His Point of View

I am concerned…and I have been for a few years now. What concerns me you may ask, and if you did I would say that I am concerned by what happens every year when I have gone to see a doctor for the the last 10 years or so. I have lived in 4 cities in 3 states over the last 5 years, and I have run into the same concern with each physician’s office I have visited in each city.

Every year (or so) as I visit a doctor for either an ailment or a physical exam, during my visit I request an HIV & STD test. And every time I visit a new doctor’s office I get a perplexed look either from the doctor, or the nurse who draws the blood for the test and I am asked why I want such tests. I don’t get the feeling that the docs are required to ask me those questions, but they genuinely appear to be surprised that i would ask for such tests.

I would imagine that if all you people were getting tested regularly docs & nurses. would not be confused when I request my annual test. So it is my best guess that not as many people are getting tested as there claim to be. So I checked with the Kaiser Family Foundation which is an independent health information and analysis foundation (HIV Fact Sheet) to see what kind of information is out there. As far as I can tell there is no comprehensive count of how many HIV/STD tests are performed each year (by private physicians, public health centers, mobile clinics, etc.), so surveys are the only source of data. According to the 2004 numbers a cool 50% of Americans claim to have never been tested for HIV… ever since birth, while 28% say their last test was over a year ago, and 20% claim to have had a test in the last 12 months. So if half of Americans really are getting tested I would imagine that getting tested would be routine for any doctor, and there would be no confused looks when I ask for mine… Something is not right. Either people are claiming to get tests falsely, or medical professionals are just some confused looking people.

So I went to the CDC web site to see what the recommendations for HIV testing are.  The suggestions make sense, but the CDC stops short of recommending that everyone who is sexually active get tested annually.  They say that those involved in high risk activities such as sex with multiple partners should be tested annually.  If you want to read the maze of what segments of the population should be tested check it out here.  The CDC says that people should be tested before they have a new sexual partner… now all of this sounds fine on the surface, but this line of thinking does not take into consideration that you may be with a single person for many years, but you never know if they have been with other people or have used injection drugs during that same time.   I would like the CDC to just make one simple blanket statement such as: All sexually active people, newborns, and IV drug users should get tested annually and before a new partner.   Isn’t that much more simple than what you may have read if you followed the link provided above?  If you have been with a single person for years you may have a false sense of security and in this case it could be a fatal error.

I understand that many people claim to “rather not know” if they are infected… but what does that really say about those people? Are they not being inconsiderate of their friends, family, children, future children? I mean who really wants to be in a relationship and unknowingly infect their partner who they claim to love? Who wants to risk giving birth to an infected child? Who really wants to risk not getting treatment until its too late and causing your children who are already here to be forced to grow up without one or both parents? 

I realize that there are people with other illnesses or conditions who are afraid that a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS would cause them to be dropped by their insurance company, to that I say if your condition does not kill you untreated HIV/AIDS will kill you just the same.  According to the CDC(click here to read more) Insurance companies should not be able to drop you simply for being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS…although it may be considered a preexisting condition which may not be covered if you change insurance companies.  In addition,  insurance companies are not allowed to receive test results without your permission in most states; although they will know once you file a claim for HIV related drug prescriptions.   We do not live in a perfect world, and despite the fact that you should not lose coverage due to your status, we all know that companies will do all they can to protect their bottom line, and it may be possible that they find some other excuse to drop you or raise your rates.  But there are solutions for these concerns as well, you can pay for your own test at your local doctor’s office, you can go to a free clinic, or you can purchase a home self test kit which allows you to mail a blood sample from a finger prick to a lab and get your results over the phone using a secret code.   When you know your status you have some control over your treatment, you can decide what you want to do and when, instead of living your life blindly.

The risks of not being tested are far too great, and no matter how bad you think it may be to find out you are infected… its got to be worse to find out you have AIDS after its too late and you are too far along for treatment to be provided which would increase your time with a relatively comfortable quality of life.

Get tested people.

Get an annual physical exam people. 

As far as I know you only get one chance at life, so do what’s necessary to preserve yours as best you can… Or as the character Joe Clark said famously “Now, I say if you wanna kill yourself, don’t f#*k around with it, do it expeditiously! Go on and jump! JUMP!”