Tuesday, October 24, 2006

HIV

I have been on HIGH FIVE as they call it HI-V or HIV all month. Everybody who has HIV in the hospital we hear about it and help take care of them. Everyone who has never been diagnosed and comes in sick and they run a rapid HIV test on them that comes back positive we go and see. in the ER. It is just me and the Infectious disease fellow and we have anywhere between 9-14 HIV patients at a time.

It is so interesting and devestating and inspiring, all at once. the reaction of people. so many reactions for hearing the same news. We have told about 6 or 7 people this month that they have HIV. The big black man with corn rows and a skull cap who who doesn't look at you. Absolute stoic. No questions, just waiting for you to finish. The 33 year old sweet Cameroonian woman who starts crying. Who won't touch your pen because she thinks then you would not want to touch it again, because she now has HIV. She is so straight edge she knows(or you think she knows since she won't tell you) it could only be her husband who has cheated on her and given her HIV.
The gay man who has been in denial and finally gets sick, gets tested and is positive. His reaction, the man, damn it caught up with me. He cries too.

The 50 yr old black woman who lived on the street for two years and turned tricks to get by. Just for a little while, just to get by.

the thing about it is in the states, HIV is a little forgiving. there is redemption. there is some treatment. a chronic disease. something you can live with and stomach. which is not the case for so much of the world. and its fun to watch people who were sick, get on the right meds and bounce back. Yesterday I was shooting the shit with this Puerto Rican guy who was kinda sick a couple weeks ago in the hospital. and he comes in to clinic yesterday in his Sean John t-shirt and baggy jeans, his hair all styled and we talked about NY coffee and People's park in berkeley and the Bay Area record stores.

and then there is this 34 year old man from Honduras who wanted to stay alive till his brothers came from Honduras. And he died today. cancer everywhere and AIDS. and we pulled the tube out and made him comfortable. and his wife was there, but not his brothers. they were caught somewhere between homeland security and honduras consulate.


sri

Saturday, October 14, 2006

this is a cool blog

lots of beautiful brown people- as the blogger says a counterpoint to all the other mags full of white folks



brownpeople

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

full into Fall

i have been sick for weeks. kinda feverish, chills a whack cough. and on call. and on call. shivering sleepless through the night. i keep looking at how sick my patients are and dragged myself to work for the last week and a half. and i feel better now. but it is freaking hard to motivate when you are feeling so sick. to compare the sickest person you see and realize that you are not even close to being that sick is useful to a degree.

my world shrunk to the walls of the hospital and the walls of my bedroom. the call room and my bedroom. for a month.

anyway i am stalling because i am supposed to be writing something for Michelle's wedding or reading about HIV- told a man he had HIV today. he started sobbing. That must be such horrible news to hear. I find myself wanting to promise things i cant hope to deliver. An undocumented mexican man wanted to leave the hospital even though he was really sick and likely had cancer eating into his bones. he wanted to leave because it was too expensive. I felt like saying, Don't worry, Money is not an obstacle. We got this one. But i told him let the state charge you and charge you and make sure that you don't have any dependents they can come after.

a Palestinian man who got shot in the 1967 war in Jordan was my patient and he was so freaking awesome, this guy. So nice. and he kept asking me, doc this procedure i need is taking so long in this county hospital, should i use my life savings to pay out of pocket somewhere else? 2000 bucks- 65 yrs old and all you got is 2000 bucks to your name. and a lifetime of scraping by. and you an American citizen and nobody has your back. The floor has got to raise. what we are willing to accept as the lowest level of care.

anyway- that was a tanget. i am trying to write a poem for the wedding and i came across this... this is the beginning of my inspiration. where all inspiration starts... RUMI...

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

What else is there to say?

Sri