I remember the first time I met someone I knew was HIV-positive. After I shook his hand, I thought, “Wait, do I need to go wash my hands? Is this OK?” As a new nurse, I knew that was an illogical thing to think. I had already learned about the HIV virus and how it spreads, but none of my education stopped that thought from going through my mind. In the years since that day and through my job as a public health nurse at Whitman-Walker Health in Washington, D.C., I’ve been privileged to know and work with many people who are HIV-positive. Here are five things about HIV I learned on the ground rather than from a classroom.
1. To not worry at all about casual contact with a person who is living with HIV.
HIV is spread through blood, semen, pre-semen, rectal fluids, vaginal secretions and breast milk. One of those has to come in contact with a mucous membrane (rectum, penis, vagina or mouth) or a different point of entry into the body, like a cut or through injection drug use with shared needles. You cannot get HIV from casual contact with someone, from pets or mosquitoes, or from sharing basic household items such as food, drinks or toilets. See the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s transmission page for more information.
[See: Which Practitioner Do I See, and When?]
2. That an HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence.
One of the first things I tell someone who is newly diagnosed is that it’s not a death sentence. Unfortunately, despite the advances in scientific knowledge about HIV in the past 30-plus years, the history of the pandemic still casts a shadow over the common understandings of HIV and makes people fear it based on old information.
Today’s reality is much different. Research on a cohort of HIV-positive patients from the US and Canada demonstrated that a newly diagnosed individual in their 20’s who starts treatment is expected to live into their 70s.
3. The many options available for HIV treatment.
In nursing school, I learned several of the original medications for HIV but had no idea how many options there were for anti-retroviral treatment. Anti-retroviral medications stop the HIV virus from infecting good cells in the body with its genetic material. By interfering with the HIV virus’s ability to copy itself, medications keep the virus controlled so that a person’s immune system can get stronger. New medications are approved every year, and in 2018, we now have eight options for single-tablet treatment regimens. These regimens include a combination of drugs in one pill, and that pill only needs to be taken once a day. Many of the other treatment options involve taking two or three pills once a day. This is a huge step forward from the many different pills taken together for treatment in the early 1990s.
[See: 16 Health Screenings All Women Need.]
4. How challenging it can be to take medication consistently.
Despite the improvements in treatment to make medications simpler and easier to tolerate, it can be very difficult to take medication daily. I used to have a simplistic understanding of what it was like to take treatment every day for the rest of your life. This unfortunately didn’t make me very sympathetic to the fact that a daily medication can be a constant reminder of HIV status. Beyond that, many people don’t live in safe environments where they can keep their medication. One person I know is homeless and has had their bag and medications stolen. Several people have emptied their medications into a bag to avoid family finding it and learning their HIV status before they’re ready to share it.
5. How harmful HIV stigma can be to relationships.
Common knowledge around HIV in the general population hasn’t yet caught up with scientific advances in HIV care and treatment. Because of this, people who are newly diagnosed and sharing their status with a partner or family member are frequently met with stigma and fears based on incorrect or outdated information. An HIV diagnosis can be scary enough without having to put others at ease during a personally vulnerable time.
[See: 10 Lessons From Empowered Patients.]
Don’t let yourself get caught worrying about a handshake like I did several years ago. We’re constantly learning new information about HIV from research, and one of the best ways you can support friends or family with HIV is to keep yourself updated using online sources like hiv.gov and poz.com.
More from U.S. News
9 Ways Saliva Reflects Your Health
16 Health Screenings All Women Need
Do’s and Don’ts of Home Medical Devices
What Nursing School Doesn’t Teach About HIV originally appeared on usnews.com
