Ill, Nerdiness, HIV

Friday morning I woke to a shocking pain in both my throat and head--I forced myself to get up so that I could attend my 8am class. The only reason I've been attending this class in this ungodly hour is because of a pinky swear. But this morning I could not physically coerce my body to mount my bike and traverse the bumpy, not to mention hilly, road to my biochem lecture. I sent a pathetic text message to my pinky swear buddy hoping that he wouldn't hold me to the thousands of needles of in my eye--he turned out to be a sympathetic spirit. I woke again to a lesser pain in my throat and head and decided the hell with the cold and went to class.

I spent most of my saturday in the Berkeley Free Clinic as a HIV counselor trainee. Through today's experience I realized how much our society breeds hypocondriacs. While the HIV virus should cause us to pause and take precautions, it should not have sent the six people who ventured to the clinic today. They were all monogamous whose partners were either extremely low risk or are HIV neg and always used protection--which puts them in the no risk category. If there's no HIV present, there is no way that one can contract it--people didn't seem to realize that HIV cannot spontaneously germinate. But I suppose issuing a test and providing counseling that assuages the anxiety of anyone means we have done our jobs?

BTW, this is Di--Matt didn't do anything interesting in the last few days, so he had me write about my last two days. :-D

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