The week of March 6 – March 10, 2021 I had the privilege of attending the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI). This was my first time attending this conference, a conference made up of researchers, scientists, community members, and others.
MzGee1966's blog
Last year we were all rocked by a deadly new virus. Somewhat like the early days of HIV, we didn't really understand the modes of transmission—we just knew it was potentially deadly.
On March 9, 2020 I landed in Atlanta, flying in from New Orleans. I'd heard about the coronavirus, but it was something far removed from me. In the Lyft on the way to my hotel I opened my news app; the first story I saw was a report that New Orleans had ONE case. I wasn't too worried…at first. By that Sunday, we were up to 103 cases. That was also the week that it became personal and real for me; someone I'd known my whole life died from coronavirus. My city soon became a hotspot, the medical experts say the culprit was Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras brings thousands of people from all over the world...
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose whether or not to have an abortion. The case began in Texas when a woman (Jane Roe) sued the Dallas County District Attorney. Prior to this case, women were only able to obtain an abortion if her life was at risk. The law as it stood prior to 1973 took the choice out of a woman's hands. Women had abortions before...
For most of my adult life I identified as a heterosexual woman. See, my family, community, and society told me I was supposed to like boys/men. After all, I was a girl, right? I was raised with the notion that girls date boys, not other girls. Don't get me wrong, there are LGBT people in my family, but like all other ingrained stigmas, that was them not me. When I was 13 years old, I told a cousin that I wanted to become a mechanic when I grew up. She immediately said, "if you become a mechanic people are going to call you a 'bulldagger'". I didn't know what the word meant, but I knew it was...
Have you ever been so tired that it was hard to put one foot in front of the other? Have you ever been so tired that all you wanted to do is sit quietly and not have to deal with anything?
On April 12th I joined hundreds of women (and a few men) in Myrtle Beach, S.C. We were there to attend PWN-USA's 3rd Speak Up Summit. Speak Up is a summit by us and for us, the "us" are women living with HIV. It was going to be a special time for me being a new member of The Well Project's Community Advisory Board. It was also the 10th anniversary of PWN-USA and a celebration was planned. Yes, the turn up was going to be real. I was so ready to connect with old sister-friends and looking forward to making new sister-friends. You can imagine my excitement at being with a group of fierce women...