poop beetle: Fun with HIV 1.2005 I'm down to my final semester in nursing school. So far this appears to be the "catch-all" semester. We're doing HIV, allergies, GI disturbances, some weird autoimmune things like Lupus and Juvenal Rheumatoid Arthritis, a little hemophilia and some skin disorders. It appears they're attempting to jam in as much as possible in what little time we have left. They're trying to make sure we get exposed to as much as everything that could possibly be on the state boards.
The women that run this nursing program in this tiny, under funded, southern rural community college want us to get our license. They want us to practice nursing. Passing the boards won't mean that we're great nurses, it will only mean that we are "safe" (i.e. not likely to kill anyone). Because I've developed a strange and overwhelming respect for these people (Stockholm syndrome ? I can't help but wonder.), I find this desire, effort, hard core push to get us to a place where we will be able to practice, deeply touching. I feel they have faith in me. They believe I'll be good or at least not lethal. And because I've come to believe my instructors are all excellent people, this has made me feel all weird and vulnerable and gushy.
I've also begun to feel sad about leaving school. (whaat?) I am going to miss these people, my instructors and my fellow students. I have rarely, if ever, felt such a sense of belonging. Or really, I should say, I've rarely gotten so much out of a sense of belonging. I don't do groups. Even though I've always been fascinated and enamored of the idea of "interconnectivity", the reality is not comfortable. Something in me gets itchy and rebellious about the pull of a group. (with the obvious exception of Happy Robot. Do you know I feel not in the slightest bit self-conscious about referring to other happy roboters as "robots"? . . . O.K. the first time I did feel a twinge of "joiner-ism", but it was just a second and then it passed and now it feels natural and right and threatens, not in the least my grasping illusion of specialness and autonomy).
I was frightened of this school when I started. I was frightened of the people and this area of the country and of myself starting this new thing that felt not like me at all (although like a type of me, a potential me, if I could pull it together). I was afraid I would hate these people and that hatred would make me act like an asshole (or struggle painfully to keep from being an asshole) which would interfere with my ability to function/succeed plus would be embarrassing and stressful.
I tackled this obstacle by doing everything in my power to squash anything and everything about myself that might stand out. I went in low and careful and detached.
At least I tried to. When I get interested or excited about something I feel the urge to "share". I lose all sense of decorum and can get open and babbly. I got labeled a "deep thinker" which sounds nice if you're 12, but at the age of 35 is cringily suggestive of "no common sense".
But I dealt with it and I continue to deal. One upside to my efforts to go deep-cover in the effort to "check" myself (not entirely successful), I did manage to reign in my ego, which gave me a little more space and time to absorb and learn and not react . . . which (and I have no idea how this happened because honestly I was just trying to get along) allowed me . . . or kind of overwhelmed me with support and connection from/to some wonderful people. Who will all disperse in four months! On to the next thing. La de da!
Slightly different subject- Yesterday in class I had a strange moment. I got big laughs from a line that lived throughout the late eighties/early nineties on a bumper sticker. We were doing AIDS/HIV. We'd covered all the opportunistic infections and various anti-protozoan agents, the tests (ELISA, Western Blot), the CD4 values and what they mean and eventually, as always on to the psycho-social stuff which is often fun and free flowing and funny enough to help you remember the hard core science. (Cytomegalovirus is now forever linked with my instructor's thoughts on a recent CSI episode dealing with "swingers"). We talked about "Philadelphia" (Antonio Banderas played Tom Hank's lover.) We talked about prisoners- someone wondered if it was the tattoos. (it's the systemic, state sanctioned rape)- but I wasn't the one to say it. We talked about Magic Johnson, and the rising numbers of senior citizens who are HIV positive (one in five in Fla., those are the number I heard). A young girl of 21 said she didn't think her generation feared it enough. And then we talked about the stigma and various inflammatory Op Ed pieces different people had read. And I said, I remember when people thought AIDS was sent from God to punish homosexuals and IV drug users. (and various people nodded, because they'd heard this too).
"But if that that's true then God must love lesbians the most."
"Remember that? Because they have the lowest risk of HIV?" I added that because what I meant to do was remember when.
But people were laughing, even people my age and older. My old as dirt instructor threw back her head and cackled. I was embarrassed. Cheap laughs off a 15-20 year old AIDS bumper sticker? Where the hell have these people been? Later on, people said "that was a good one, Anne". But I still love them.
