She treats everyone as though they have a disease because that's a precaution that keeps her safe.

So the organization that I chose is AMREF, African Medical and Research Foundation. AMREF continues its projects through country programmes in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Southern Sudan and South Africa. Support is provided to an additional 30 African countries. AMREF creates healthy communities. The villages express their need and AMREF sends in people to help with each one. They send medicines out to different villages to help stop people from dying of preventable diseases like HIV, TB, and malaria.

For more information about AMREF you can go to www.amref.org and I'll continue to post about the organization the more I research it.

Quick Update

So...just to get it out. I haven't checked my grade for the Module 1 yet because like the idiot that I am I uploaded my rough draft of my Module 1 and not the real one. I just need to delete everything on my computer because it goes really slow and it's hard finding the right documents...and I need to better my time management.

Anyways I have an interview on Tuesday for a job at Florida Hospital as a research assistant. If I were to get the job and I'm praying I do then I will get to sit in on different surgeries and work as an assistant to Dr. Lamvu, an obstetrician so I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that I get this because it will be a step in the right direction as far as my job.

So as I was perusing the CDC website and reading my book choice, not at the same time I stumbled upon an answer to my question of whether or not HIV is always passed down from mothers to their children and the answer is...no. I'm at the point in the book The Naked Truth where Marvelyn meets a young HIV positive woman of 20 who is on either her 2nd or 3rd child at the moment I dont recall what the exact number is. She says that the mother was taking medications and having prenatal care that allowed her to not pass the gene on to her unborn child. I'll be researching this more on the CDC website and hopefully pretty soon (like tomorrow probably) I'll figure out the putting videos and pictures on my blog.

Until next time.

Megan

What I want to do, My interest, and a trip to the HIV clinic :-)

I am majoring in Biology and minoring in Chemistry and Music. I want to deliver babies (obstetrician) and that's the main reason I decided to take this course. I think that it should be a requirement because I will be monitoring women's pregnancies from conception to birth to a little bit after. I know that I'll encounter women who are HIV positive and who will be concerned about their babies and dealing with their pregnancy and HIV. I want to be able to give them answers and educate them more about if they don't know everything about the disease.

My interest is HIV in mother's and the transmission of the disease from mothers to their babies. I want to understand whether or not every mother who has HIV is guaranteed to give it to their baby or if they even have the option of breast-feeding their children.

When I went to the HIV clinic with my roommate the first thing I noticed is the wall full of different HIV magazines and a little bowl full of condoms. So I was immediately happy. I love free stuff, I mean what college student doesn't so I grabbed a copy of every magazine on the wall and took my seat next to a family of hispanic women who decided to make it a girls day and all go get tested for HIV, at least that's what I picked up from the light spanish that I was speaking to the youngest girl. I found out later that she spoke english...there were 3 men working at the time and all of them were very nice. They asked some questions, personal questions but they made it fun so there wasn't any awkward tension that you usually get when talking about personal stuff. There's this kinda hard scrub that you have to put in your mouth for about 3-5 minutes it has a salty taste to it but it goes away after the first minute or two. Then they just talk to you and make sure you know how HIV is spread and how to have safer sex. So I go back on the 18th to get my results so...I cant wait :-).

It's Sad

I was just going through the AIDS timeline on Avert.com when I came across something that happened in South Africa to a woman named Gugu Dlamini who was an AIDS activist and who was beaten to death by her neighbors after she revealed that she was HIV-positive. I don't understand how someone could have hate on that level. I don't get how people can just kill someone simply because they are sick or different from them. It goes back to the KKK just because God made everyone different from birth doesn't make anyone better than anyone else. When we have love for everyone regardless of our differences that's when the world becomes a better place, not when we isolate, quarantine, or even kill someone for not being like the majority.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to everyone who's reading my blog. I'm going to start off by telling some things about me that you don't already know. My name is Megan. I'm 19 years old (gonna be 20 on October 25) Yay. I just moved to Orlando to go to University of Central Florida like 3 weeks ago and so far I'm loving it. I just recently went to get an HIV test from Miracle Love on Colonial and I'm still waiting for the results. I'm in the middle of reading The Naked Truth and so far I'm loving it. I really feel like so many people need to read this story because parts of her story is everyone's story. She comes from a community where people aren't knowledgeable about HIV and I am from a small community also. We know about HIV but we don't know details. After I am through with this course I want to go back to my hometown over the summer and use what I've learned to teach others to become more informed.