I was a Peer Navigator for about two years and the amount of people who get tested and never come back is crazy. The people who get into care and disappear is not none. we had some people who had missed 14+ appointments. Eventually Drs will turn off their ART refills to get them to come in for labs and refills but often those clients totally disengage in care, or by the time they come back their numbers are worse than they were at their original dx apt.
We had some who just don't take their meds, homeless clients or ones living with people who don't know their diagnosis will sometimes hide their pills, or not take them daily.
Some people with no symptoms they can feel don't understand why they are taking these pills that make them feel no different.

To Brad and all my other family here…🥰 I say this with all kind of love♥️. I am an ex prostitute so I know what it is to want to have sex all the time😎 and I learned that most of the love I was looking for was not sexual, but spiritual 😇and emotional 😟and I’ll speak on that on a different day. However, I learned that alcohol 🍺was created back in the day for those who are dying. 😵So all of us here shows me that we are doing our very best to stay alive. 😃👍A glass of wine is harmless but I’ve learned as a certified HIV testing counselor that alcohol and drugs can speed up the strand of HIV 200 times faster 🏃‍♂️💨it’s like putting 1000 balloons in the room and somebody comes in with 🎈🎈🎈a needle 💉and pop every balloon. 🎈 That’s what alcohol does. It pops the balloon 🎈 of our good cells, causing the HIV viral cells to make more copies of itself 🦠 🦠🦠🦠like a Xerox machine.
I understand you wanna go out of this life with a bang.‼️ However, I have seen people who suffered more at the hands of drugs 💊and alcohol 🍷 and multiple sex partners😘 than they did when they were sober. I bear witness that a life without the use of alcohol 🍻and multiple partners is very healing ❤️‍🩹for the mind the body and the soul,💫 and when those three components are at a healthy place ❤️‍🩹your body has a way of receiving the healing it needs. ❤️‍🩹😃👍This has been the only way that I have been able to live with this diagnosis 43 years.😇😃 Don’t be your own worst enemy because you don’t want to be at the hands 👏of a self-inflicted injury to your immune system. 🩻 I love you all and I most importantly love your transparency and your blatant honesty because that’s the way I am and that’s the way we should all be👍😃👍. Most time people who are newly diagnosed… 😳After they hear the words “You have HIV “…their ears 👂 go silent. So that’s why people don’t come back for treatment and that’s why they don’t take the medicine.💊
Somebody mentioned about different strands…so people are creating 700 different strands and counting.😳 For example, somebody having unprotected sex and HIV positive with someone who is HIV positive and also diagnosed with syphilis🦠 thus creating new strands. 😳The researchers and doctors have not had time to tackle the strands that are out and we keep making more.😟
So we need to cool out heels 👠 and stop making new strands so we can begin to heal and lastly,..I heard of 8 different cases of people who were completely healed of HIV 🦠❤️‍🩹👍😃👍and I will look for that information and come back to talk about that. 🥰 I love y’all. I really do 👍😃thank you for being there for each other. Have a blessed Sunday.😇🥰😇 love each other and most of all love yourself♥️😎♥️

There is a big difference between the strains of HIV I & HIV II. It is unlikely that you would have HIV II which exists largely among heterosexual populations in Subsaharan Africa.

As for variations of HIV I in individuals, one of the reasons we take AVT is to reduce viral replication in our bodies and the production of variants. Everyone who has HIV actively replicating, is producing plenty of their own mutations. That is why resistance to medications is such a problem. You can also pick up resistant viruses from others, as well as STDs, having unprotected sex.

Bummer, I know... coming from a guy who discovered infections with Herpes Simplex II, HPV #16... AFTER my HIV diagnosis.

None of this is simple, getting it right, getting it wrong, especially as it expands out over a lifetime of relationships, ups, downs, good health & bad. Just keep trying to do what will keep you healthy.❤️

@A myHIVteam Member If you get "reinfected" with a problematic version of HIV, it will show the next time you do labs.

I think that is unlikely. If you are on AVT, you are equipped to stop viral replication in a way you are not without the medications, even if the virus is resistant to one of the medications.

Also, your body has produced antibodies to HIV... maybe not enough to stop the initial infection, but subsequent infection you have covered, resistant or not.

The risk is for people NOT on medication, or not taking their medications consistently. Also, for infections in general that tear away at your health, and ultimately leave you vulnerable to life threatening conditions like pneumonia, sepsis...

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A myHIVte...

There is also the way in which the drugs are combined. There are articles that speak to how certain antiviral medications work, and why combining them this way or that is particularly effective at blocking resistance. I saw those articles, researching the stuff I just posted.