Playing Doctor

20 May

Just to follow up: Since my last update (and 10 days of Erythromycin), my unsightly right underarm abscesses have disappeared… unfortunately one has cropped up on the left side. Another painful, swollen, hopefully wont turn into a festering black deathy skin spider bite. Actually, I am pretty sure it isn’t the mark of the brown recluse, because last night – after much semi excruciating pain and embarrassment from having to walk around like a crazy lady holding her arm in the air to prevent any sort of rubbing – the thing had a semi volcanic eruption. I seriously lost the body weight of a small but well nourished African child in puss and blood. Just one friendly reminder that yes, I live in bacteria-ville.

I also have a sore throat, cough, and eye infection. When it rains it pours… especially when too many antibiotics are involved.

Back on topic. I meandered over to my boyfriends house last evening after spending like 4 hours cooking beans from scratch, and was greeted with the ever warm endearment:

Iraque: “Want to take a test?”

Test? What? I thought I finished school? I give tests now, not take them.
Then I remembered that this question really only means one thing here. HIV test.

Me: “Will you do it too?”
Iraque: “Yeah ok. But I did one like a half an hour ago.”

I took a test in April and was negative, so really had nothing to fear. But the whole HIV testing process is awfully scary in itself. Then picture it inside a mud and reed hut illuminated only by one measly little white candle (ok, the house does have a cement floor, so not totally African stick shack like you might picture.).

Now that I think about it, it is even more frightening that there was no trained professional supervising the whole thing. Just two really smart semi-idiots figuring out where you put the blood and how much liquid to put on it, and how long should it take, and is one line or two means I am positive. Really, it was like two kids playing doctor with this little toy paper test… playing with an incurable worldwide endemic disease, that is.

The HIV Rapid Test itself is this little piece of paper/cardboard, with one little strip of some sort of actual medical paper running down the middle hot dog style – although I was never sure which way was hot dog and which was hamburger, which seriously inhibited my paper folding skills as a child.

So you put your blood at the top, then a drop or two of some mysterious liquid, and wait the agonizing 2-5 minutes for your blood to run down the little strip. FYI one line is good, two lines bad.

The testing commenced as I poked my finger a few times with this little sharp metal needlish thing in hopes of drawing blood. But my efforts were to no avail. So I handed the sharp instrument over to Iraque, and he took a nice swift stab at my left index finger, and a few droplets gushed forth. Now that's love.

I collected the blood, dropped it on the tab, he dropped some solution on, and we waited. I was squirming, he was laughing at me for being nervous, which of course just compounded my somewhat irrational fear. Overall, it was a very pleasant Wednesday evening. NOT.

You know that feeling when you look over a ledge, and you know there is a really big fence that will surely keep you from plummeting into the seemingly endless abyss below, and yet you sort of want to pee your pants anyway. Well that is more or less what I felt like as I waited FOREVER for those little drops of blood to make their way down the flimsy paper contraption.

You might be nervous for me even as you read this. But I am pretty sure I wouldn't be attempting to throw witty remarks into a blog entry that ended with: And then I found out I had HIV. Not exactly a crowd pleaser.

So rest assure, the little guy happily showed me one faint red line. Negative. And Iraque too. Wonderful. Pray for me in three months when I have to repeat the whole process.