Perspective.
Apr. 11th, 2002 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaLast year I went to visit one of my clinic patients who was temporarily in inpatient psychiatry. Afterwards, I leaned against the nurses' station looking through his chart.
"You work at [name of HIV clinic], huh?" a nurse asked me. "How do you like it there?" Her sidelong glance made it clear that this was not a straightforward question. At first I thought she was referring to the famously dysfunctional clinic politics.
"It's interesting work, and I like the patients" I said, or something like that.
"You're not afraid to work there? I would be."
Then I realized what she meant. She worked on a locked ward in which every single patient was considered a danger to self or others, and she wondered why I wasn't scared to work with people who have a particular not-easily-spread viral infection. Oh yeah. I forgot.
"Aren't you afraid of catching HIV in the clinic?" my sister asks.
"What the hell do you think I do at work?" I ask, and laugh. But it's not funny, not after the third or fourth encounter, not after I've spoken with clients who are afraid to hug their own grandchildren because you can never really be sure. Not after hearing about families serving meals on paper plates and the can of Lysol in constant use.
Not after hearing educated and kind people argue that there's a reasonable case to be made for paper plates, "because it's your life at stake." Because they say HIV can't be tranmitted casually, but that might just be PR. Because it's natural and understandable to be squeamish about touching something a person with HIV has touched.
I guess I don't have any perspective at all about HIV anymore. Some days I interact with more HIV-positive people than HIV-negative people. I shake hands, I put a consoling hand on their arms, I hug them sometimes. They bring in homemade cookies and I eat some. I use the bathrooms and the doorknobs and the pens they have used. I look at their wasted limbs and lipodystrophy humps and rashes and KS lesions and open sores. I sit in clinic rooms in which they have been examined, in which they have bled, propping my notebook up against the sharps container. I'm not afraid.
I've been afraid of contracting tuberculosis. I've been afraid of head lice. I've been afraid of infecting my hypothetical future child with congenital cytomegalovirus, until one of the docs straightened me out. I've been afraid of being hit. But I'm not afraid just because I deal with people who have HIV.
I don't know anymore what's reasonable to fear and what isn't. I don't think I'm strangely brave, or anything, but at the same time I can't conceive of thinking that these fears are reasonable or normal. There been more public education about AIDS than about any other public health threat in history. Shouldn't people know that they're not at risk from casual contact? Shouldn't they at the very least know that their fears are irrational, that their squeamishness is something that ought to be overcome?
*sigh* Or am I the weird one, the fish who can't see water?
"You work at [name of HIV clinic], huh?" a nurse asked me. "How do you like it there?" Her sidelong glance made it clear that this was not a straightforward question. At first I thought she was referring to the famously dysfunctional clinic politics.
"It's interesting work, and I like the patients" I said, or something like that.
"You're not afraid to work there? I would be."
Then I realized what she meant. She worked on a locked ward in which every single patient was considered a danger to self or others, and she wondered why I wasn't scared to work with people who have a particular not-easily-spread viral infection. Oh yeah. I forgot.
"Aren't you afraid of catching HIV in the clinic?" my sister asks.
"What the hell do you think I do at work?" I ask, and laugh. But it's not funny, not after the third or fourth encounter, not after I've spoken with clients who are afraid to hug their own grandchildren because you can never really be sure. Not after hearing about families serving meals on paper plates and the can of Lysol in constant use.
Not after hearing educated and kind people argue that there's a reasonable case to be made for paper plates, "because it's your life at stake." Because they say HIV can't be tranmitted casually, but that might just be PR. Because it's natural and understandable to be squeamish about touching something a person with HIV has touched.
I guess I don't have any perspective at all about HIV anymore. Some days I interact with more HIV-positive people than HIV-negative people. I shake hands, I put a consoling hand on their arms, I hug them sometimes. They bring in homemade cookies and I eat some. I use the bathrooms and the doorknobs and the pens they have used. I look at their wasted limbs and lipodystrophy humps and rashes and KS lesions and open sores. I sit in clinic rooms in which they have been examined, in which they have bled, propping my notebook up against the sharps container. I'm not afraid.
I've been afraid of contracting tuberculosis. I've been afraid of head lice. I've been afraid of infecting my hypothetical future child with congenital cytomegalovirus, until one of the docs straightened me out. I've been afraid of being hit. But I'm not afraid just because I deal with people who have HIV.
I don't know anymore what's reasonable to fear and what isn't. I don't think I'm strangely brave, or anything, but at the same time I can't conceive of thinking that these fears are reasonable or normal. There been more public education about AIDS than about any other public health threat in history. Shouldn't people know that they're not at risk from casual contact? Shouldn't they at the very least know that their fears are irrational, that their squeamishness is something that ought to be overcome?
*sigh* Or am I the weird one, the fish who can't see water?
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no subject
Date: 2002-04-11 03:04 pm (UTC)