My Week of Thinking

I had some pretty interesting and confusing thoughts this week. Thoughts about HIV and my life. What if I were to contract HIV right now? Right now that I am married and have three children? Or what if I were to find out that one of my children had HIV? Would I be able to deal with it? Or rather how would I deal with it?
I know that I am definitely growing in knowledge because of this class. I am a pretty fair person, but I will admit that when I didn't know much about the disease - it was easy for me to judge a person if I knew they were HIV positive. It was easy for me to Not want to be around them, to even fear being around them to an extent. My way of thinking has completely changed now. I feel now that if I were faced with HIV, I would handle it much differently than before. HIV is something that frightens me. It doesn't frighten me to where I think that I can easily contract it from someone else. What frightens me is what it does to one's body. I've been "surfing" the web and "googling" images of what the different infections of HIV look like. The pictures are horrifying. For our Module 4, we have to write about four diseases. One of the diseases I chose was Herpes (HSV2). In a few of the pictures herpes was compared between HIV positive people and HIV negative people. The sores of the HIV positive people were scary. They looked like craters on their skin. HIV infected people can lose their eyesight and hearing. That alone is terrifying. HIV destroys the body, completely.
That brought me back to thinking about how I would deal with one of my children having HIV. I know I would have to come to terms with it. But I wonder if it would be easier to deal with if one was not so educated about the disease and what it has the potential to do? While this class definitely helps with helping grow in knowledge, but at the same time, it has opened my eyes to the truths about HIV and some of them are hard to swalow.
I must admit that I am gaining a GREATER respect for people who have to deal with HIV, both the people who are infected by it and the people who are part of their lives.

Continuing to learn about HIV

Well, here are again, another week has gone by and I continue to learn more and more about HIV. Although my main topic of interest in learning about is mothers and how they deal with HIV, this week I have enjoyed learning about all the different diseases that present themselves due to the lack of defense provided by the immune system. There are so many opportunistic bacteria that jump in at the first sign of a weakened immune system and take over and destroy the body of the infected person. This is one aspect about HIV/AIDS that I was not aware of. I mean, I knew that a person would get really sick from HIV but I did not know HOW severe it could get and how many DIFFERENT diseases they were succeptible to. In our Module 4 for our class, there are descriptions and pictures of most of these opportunistic diseases. I was in shock as I scrolled down the Power Point. One of the diseases that made an impression on me was Herpes. The slide showed a picture of what a Herpes simples wart looks on an HIV postive person compared to what one of these blisters look like on a non HIV infected person. What a difference! The one on the positive person looked like the size of a baseball. Another one that left me speechless was the picture of candiasis (thrush). There was one picture of a person who had thrush of the mouth so severe that it looked like a felt covering over the tongue. It looked so uncomfortable. I cannot imagine how someone be able to eat having thrush so severely. We did a Thrush simulation for class where we had to put two pieces of cotton on each side of our mouth and then try to eat some saltine crackers and wash them down with water. This task was nearly impossible. Again, I cannot imagine having to deal with this long term.
These are only two examples of opportunistic diseases. I look forward to our next assignment where we get to choose four of these diseases and write about them in detail.
This part of the class has made me gain a greater respect for what HIV positive people have to suffer because of this virus.

Did you know?

Here we are in our second week of blogging. I have learned so much more in just this past week about HIV, especially statistics. After completing Module 1, I was left in awe at the amount of people who are HIV positive across the world. The statistics for Africa are just frightening. As mentioned in my previous blog, I am interested in finding out more on mothers and children with HIV. I was browsing through the web looking for some HIV organizations that provide help and support. I came across World Vision http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/pages/hope-child-sponsorship?Open&campaign=1193518&cmp=KNC-1193518. They are an organization that offer sponsorship services for orphaned children with HIV. They also offer help and support for widowed people as well as children that have somehow suffered because of HIV. The way it works is that you make a monthly donation and that goes to help people in need.
I would love to know of some other organizations that offer similar help. I would actually like to join one of these.
We had to read a book about HIV for our third assignment in this class. The book I chose to read is called "Sarah's Song", this book has put the disease into a different perspective for me. I could not take my eyes off of this book once I began reading it. It goes through the daily lives of a married couple who gets diagnosed with HIV in the early 80's. It takes you through their battle with HIV. It was an amazing book. It honestly changed the way I feel about certain aspects of HIV.

HIV Intro

Hi. My name is Cathia Nieves and I am a full time 3rd year student at UCF this semester. I am a Nursing major and am awaiting acceptance into the RN program. I am a proud mother of three wonderful children ages 7, 6, and 2. I've been married for seven years and feel blessed to be able to pursue my goals and dreams after being out of school for such a long time. I am first time blogger, so please excuse me as I get used to the whole blogging thing.
I wanted to take the HIV class because I am genuinely interested in the virus and how it works. I took Microbiology a couple semesters ago and it forever changed my outlook on diseases and what causes them. I was especially interested in the HIV virus, but the class did not go into much detail about it (as we had numerous bacteria and viruses to study).
I have never known anyone infected with HIV, so I do not have any personal experience with the virus. Our first assignment in this class was to do a simulation to see what it would be like to be a patient with HIV/AIDS. This simulation - which only showed one possible side effect of HIV - opened my eyes to what people with HIV must suffer on a daily basis. We take things for granted such as eating a cracker and washing it down with water. People with HIV/AIDS who develop Thrush have a hard time performing such a simple task.
What interests me most about HIV is how mothers deal with HIV (having children with it and having children without it). As we get deeper into the course, I hope to eduacte myself as to how they deal with it and all the complications that come with it. I would love to meet someone who falls into this category and build a relationship with this person. I hope to have that opportunity.