#gardasil
i went to the doctor yesterday.
+ started gardasil!(-‿◦☀)
when my doctor first mentioned this to me, i was like, I thought gardasil was for 13-year-old girls so they wouldn’t get HPV, not old slags like me who have who knows what kind of sewer garbage swimming around in my anus. but, lo and behold, they say that getting this vaccine is supposed to reduce the instance of anal cancers in hiv+ people something like 78%. so i like them odds.
- got flagged down and hassled by case management.(⊙_◎)
i have sort of determined that case management at this place is kind of useless (for me, anyway). in the less-than-a-year that i have been getting medical care there, i have been assigned three different case workers, because people keep quitting and/or getting fired. i have said before and i will say again, rapid turnover in social services hurts poor people. often there are good reasons that people leave when they leave and bad reasons that people get fired when they get fired, but it usually has something to do with 1) organizational culture (white at the top/POC at the bottom, authoritarianism & bureaucracy, other weird internal hierarchies) and 2) normal shitty labor stuff (overwork, low pay.)
they were really unprofessional about several things (talking to me about private stuff in the waiting area where everyone could hear, trying to get me to sign a blanket un-filled-out HIPPA and had previously visited my house and talked about stuff in front of people staying here who don’t know about my status); and to top it off, yesterday my new “care navigator” called me “he” and “him.”
at my age i really feel like i should have a thicker skin about this, but it kind of managed to ruin my day. really the only place this happens to me is in health care settings, in part i think because most of the time people talk to you while staring at your electronic records on a computer screen because everything has to be so meticulously documented, and there is a big SEX: M(T) right by my name. it’s such a bummer. also, i really tend to internalize this kind of thing. it’s hard for me to stick up for myself because i assume that being misgendered is always *my* fault somehow. more on that later.
to summarize, dear doofy case managers:
however,
+ my viral load is undetectable!ヽ(*≧ω≦)ﾉ
which is cool and all, but “undetectable” is imho kind of bullshit, if for no other reason than they keep moving the target. scientists keep developing progressively more and more sensitive tests for HIV antibodies, so what used to be considered “undetectable” and awesome is now considered problematic (depending on how OCD your HIV doctor is, and most doctors became doctors by being kind of obsessive about everything.) like, tests used to bottom out at 400 copies/ml (of blood), and then 176 copies/ml, and then (when i started getting bloodwork done) 40 copies/ml. right now where i get tested “undetectable” is under 20 copies/ml, which means you have to be extremely adherent to your treatment in order not to get a lecture that’s like, why aren’t you taking your meds? what’s stopping you from taking your meds? what are you doing wrong here? you need to take your meds! even if par chance you develop totally normal blips of viral load, which are common, like, in the winter, and when you get a cold.
anyway it’s still always good news to get tho. proverbially, w00t w00t.
