Week 5

This week, I have almost finished the book, “The Least of These My Brethren.” This book has a huge chapter dedicated to the typical days in an AIDS ward that this doctor faces. Every time I go to work, I am constantly comparing how this doctor’s unit is compared to our own.  This particular hospital ward is located in New York and contains 17 patients. As if these patients aren’t suffering enough, they are forced to live in a unit that is hot, very dirty, and was not possibly fit for housing as many patients that it does.

Every time that I would read about roaches crawling on the floor, people wearing briefs or clothing that have blood, urine, or stool pasted to them, I felt outraged. At our hospital, if a person has even a juice stain, we are ordered to change them right away. I can’t imagine how a person with AIDS, who knows that they might not live very long, has to spend his/her last moments in a place like this. I would probably want to die sooner if I had to watch roaches crawling around me. I don’t see how people can get better in places where hygiene is not handled properly or where the rooms have not been cleaned after a discharge.

I am a neat freak and a “germaphobe.” In my mind, I kept thinking, “These people have been through enough. Why do they have to suffer even more?” What also amazed me about this book is that the people who work on this particular unit can be described as angels. The staff and this doctor really care about the well-being of the patients here, despite the gross conditions that they have to arrive to every day.  This book really got me thinking about how some people in America might perceive AIDS patients. Do they think that they deserve to live in conditions like this? Did the hospital management put this unit on the back burner for being remodeled because they didn’t care about extending the lives of AIDS patients?  This book has really given me more insight as to what AIDS patients and their caretakers have to go through. I have already recommended to some of my fellow employees.

Did You Know?

Of the 2 million people who died of AIDS during 2008, more than one in seven were children. Every hour, around 31 children die as a result of AIDS.

Source:
UNAIDS (2009) Report on the global AIDS epidemic. Retrieved on October 3, 2010 from http://www.avert.org/children.htm

Week 4

First of all, Happy Fall everyone! Last night, I spent some time reading stories about missionaries who have traveled to different countries in order to help villages who have significant numbers of people with AIDS. The website that I went to was through Global Ministries, and I read a lot of interesting stories. However, there, was one particular story that really brought something to my attention.

A read a story about a man named Terry Boyd. He is actually from Idaho and wrote about his last year, at the age of 38, battling AIDS. Terry is pretty graphic in his writing about how AIDS has taken over his body and the normal, day-to-day hardships that he would face with a T-cell count of 10. He is documenting everything that goes on his body and mind so that those missionaries that work with people who are HIV positive can get a more in-depth understanding of the people they are working with.

Terry wrote something in his story that really caught my attention. He wrote, "Why is it, for example, that many of those actively involved in AIDS support services are the ones who have lost someone or know someone who has AIDS? I guess it is understandable. People are afraid." (Boyd, 1989) Terry was certainly on to something. A lot of times, AIDS has to affect someone dearest to us before we really want to get involved. If it wasn't for this class, I probably wouldn't have a spark in me to help others who are HIV positive.

I wish there was some way, other than watching a family member or a friend become infected with HIV, to get more people in this world or nation to want to fight against AIDS. Maybe people view AIDS as something that they have to “see it to believe it” in order to want to help the cause.

Terry’s statement really challenged me to want to get out there and support some type of AIDS service.  I don’t want people with HIV or AIDS to think that I am afraid of them. Hopefully, some of you will feel the same way that I do.

Source:
Boyd, T. (March, 1989). “Living With AIDS: A Personal Journey”. Global Ministries. Retrieved September 21, 2010 from http://new.gbgm-umc.org/resources/worship/aids/stories/livingwithaidsapersonaljourney/



Did You Know?

Taking medications routinely are vital for child battling HIV. "Medicines that fight infections cannot work if they are not taken correctly. When a child or teen misses a dose, or if they stop early, HIV can mutate, or change, to survive the medicine." (HIVinfosource, 2010)

Source:
HIVInfoSource. (January, 2010). "Children and HIV". Retreived on September 22, 2010 from http://www.hivinfosource.org/hivis/hivbasics/children/.

Week 3

I had no idea what I was going to blog about this week until I had answered my Question of The Week. When asking my husband, Brett, how he would handle it if I were to have HIV or AIDS, his first response would be that we would have to adopt if we wanted to have children. This small response got me thinking about such a larger picture than I expected. I thought about how everyone who contracts HIV has to decide whether or not to even initially tell their sexual partners if they have the virus/AIDS. Then, they have to decide eventually what they will do to protect their partners. Eventually, this decision making process may trickle down to deciding whether or not to have children together.

I can’t speak for anyone else but myself in saying that it would not be easy to just automatically say, “You’re right Brett. Let’s not have our own children. Let’s adopt.” It would be really depressing, but I also can’t see me wanting to spread HIV to another soul if I had the power in my own hands. From an outsider’s look, it is painless to say, “People with HIV shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce offspring.” It takes a bigger person to look at these individuals and to at least try to understand where they are coming from before slamming the door on their behavior.  

There’s a side of me that wants to say, “Just because someone has HIV, doesn’t mean that their own free rights should be taken away.” The other side of me says, “Look at the baby involved, and what about their rights as to living an HIV-free life?” Maybe I am just too uneducated about HIV to even take a side in this matter. So far in this class, I really only thought about how HIV affects people who do not have HIV, but this small topic has open my eyes to see that there are many other things that a person with HIV definitely has to think about. This topic has showed me how HIV affects a person’s whole life, not just their body.

The Question of the Week also had me thinking about if the tables were flipped, and my husband was to be the one with the virus. I would feel as if there was a huge wall right, smack in the middle of our relationship. Ultimately, the decisions should be made by the person with HIV. It isn’t my business or anyone else’s what they decide to do. I am just wondering what everyone else thinks.

Did You Know?

Among the children who have HIV, almost sixty two percent of them are not receiving the proper treatment in order to prolong their lives. One reason for this is because children usually need to take their medication in the form of syrup or powders because they find tablets hard to swallow. Caretakers are giving children adult tablets broken into pieces, causing them to not get the necessary amount. Two other reasons are that “medication is high in cost, and that there is a lack of healthcare works trained to treat children.” (Avert, 2010)

Resource:

Avert. (July, 2010) “HIV, AIDS, and Children.” Retrieved on September 15, 2010 from http://www.avert.org/children.htm.

Week 2

           Last week I had to work Wednesday and Thursday night. Thursday night was very, very slammed. I, along with three other CNAs, had 21 patients. We each had at least one HIV positive patient. I overheard the two of them complaining about how there isn't a sign in front of the HIV patients’ doors warning those who enter to take proper precaution. (There are color coded signs that hang in front of a patient's door who has either an air born disease or a contact disease.) They were nagging, “There needs to be signs on the doors of patients with HIV, especially.” There point was this: Having over twenty patients is hard. Keeping track of who has what disease is even harder. They didn’t see a difference between a patient with MRSA and a patient with HIV.
          Overhearing their conversation had me thinking. I realized that even people in the medical field have a misunderstanding of HIV. They picture it as something they can contract just by entering a room or touching a patient without gloves on. It sort of made me mad. They weren’t thinking about how putting up a sign would violate HIPPA. On top of violating HIPPA, that sign would exploit something very personal that a patient might not want others to know. I have always been taught to treat an HIV patient just as I would a regular patient when it comes to precautions.
           I really think that my hospital should really spend some time informing its employees HIV. Those nursing assistants have been at that hospital over 4 years, yet they are very misinformed. I have only been there for less than a month, so I learn from them. HIV is obviously growing at a rapid rate, and we need to be as informed as possible about this virus and about AIDS.
            This story really makes me feel that we are not in a world so far from that of Ryan White. Those nursing assistants felt like they needed to gown up just like the mothers of the children that stayed the night with Ryan insisted that there be the plastic wall of protection when they slept in his room. That story really made me take a look about how I would have treated Ryan if he were my classmate. Would I have advocated for him to come back? Would I have cut him from my friend's list? Would I have done nothing? I really can't answer that question right now. I can only say that I would hope that I would have read the facts about HIV/AIDS before I did anything, but why did nobody else do that?
             When I was going to help at an AIDS hospice in New Orleans, Louisiana, my friends and I had to sign a waiver that the hospice was not responsible if one of us were to get infected. I was 14 the first year that I went, and I really didn't know anything about AIDS; I just knew that those people were sick, and they needed some love and care. Three of my friends were not allowed to participate after their parents read the waiver. When I showed my mom the waiver, I asked her if I could get sick, too. Her response to me was this, "Katlin, playing cards or helping cleaning someone with AID's bedroom will not get you sick. You are to treat these people with God's love. You are going." I didn't have gloves on. I didn't have a gown or mask on. Quite honestly, it was one of the most rewarding experiences that I have had in my life. We were able to build the children a play set, clean up their rooms, fix things around the facility, play cards, and meet some unforgettable people. I went back the next year and did the same thing. Unfortunately, the whole facility was wiped out during Hurricane Katrina, and many of the residents did not make it. It was really hard for me to take. However, that hospice showed me that living in fear of people with AIDS is not going to help anything or anyone.

Did You Know?

Infected children and infants with HIV need to be treated with the same therapy as adults. They need to be given antiretroviral drugs, too. Because their immune systems are already very weak, HIV can take a disastrous toll very, very quickly. Without treatment, one third will die even before their first birthday. Out of those children who do survive without proper treatment after their first year, half of them will parish before their second birthday.

Source
Newell, M. et al (2004), ‘Mortality of infected and uninfected infants born to HIV-infected mothers in Africa: a pooled analysis’, The Lancet 364:9441