The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book. ~Author Unknown
all right- did michele obama rock da house last night or what? quite a public speaker..
anyway, happy birthday to me.... i left one of my hiv meds at home. i brought two bottles of another in error. i only had to speak to a concierge and i got the name of a local pharmacy, emailed my doctor to call in a scrip, then i had to call 2 numbers at my insurance company to see if they would approve a 2nd scrip within a month. thank god i have vacation privileges with meds...
today was the first day of the hrsa ryan white grantee conference 2008. i must say i started out feeling a bit out of place, but then i always do. once i had a coffee i realized that i was completely where i should be. i am an acting co-chair for planning council for the mohr denver. i have the responsibility to understand what programs are going on in in the rest of the country. and i have the privilege of seeking new directions that might fit our city.
the peer to peer programming is probably the most intriguing to me. i know that, in denver, there is not really poz involvement in outreach for prevention, nor is there any real poz presence in diagnosis assimilation processes. i think this a damn shame. i have learned through the 12step process that having people around who have successfully worked through their issues helped me immensely. in the beginning it helped me even believe that i could do it. then further in, with the help of a triumphant predecessor, i have been able to meander through this emotional and situational minefield called life with my own meager success.
i hold the belief that if you have done it, you have the skill to help someone else. if you have not, you may help, but you are not an expert. i am prejudiced in this way, but i am not married to being right.
i do know that i love working with folks with hiv now. after 12 years of living in fear and denial about it, followed by 10 years on meds, i have come to realize that i have some terrain knowledge of this journey. i have a skill set for troubleshooting that can be a great asset for someone. i know there are others like me. and i think they can benefit from just re-learning this about themselves. not to mention the benefit to the new poz that hasn't a clue.
i'm working on helping build a poz network of poz guys working together in my town. i know that we need one. and when i say we, i mean the whole community needs us to have a stronger poz network. it's a win-win. and the poz guys have done a lot of the footwork already. we just have to remember we can do this.
