Looks like a busy week.

Will be off to a two-day HIV training which is Client-Centered 1:1 Interventions starting tomorrow and finishing Wednesday. 9am to 5pm, which would be very tough on my leg. If I sit too long, my leg stiffens up. (Slow recovery from surgery and damage from hit-and-run.) I had taken that training before last year or was that two years ago? I had lost track, but they messed up the certificat, putting down Jules Wolfers instead of my real name! :p They hadn't renewed the certificate so I had to take it again. That's all right since it'd be a nice refresher class for me! I will also take other six classes..can we say BUSY? The classes are Mental Health & HIV Prevention, Effective Referrals, STDS for Non-Clinicians, Cultural Competence Level 1, 2 and 3. And no, I'm not being paid to attend. It's volunteering and I figure taking those trainings will look excellent on my resume especially certificates I can include in the resume. I gotta do all this because it's my dream to be a mental health counselor/case manager for deaf clients with HIV in the future.

Someone asked me WHY I want to work with deaf clients with HIV. "What's wrong with working with mental ill clients, mental retarded clients or clients that may have problems like addictions, domestic violence or having high-risk activities?" Who says I don't want to work with those clients? I didn't say that. I discovered that there is too few counselors who can sign out there in the United States. It's harder to find counselors who may have experiences in this or that.. There are addiction counselors, there are domestic violence counselors, there are clinical psychologists, you get the idea. It is high likely that when one NEEDS help in a certain area of mental health, you won't find a counselor who can sign. For example, if one needs to go to a 12-step AA group, there is a chance there would be no counselor who could sign. At most, there'd be an interpreter (that is if the organization that'd call up one.) So... the bottom line is..counselors who can sign will need to be generalists. What is that? Let me read from the dictionary:

Generalist: : one whose skills, interests, or habits are varied or unspecialized.

It means that in case of mental health, the counselor would need to have basic knowledge of addiction, high risk adolescence, mental disorders, autism, domestic violence, family violence, PTSD, crisis intervention, etc, etc. I had already taken PTSD and Crisis intervention classes. I worked for an organization that focuses on domestic violence. I also worked for a non-profit organization that worked with deaf clients with mental retardation and other disabilities, as well as an organization working with deaf clients with mental disorders. In March, I will take a two-day workshop on addictions. More knowledge the counselor can collect in her repertory, the more resourceful she can be for the clients and herself.

However, HIV/AIDS have been my passion for a long time as I could remember. Rene (name changed to protect his family) took me into the world of HIV/AIDS. I remember as if it happened yesterday, Rene came to me in 1991. He said that he was afraid to go to the doctor to ask for a HIV test. I asked him why he would even think about that. He said a guy told him that he was HIV positive and that since Rene had sex with him, he should go take a test. I agreed to go with him to a doctor for a blood test. I remember two weeks later or so, I remember how our hearts pounded that I could even feel vibrations in my teeth. The doctor was even considerate of getting an interpreter that day. He told him that the test was positive for HIV but encouraged him to come back in six months. We both were stunned. He asked the doctor more about HIV but the interpreter used a lot of medical terms that went over his and my heads. After the appointment, he asked me more about HIV and I have to tell you, readers, I had NO idea but that HIV kills. It was a bogeyman to me. In a few days, we went to the library to look up and there were a lot of medical terms that I had to read forth and back (looking up dictionary, reading book, then back to dictionary). Due to Rene's 4th grade reading level, he couldn't "get it." So I would read and then translate into ASL for him. My heart was broken for him over much that I am even surprised that it's still beating after all this breaking for months. With him, I learned about what HIV/AIDS means, what it does and doesn't, how it affects the immune system and that it wasn't HIV that'd kill. It's complications that comes to a weakned immune system, hence AIDS with complications.
He had died 4 years ago but bless his heart, he refused to let HIV control his life as possible. He went hiking in the Rocky Mountains and surfing in Hawaii all the time when he felt good. I saw how it was very tough for him, not from the deaf community but from the medical community. It was tough to find an interpreter who knows medical and sexual terms and not spell them out! Can you imagine one going "A-N-A-L-S-E-X" instead of signing it??!! Many times he would show up at the doctor's office to find that there would be no intepreter. Often he would write forth and back and then bring notes to me to read and help interpret words/terms he didn't understand. I decided to do more research on HIV/AIDS myself and I find it an amazing 'machine.' It is a destructive program if you will. There are viruses and bacteria out there that would keep their host alive while eating them, yet this HIV virus killing its own host. This virus has no judgement on who gets it. Women, men, kids, adolescenes, hearing, deaf, catholics, jews, pagans, African-american, hispanic, white, it has no racism, no sexism, no audism, nothing against 'em...but that it is all one blood and immune system to that "destructive program." You can say it is akin to a computer virus, when you think about it.

So, that is one of reasons why HIV/AIDS is one of my passions. 'Boyo,' I won't forget you and your favorite saying, "I ain't beat until I am ready!"