Take the test. Take control.
Knowing is beautiful.
Get educated, get involved, get tested, get treated.
When we teach health in New York City, we tell teenagers to get tested for HIV/AIDS and other Sexually Transmitted Infections regularly. The world is filled with slogans and outcries over the importance of being tested, of knowing whether you carry HIV or not. Knowledge is power, afterall, isn't it? If you know you have HIV, you can get treated, get help, you won't get more people infected. Knowledge is power. Right?
Well, yes, knowledge is power. But knowledge is also pretty damn scary. It's easy to say a slogan, it's easy to see it on TV and to know everything about HIV, but it's a whole different ballgame when it's time to walk into a clinic, let them needle your arm and then walk back in a week later. It's empowering to know, but it's terrifying to hear your death sentence read out.
That's the thing about slogans and education: they can't take away the fear factor.
I've been thinking about this recently and sharing stories with fellow friends because I got tested last week. I didn't do it the way a lot of people do, I was pretty 100 percent sure my test was going to come up negative. But the doctor mentioned it and I figured, I might as well know. So, I did it before I could really think about it, and all of a sudden I was in the car on the way home and I realized that my life sentence was going to come in a few days.
That's what the slogans tend to leave out. They forget to mention that getting tested is quite an existential, eye-opening experience. Because getting tested makes you think: What would I do if I knew I had AIDS? What would I do if I knew I was going to die a premature death? What would I do if I knew I could have helped it?
I talked to a few friends about the issue in the days before my doctor called with the results. Educated, inspired, and careful guys, they admitted that even they were scared when they walked into the room to hear their verdict. And I was too. I was scared because even though everything in me was saying: There is no way you have HIV, everything in me was also envisioning a scenerio in which I did.
I didn't. I got a test back that said no, and I was really happy to hear that news. But my heart raced for the rest of the day, and I've been holding close the vision I created of my life with a death sentence looming close over my head.
The reality is that now I'm "empowered." I feel like I can relax for the first time since my car ride home, and I am now equipped with a greater understanding of myself and what's going on with my body. I'm able to rest easy now-- I know I'm healthy and I know I won't harm anyone else. But a lot of people walk into that room or dial that phone number and aren't so fortunate. For them, that moment of judgement is just the starting point of a life that's indescribably different from the one they had when they woke up. And that's what the slogans don't tell you: knowledge is empowering, but it's also catastrophic. Knowledge is empowering when you get a no, but it's also debilitating if you get a yes. And either way, it's quite humbling.
My point here isn't to dissuade people from getting tested. Obviously I would never advocate for that sort of thing and obviously I'm in favor of campaigns that encourage the population to empower themselves through an important blood test. Maybe my point here is that really we should all be walking through that lab room door, hold out our arms and watch our fate leak out. Maybe it's important that we all get a little scared, that we all step away from our lives that are full of "good decisions" or "lucky breaks" and realize how fundamentally reckless we can all be. Maybe it's a good thing for us to step up, show a little courage and have the guts to walk into the room, sit behind the desk or make the phone call and stare death straight in the eye.
Whether knowledge is power or not, I don't know. But what I do know is that self-examination might be able to change our lives just as much as the lab room judgement that we'll all face one day.
posted by iliza @ 2:59 PM
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