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.