{"id":1076,"date":"2010-08-30T21:28:56","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T01:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:24:44","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:24:44","slug":"required-reading-in-love-and-serodiscordant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/required-reading-in-love-and-serodiscordant\/2010\/08\/30\/","title":{"rendered":"Required Reading: In Love and &#8220;Serodiscordant&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1077\" title=\"newspapers\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2010\/08\/newspapers1.jpg\" alt=\"newspapers\" width=\"218\" height=\"191\" \/>Being of a certain age, my wife and I still subscribe to the print version of the Sunday <em>New York Times<\/em>.\u00a0 Since we also get the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/\" target=\"_blank\">local rag<\/a>, quite a bit of paper is deposited on our doorstep each week.<\/p>\n<p>Worth it?\u00a0 You bet, especially since occasionally there&#8217;s a gem in there like this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/29\/fashion\/29Love.html?_r=1&amp;ref=modernlove&amp;pagewanted=all\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Modern Love<\/em> column<\/a>.\u00a0 (I supposed we might have stumbled upon it if we&#8217;d just read it on line, but I doubt it.)\u00a0 In a piece entitled &#8220;On the Precipice, Wings Spread&#8221;, Kerri Sandberg writes about dating (and ultimately marrying) her HIV-positive boyfriend:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even though Theo appeared to fit into the lucky new \u201clong-term non-progressor\u201d category, his H.I.V. status taught us to savor each day because you never know how many you\u2019ll have.\u00a0 We did our best to maintain that balance sexually, too, creating a repertory that was spontaneous without being reckless, careful but not fearful. According to a guy on the Centers for Disease Control\u00a0hot line, our brand of lesbian-inspired lovemaking posed a \u201cslight risk\u201d of transmission. But I also had a slight risk of dying from just about anything. What was I supposed to do, never leave the house?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>HIV clinicians will recognize immediately this bit of denial, one that&#8217;s surprisingly common among our &#8220;serodiscordant&#8221; patients.\u00a0 And even though annual testing is recommended for uninfected sexual partners of people with HIV, those that actually get tested seem to be\u00a0the exception, not the rule.<\/p>\n<p>But when you think about it further, and when the feelings are described as artfully as Ms. Sandberg did here, maybe that&#8217;s not so surprising after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being of a certain age, my wife and I still subscribe to the print version of the Sunday New York Times.\u00a0 Since we also get the local rag, quite a bit of paper is deposited on our doorstep each week. Worth it?\u00a0 You bet, especially since occasionally there&#8217;s a gem in there like this week&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,8],"tags":[423,653,656],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-hiv","tag-new-york-times","tag-newspapers"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}