About six months ago, I was driving on my way to school when I heard on a local radio station that a South Beach club promoter (the name at this moment escapes me) infected with HIV was arrested for deliberately sleeping with countless women without protection. The radio station was asking women who knew the club promoter to either call the radio station or get tested immediately. In my opinion, HIV is a chain reaction in which all it takes is for one person to have AIDS and all those people who come into sexual contact with that individual are exposed to the deadly virus.
It’s alarming the rate in which HIV is spreading among people in South Florida.
According to CDC, the South Florida metropolitan area -- which includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties -- had the highest rate of new AIDS cases per 100,000 people in the U.S. from 2003 to 2005. Only New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico, had more new reported AIDS cases among Hispanic women in 2004.
But, I would like to dig deeper into the subject about HIV, because I think is not a matter of ethnicity or language barrier but a matter of choice, like everything else in this world. Government can spend millions of dollars on PSA’s but in the end HIV can affect anyone, and everyone at some point, from promiscuous women and men to married couples, to people who have sex only once a year.
I think that in the heat of the moment, and especially in the arms of the man or woman that one desires and perhaps even love, thinking about whether one may contract HIV if one has unprotected sex is at the bottom of the barrel.
So, I guess that is why each time one goes to get checked for HIV despite, perhaps, not having many sexual partners, waiting for the test results may seem endless and far from painless. It’s at that moment that people stop thinking with the emotions and begin to think realistically.
I will never forget the fall of 05’ when also on my way to school, an unknown woman called a local Spanish radio station to say that she was pregnant. The radio host, Enrique Santos, congratulated the caller when suddenly she bursted into tears and said, “I’m pregnant and I’m going to die.”
At that moment, I know it took Santos by surprise because he didn’t know what to say. Normally his morning show was filled of people calling to do pranks on other people but this call was definitely an unusual one. The unknown caller continued by telling her story and she said that she had just discovered that she had HIV because it showed twice on the blood results that she had taken as part of her regular pregnancy evaluation.
The caller did not reveal her identity but she told her story. She had been married for various years and at first she was ecstatic at the news that she was going to be a mother for the first time.
But little did she know that her husband was cheating on her. She discovered her husband’s infidelity the moment that her test results came out positive.
In vengeance she called the radio station to scream out to the world that her husband was a perro, Spanish word for dog.
She asked the host to call her husband so that she can humiliate him on air and with thousands of people listening. The host asked her to rethink her decision but the determined caller wanted to continue with her mission.
The phone rang and after about the third ring a man with a rough and cheerful voice answered the phone. The desperate woman greeted him in a cold manner. The man at first seemed happy to hear his wife, but his mood changed in a matter of seconds.
She told him that she was leaving him and that he needed to get tested for HIV. Her words were sharp and filled with pain, “I’m leaving you and it is because of you that your son and I will die. I have HIV,” she said screaming and crying simultaneously.
The man began to cry as well and then all we heard was the phone disconnect.
After that dramatic episode, the station remained quiet for a few minutes. It was the first time that I had heard something so dramatic and powerful over the radio.
It made me realize something very important and is that we are all at risk of contracting HIV including those that think that they are in a monogamous relationship and that their spouses will never cheat on them.
2 comments:
The story about the radio caller was crazy! and a good example of how this disease is spread. You had some good date figures up top, and adding a "face" to the srory made it a better read.
The color scheme in your blog is a bit overwhelming with the red. I'd try a less shoking color, and the graphic up top also makes ur description un readable.
Good start! Look forward to future posts.
Hi Lily, I love the story. My favorite part was the woman who called the radio show. It's sad that situations like that happen all the time. Not to mention that some people don't take marriage seriously. Anyways, overall I liked it, but you should either change the text color or the background color. You also need more graphics. ttys
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