Many people looking into HIV Treatment for the first time are concerned about drug-resistant strains of HIV.  It’s no wonder, with all the news out there about a “super bug”.  It is true that HIV mutates and evolves very quickly, and inside a person’s body, it can be resistant to specific drugs that person is taking.  But this is just one piece of the HIV drug resistance story – and maybe not the most useful piece for people who are newly diagnosed and wondering how they will respond to meds.

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When I started in this work 16 years ago, there were few treatments and little hope. But people are resourceful thinkers, and alternatives to medicine were hot. Meditation groups, yoga, and the power of positive thinking were just a few things that were embraced. Having a life threatening illness that often meant a rapid death with little help from Western medicine challenged people to get their minds around these different approaches. For some it meant getting clean from drugs or alcohol, for others it meant looking at unhealthy relationships and deciding to leave them. Through these changes, there were people who came to the notion that “HIV was the best thing that ever happened to me.”  But there were also those who didn’t reap the perceived benefits of learning they had HIV.

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A recent headline about humanpapillomavirus (HPV) made me glad, because it underlines the importance of talking about all kinds of safer sex. Researchers are finding HPV DNA in various tumours where the cancer is found in mucosal tissue, such as the nasal cavities or the throat. The connection between oral sex and HPV that leads to these cancers can be used as another argument in favour of the HPV vaccine, which has been controversial. I support parents’ rights to make decisions about what vaccines their kids receive, but am also for illuminating the prevalence of HPV.   

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One of our favourite online information sources is The Body – The Complete HIV/AIDS Resource.  They have an excellent high-traffic Ask the Experts forum where twelve HIV specialists (many of them doctors) answer the public’s questions.  A recent thread got me thinking about the notion of risk.  Dr. Robert Frascino (Dr. Bob) calls it the QTND – question that never dies – what’s the risk of getting or passing on HIV by giving or receiving oral sex?  “Sometimes I wish there were a universal factsheet” writes Confused London Boy, “[…] saying when and in what situation a condom should be used”.  “Where is the line?”

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If you’re visiting our blog and website for the first time, welcome!  Perhaps you ran into us distributing condoms and information cards on the street, or maybe you picked one up from a display basket at a local business.  I’ve spent the last couple months learning everything there is to know about condoms.  Here are some of the gems, Trivia-style:

1) Besides the obvious, how do soldiers, engineers, filmmakers and paramedics use condoms?

2) Before Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber in 1839, what were condoms made of?

3) An ancient version of a female condom appears in the legend of Minos, dating back to 150 AD.  When did the first known real-world condoms appear?

4) What is the earliest known example of “condom testing” and who performed it?

5) What does Gabriele Falloppio (the doctor who fallopian tubes were named after) have in common with King Louis XV and Giacomo Casanova?

6) In 1880, if somebody asked for “a little something for the weekend”, what did they want?

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I was really excited my son was sick this week. Wait, that doesn’t sound the way it should. The whole sentence should read, “I was really excited my son was sick this week, as I got to hear an interview on a radio show that I can’t normally listen to until later in the day (work and all). If I’d turned it on at my usual time as I was leaving work, I would have missed it.” That’s better. So what’s got me so excited? Research looking at seniors and HIV.

Researcher Katie Mairs presented findings on Wednesday at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network conference in Toronto. I wasn’t in Toronto, but later that day heard her co-researcher Sandra Bullock on CBC’s On the Coast talk about their findings. It seems that snowbirds going down south to escape Canadian winters may come into contact with more than a heckuva lot of sunshine. Almost three hundred seniors were surveyed, and 80% said they were sexually active and dating (8% of them while married) down South. Yet they weren’t using condoms on a regular basis at all. The research found that those who don’t think they’re at risk for pregnancy don’t think a condom is necessary. True enough if you’re thinking solely of reproduction. But for STI prevention, a condom is a fantastic tool.

This research is asking questions of a population that can be sorely underrepresented in sexual activity/ sexual health findings. Being post-menopausal doesn’t make women less likely to get STIs (in fact, it can increase the risk), and HIV prevention information is important in this age group. According to Mairs, HIV prevalence among US residents over 50 is highest in Florida. With a “holiday” attitude that is easy come easy go, sexual choices could put people at risk. It reinforced the importance of the work we’re doing with our You Should Know campaign, which is aimed at women over 40.  It’s great that this research might open more avenues for discussion, make way for education, support doctors and patients to talk. STI prevention is important, no matter what the age of sexual adventurers.

Janet

This blog represents the ideas of individual writers, and does not necessarily reflect any formal stance taken by Positive Women’s Network.

I’m secretly excited about the prospect of H1N1 becoming known as Hini (pronounced “heenee”).  I’ve heard it a couple times now and hope that it catches on.  I normally take flu season in stride, but like most people, I’m following the situation a bit more closely this year.  It’s a relief to find small ways to laugh and joke about it, like the Hini title and last spring’s Zombie Flu spoof.  Once you’ve had a chance to chuckle, check out these slightly more serious guidelines for people living with HIV/AIDS, released by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.  They clearly outline how to identify, prevent and treat H1N1.

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Last week’s retreat was another huge success and many women came away connected and recharged, according to the evaluations. Retreats are unlike any other thing we offer. They are a whole weekend of symbolic unpacking by a variety of women with a range of life experiences (one attendee commented on the diversity of women and how well everyone got along). Women unpack their sadness of being diagnosed and feeling they can never look at life with hope again. Women can unpack their worries about going on treatment and how it might affect their bodies. Women unpack their long-term experiences with HIV, how they have made changes and stayed healthy. Women unpack their vulnerabilities and their successes, and share them.

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One of the many nerdy things that interest me is database design.  I learned to make the most basic contact database in university and have been improvising my way through various PWN database challenges ever since.  One exciting example from pretty early on is the question of the tick box.  Databases are good at storing tick box information.  For example, if woman X is interested in both cake decorating and field hockey, woman X will show up in database lists of both icing-spreaders and stick-wielders, as well as in lists of women who both spread and wield.  For some reason, we have a much harder time with ticking multiple boxes in real life; we tend to want everyone to fit into neat little boxes and either/or categories.  This seems to be where many people fall through the cracks in HIV prevention and care.

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A few weeks back I posted about the results of a teen sex survey in Toronto (in a nutshell, the kids want more information than they currently get). One of the things that struck me in the analyses of the study was that 4% of the respondents said they weren’t sure they’d had sex, yet they reported vaginal, oral and anal sex experiences. Which leads me to ask, what are we talking about when we discuss sex? To me, sex can be many things to many people (Hallelujah!), and safe sex involves lots of possibilities. But the study makes me think this isn’t the case in general.

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