I am 28. White. A Female. And a former Peace Corps Volunteer. I am HIV Positive. This is my story of how a few months, a few people, and a few events in Zambia changed me and my life forever. This is the story of how I contracted HIV and brought my Peace Corps Journey to a crashing halt... and how I am working now to pick up and put back together the pieces of my life as a newly diagnosed person living with HIV. This was not the journey I had originally planned... my path has traumatically and dramatically changed... but it is the one I am on now. There is no going back. There is only forward. I welcome you to follow along with me as I attempt to explore this new life ahead of me, whether you are someone from the Peace Corps community, or someone living with HIV. I welcome your comments, questions, suggestions, and opinions. Let us go forward together. To start from the beginning, click here He Gave Me More Than A Bracelet.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Updates For This Week...

So, a few things have happened this week, that I feel I should share here.

First, my nanny job will be ending on April 26th, as the family will be moving away. I knew when taking this job that it would just be temporary, so there are no surprises here. Anyways, this has caused me to restart my job search yet again. In the past weeks, I have applied to a few nanny jobs, as well as various community and HIV outreach jobs. This week, I received an e-mail from one such organization stating that they liked my cover letter and resume and would like to set up an interview for their HIV Outreach Specialist position. So, I have an interview scheduled for next week! Wish me luck!

The second e-mail that I received earlier this week was from my Peace Corps International Health Coordinator (in response to an e-mail I had sent her the week prior). This e-mail was in regards to my possibilities of reinstatement. She discussed my case with the Medical Office, and has let me know that if I do in fact apply for reinstatement, that the Medical Office would like me to maintain my undetectable viral load and CD4 >500 from now through June. If I can maintain these results for this period of time, then the Medical Office will feel comfortable in granting me clearance to reinstate. This was surely great news, and honestly, much less of a battle than I had expected! Although nothing is for certain, I will continue to communicate with them more about this as time passes...

Finally, I had a doctor's appointment yesterday. In all honesty, it seemed kind of a waste of time. I am not even sure why they wanted me to have an appointment, other than the fact that I did not meet the actual Doctor last month, and this time they had him come in and talk to me for all of 2 minutes. During this 2 minutes he gave me information about HIV, as if I know nothing about my illness. I guess I shouldn't get upset about this, as he is just doing his job, and he probably has lots of patients that don't know anything about it. But still, it kind of makes you feel like crap, like you are pre-judged to be unaware and unintelligent. I don't know, maybe it's just me that feels this way lol. I expected to have lab work done again (like usual), but they said no, they were going to put me on the 3 month schedule for lab work now that I had reached undetectable. So, why this appointment? I have no idea. Oh well. So, I guess now I will go back in during May for a full appointment and lab work...

3 comments:

  1. Good luck on the job search!!!

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  2. You should look into getting 500/501 trained. In Florida it is required to do HIV/AIDS testing. I can find the contact for you, I do it in Tallahassee.

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  3. It can be pretty frustrating to be treated like you are an idiot, but providing information to all patients is a way to prevent lack of education due to assuming that patients already know things. You are well-educated and have researched a lot about your illness, but unfortunately not all patients are like that.

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