Testing Positive

I have been an HIV counselor for almost 1 year now and it truly is something that I love to do. I have always felt that it was a way that I could give back to my community as well as help someone in need. Since I have been a counselor I have tested and counseled over 300 people and while the routine is the same each client is unique. Out of the 300 I had tested all of them came back negative and while many were low risk several did fall into the high-risk category. I can safely say that I had gotten complacent and started to believe that HIV was pretty difficult to get. That was until a week ago when one of my clients tested positive. I was completely caught off guard by this. He was very emotional during the session and I was expecting to come back with yet another negative test result and make his day. This was not the case. When I went to pick up his results my head and heart sank as I read the words “PRELIMINARY POSITIVE.” Luckily for me a senior counselor was around who helped snap me back to reality. There was so much that I wanted to do for this guy to try to make things better but I realized that was not my job. My job was to deliver the news in a professional manner and that was it. My job was not to provide in depth counseling or to assess the persons mental condition before he left my job was to deliver the news. I had to fall back on my training and remember the role play sessions. I returned to the room, sat down, and delivered the news. He was devastated but responsive. We chatted briefly for a moment and then I had to pass him to our senior support staff and phlebotomist. I debriefed with my site supervisor and then went right back to counseling as we were short staffed. Typically when that happens a counselor is allowed to leave to decompress but since we were low on counselors I had to get back to work. Needless to say that day was difficult. I think what definitely helped was when I told my friends the first thing that most of them said was “are you ok?! And do you want to talk about it.” Knowing that I had their support made me feel very good. It also made me realize that I did need to talk about what happened and process the feelings that I had.