Wednesday 11 June 2008

Off to the clinic today

Well I am off now to my monthly visit to see the HIV consultant I will let you know how it goes later

But I just hate I hate going to that clinic . I just always get so angry that my treatment is done in a STD/GU clinic!!

My daughter says this is my problem because even though I feel I did not take any sexual risks to get HIV, it is transmitted sexually??

But I just can not accept that with a lifelong illness that has affected everything in my life and may eventually kill me ......................( HIV meds only 'delay' AIDs not prevent it. You may be lucky and it delays it for many years but you can never be sure!!)

....................that I have to turn up a STD clinic at least once a month -although it will get less as time progresses, unless/or when I am ill


...............................and sit sometimes with giggly 'mostly' quite young girls who cope with having picked up an STI/STD by making a joke of it

  • or worst still grumpy 'mostly' young men with itchy or drippy pricks, who are obviously feeling, if they are heterosexual that if they had not had sex with that Slag, Slut whatever I have heard it all from young men.................................. they would not be there i.e blaming the woman as always I can see it on their faces and also on their faces what is that old woman doing here - dirty old person, people my age ( their parents age ) do not have sex !! And if they do then they must be a sex worker to have to be in a STD clinic at my age ( 55)


I know this is my stuff - and could be just my assumptions and not so at all - but my stuff is my stuff and this is how I feel because I have to get treatment for HIV in a sub standard STD clinic !!!!!
And I am not certain it is only just my stuff at all??

After all I was a youth worker working professionally with the age group of the majority of people , men and women, that are at that clinic when I go....................

And believe me I have had to direct both young women and young men to STD clinics as a youth worker and what I have said above was the main attitude .......girls made a joke of it and often brought a couple of friends for support and sat and giggled their way through the consultation ( or in fact me sometimes as their youth worker)

The young women I do not really mind sitting with them and not all of coruse treat it as a joke. Some look very upset and I just then wish I could go to them and try to support them through it


but I can see on their faces sometimes a question about what an old woman like me is doing there!! But on the whole I am OK with sitting in the waiting room when it is only women.


In fact I just wish I was there for an STD and not HIV!!!!The STD woud be cured after a course of antibiotics



- but I still do not think an STD clinic is where people with HIV should be going for their treatment, and I especialy do not like that if you have an STD your clinic time as a woman is seperate so you never attend with men - but if you have HIV you can often find yourself as a woman in a waiting room of men with STDs or visa versa
  • but the lads!!

    Their attitudes when I was a youth worker were always so basically crap.....by this I mean the attitudes of heterosexual young men - the gay young men were great!!.

    But if heterosexual young men got an STD it was almost always seen as the woman's fault for being a slut and picking it up - never theirs for not using a condom etc

    And believe me I have worked with hundreds of young men as a youth worker on issues around sexuality

    So while I can just about cope when my appointment with the GU clinic coincides with the woman's STD clinic

    I bloody hate it when I am seen as a HIV patient when the mens STD clinic is going on - I know the attitudes of younger ( and often older) men towards STD only too well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An appointment at that clinic always does this to me - makes me rave!!!

People living with HIV need somewhere else for just HIV people to go to for treatment other than a STD clinic, or if they do have to go to a STD clinic the HIV clinic should have its own slot

or if soemone with HIV does not want to be recognised/identified as HIV ( I do personalty not care about this ) then HIV people just have appointments all thought the day at a time that suits them , not the doctor, and hopefully that they do not have to wait in the waiting room with anyone if they do not want to i.e a seperate room to wait in !!!

And not have to attend a HIV clinic that is tagged onto a STD clinic that only is available once or at most twice a week and on a certain day!!

Sorry just having an offload about the clinic ...as usual

Veritee

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