A couple of weeks later, he advised me that his HIV test came up inconclusive-which he advised me is mostly likely a positive result. The news was like a shot in the head because I was caught in between two worlds- do I stay with my current husband or do I move on to my new life?
I?m in a position in life right now where I’m living poor. At the moment, my lights are off, I have no way to get back and forth to the doctor, I haven?t been on meds since I gave birth to my daughter in march 2016, and it?s hard to find work where I live.
Then the truth set me free. Learning about Undetectable equals Un-transmittable ( U=U ), and PrEP gave me a new light in life. I set out to make sure I achieved and maintained undetectable levels to prevent the spread of HIV and inform my partners about PrEP. I have come to understand that my future child will not face the same stigma and side effects in their life. This hope has inspired me to think about what family I want to have.
Jay MacGillivray and Mark Yudin’s talk, “Trauma-Aware Reproductive Care for Women Living with HIV & Those at Risk” explored how prenatal care is impacted by trauma; including insecure or unsafe housing, immigration status, gender-based violence, problematic substance use, severe mental illness and exploited sex work.
In fact, there has never been a case reported of penile-vaginal HIV transmission in the setting of an undetectable viral load. Therefore, in these studies, HIV prevention was due to treatment as prevention and not subtherapeutically dosed PrEP.