Self-Empowerment Training (RITM)

This is an a public invitation that a fellow PLHIV (pozziepinoy) from RITM asked me to re-post from his blog. I have personally attended this training several months ago. It is a good way to meet up with fellow PLHIVs from different Treatment Hubs. In our batch, there were seven from San Lazaro Hospital (including me) and seven from RITM. It was a refreshing experience to meet PLHIVs from a different Hub. While the seven of us from San Lazaro Hospital are the tenured ones in our batch because most of us were diagnosed in 2010 and already knew each other because we often see one another every Thursdays (OPD Day); the boys from RITM don't know each other, aside from the fact that they were all newbies because all of them just got diagnosed this year, they also don't get to see each other very often due to clinic schedules. So we were the ates and kuyas of our batch.

Anyway, this training is fun and educational. A good way to be able to move forward, specially for those who just got diagnosed.

*****

WHAT: SELF EMPOWERMENT TRAINING (SET)


WHEN: SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 2012, 2PM TO 7PM
              SUNDAY, AUGUST 26, 2012, 8AM TO 1PM
                   

NO REQUIREMENTS NEEDED!!

Interested parties can text or call Ate Beth 0917- 836-0312. You can also email me at pozziepinoy@yahoo.com if you have any inquiries. Please indicate your complete name with middle initials for the certificates and ID.

This is a project of RITM-ARG and training is FREE! First come first served basis only. Limited slots available.

Pulses: A play inspired by people living with HIV

Yesterday, I went (alone) to UP Diliman to watch a play that was told to me by a friend. That play was my first "independent" play to have watched since my highschool days where the last theatrical play that I get to watch was El Filibusterismo. So it has been such a long time since I watched one. This play was titled Pulses, and is a thesis for a group of graduating UP students. Even though this particular play is a student production; acting was exceptional.

Props were bare, but very smartly used. Music was melancholic, and it gave me goose-bumps. What made this play exceptional was the skills of the actors and how each one gave vivid life to the characters they portrayed. Some were funny, some were shockingly liberated, some were mild yet melancholic. All, were great, and everyone will surely be able to relate to a certain character; they may be gay or straight, a cross-dresser, or a straight couple who is so much in love, a prostitute, an OFW, a lonely gay guy living alone, or a young family. 

This was a play about the lives of people living with HIV, from all walks of life. Of how we live, and the things we go through, from the first day of diagnosis, progressing to the point where we have moved on. Personally, this play was not easy for me to watch at all. I thought it was going to be just okay, that it will be just a breeze, that I am just going to sit there and enjoy the production; just like when I watch Rent repeatedly. However, this one was different, basically because I... First-handedly experienced most of the scenes and stories portrayed in the play. I have witnessed and I know people going through or have gone through the exact same situations that the characters in this play had. As the emotional person that I am, and being able to absorb easily what is going on around me, I got drifted into the story, very easily. That said, tears gently poured out from my eyes just within the first few minutes of the play. I did my best to keep them in, but the scenes were all just too relatable, although not painful anymore; the memories and the emotions of way back just bursted in me. There were some scenes that were just all too familiar, very much familiar, that I felt transported to the exact same moment, that I can't stop but to just let it all out; I cried but not in sadness, but in memory of it. I had to stop myself from shaking and crying because the people beside me were already looking at me. I may sound exaggerating, but I just can't help it, it's different when someone (like me) experienced the same situation being portrayed.

The play is a great tool to open the eyes and hearts of many and give them an insight of what people living with the virus goes through and the people affected by it; like our parents, siblings, friends, lovers, acquaintances, counselors, doctors, the people we work with and who we are with at most times. It gave faces and form to what we don't see and to what we do not want to see with regards to the virus, that not only infects our bodies but influences our minds, and proper knowledge is one tool to fight it.

Pulses is a moving, powerful, and heart breaking play that opens our eyes to the hidden realities of the life changing effects of HIV.

"We are more than what our bodies make us to be" - Pulses

My new pill: Efavirenz

So it has been five days since I started drinking my new medicine, Efavirenz. Which side effects include insomnia, sleep deprivation, depression, vivid dreams, paranoia, mania and suicidal thoughts, dizziness, impaired concentration, confusion and anxiety... All of which I've already been through in the past, so I guess this will be just a breeze to me. Although on my first day, I really felt the dizziness effect, I was so dizzy that I couldn't even stand, that was within the first few hours of drinking my first pill. Then the next day, when I was about to go to work, I can still feel the side-effect of the drug, which was dizziness, it went on until I arrived at work and while I was working. As the days go by, the dizziness effect started to be tolerable, or because I have been expecting it to happen so I am already mentally prepared for it. However, the other day, I was on my way home and I was caught outside within the time I need to take Efavirenz, so I did. I felt so dizzy that while I was walking up the stairs of my building, I almost fell and it took me almost 10 minutes to arrive at my unit. That's why I need to be home before the time I take that pill. So far, no vivid dreams, but I am anticipating it. That's why I watch a lot of anime before I go to sleep.

Do you remember or know the feeling of getting so drunk that you cannot almost text right and your speech is slurred? You're so drunk that your motor skills get affected so much you cannot walk right? That is how Efavirenz affects me. Well, it gets better everyday, tolerable.

I take Efavirenz once a day together with Lamivudine/Zidovudine which is taken twice a day. I still feel weak these days, or it is because of me being overweight. During my stay in the H4 Ward during my confinement, my lungs were discovered to be already inflamed due to smoking and being already too sensitive to irritants, well I haven't been smoking since I took my first ARV pill which was more than a month ago. Also, my heart is already weak, so I have to minimize my bad fat intake and start doing mild cardio workouts. People living with HIV must take care on working out not to stress themselves too much and the workouts must be on a progressive process so that the body won't be surprised with the sudden activity. Last time I tried doing cardio during my ARV trial, I got sick. I can feel my body weaken, perhaps because of all the toxicity of the pills I have been taking. Well, I just have to live with it.