Testimonials

I am from Laurens County and I have been a consumer of USCC for about seven years now. Over the past seven years many things have changed but thankfully, USCC has not. I was twenty one when I first heard about USCC. I was still struggling with the reaction of my friends and family when I told them I was gay. Soon after corning out, I met a guy who became my first boyfriend and sexual partner. I was still so new to the gay world. I had high hopes for this relationship. At the time, it was the only thing in my life that made me smile. However, that all turned into a nightmare with just one phone call. My boyfriend had cheated on me and contracted HIV found out by getting tested in Spartanburg and decided it was best to let a health official call and tell me the news. I got into my car and drove to Spartanburg immediately and had my blood drawn to be tested. The lady told me to come back in two weeks. It was the longest two weeks of my life. I cried and prayed non-stop until the moment the time came for the results of my test. After she told me my test results, I asked her how long I had left to live and her response was, “about thirty years.” I wouldn’t even speak. She asked me to sign a form and I then left. I chose to go to my own doctor in Laurens County and get more blood work and see what he had to say. The test came back to show I had over nineteen thousand copies in my body already. My doctor then suggested I look into USCC. I was just exhausted. What had happened to my life? I was the kid that got straight A’s and never got into trouble. I had gone from the golden boy to my whole family not speaking to me because of someone else’s actions. It was beyond tough not having anyone I could turn to for guidance or comfort. I really wanted to give up at this point.

I made an appointment with USCC. I didn’t really even want to go. I walked into the door and was greeted by a lovely smiling face. Her name was Taisha Williams. She hugged me and told me everything was going to be okay. She took my information and then began informing me about USCC, their mission, and explaining the unknown. I never really knew what HIV did to the body; much less, that there were different strains. She answered all my questions and most importantly she gave me someone to talk to. I walked in the door feeling like trash and embarrassed. Taisha Williams gave me hope.

Soon I had a doctor’s appointment and more blood work was done. Doctor Holman has always been really great. He too told me everything was going to be okay. He prescribed me some medication and told me I wasn’t going to feel good for a few weeks but that the end result would hopefully be great. After making another appointment, I left and went back to see Mrs. Williams. She explained all I needed to know about my medication & how important it was that I take it regularly even if it made me sick. After telling her I couldn’t afford the medication, she showed me how I could! There wasn’t one thing that she didn’t help me with. Even through the two weeks I was sick, she answered my phone call every time. She always listened to what I was upset about and did her best to help in any way she could. I really would not have been able to fight this battle without her.

A couple months went by. My stomach no longer hurt and I had another doctor’s appointment. It was time to find out what the medication had done. My results were undetectable. I cried tears of joy. My doctor told me that as long as I took care of myself I would live to be 90. I couldn’t wait to tell Mrs. Williams the good news.
USCC didn’t just set me up a doctor’s appointment and help me pay for my medication, they helped me get my life back when I didn’t even think it was possible. I am now twenty-eight years old, still completely undetectable and healthy. I don’t know what I would have ever done if I had not walked into to USCC’ s office that day but I sure am thankful I did.

This letter is being written on the behalf of Upper Savannah care Services. Within the healthcare field it becomes ever more critical to conduct systematic reviews of the how to guide to programmatic activities, policy making decisions, and future research. Conducting systematic reviews requires a comprehensive search of behavioral, social, and policy making to identify relevant behaviors. As a result, the validity of the systematic review findings and recommendations is partly a function of the quality of the systematic search of the behaviors. Therefore, a carefully thought out and organized plan for developing and testing a comprehensive search strategy should be followed. This means the HIV/AIDS prevention literature to provide a framework for developing, testing, and conducting a comprehensive search strategy looking beyond old political barriers.

Being HIV positive does not mean that one may not have physical contact with another person, however all future physical contact particularly sexual must be approached with caution responsrbly. Through Upper Savannah Care Services clients team to minimize exposure of others through safe sex practices, the effects of substance abuse and how to protect themselves from opportunistic infections. Many symptoms and side effects are related to HIV and the treatments and the medications. Clients must have an ongoing relationship with a medical caregiver i.e. doctor, clinician, nurse practitioner. They will work with clients to treat effectively and appropriately. Medication doses can be confusing and time consuming but extremely important to the overall health of clients the Upper Savannah Care Services will help with medication adherence.

The Upper Savannah Care Services has had success in community-based organizations to adopt externally developed HIV prevention programs to enhance several factors. Among these factors are stronger organizational focuses on HIV/AIDS. Access to intervention manuals, staff training workshops, and telephone consultation. Applying an evidence-based intervention also requires that a community-based organization be able to assess the needs and desires of its consumers to make any necessary adaptations. While technology transfer is generally conceived as the movement from research into practice, the term “technology exchange” may better reflect the mutual benefits that the process conveys to public health professionals and researchers as well as community-based providers. Technology exchange values their input from consumers and other stakeholders as well as the expertise of researchers. Upper Savannah Care Services focuses on the ways in which the technology exchange process can be harnessed to adapt evidence based behavioral interventions to the needs of local populations and conditions.

When confronted with the going epidemic among African American men who have sex with men, two conclusions seem unavoidable there is a fundamental inequality that continues to plague our society, and the response to this inequality is a doomed one in which we are all complicit. In the United States, whenever we talk about funding for health services, the discussion seems to degenerate into a conflict between health care and highways or defense or tax rebates, or between research on HIV disease and research on diabetes or cancer, or between services for injection drug users with HIV and services for gay men with HIV. It’s as if we were not one society with common problems, as if we had no choice but to ration our benevolence. Advocating for a strong and sustained response to the epidemic among African American men who have sex with men, Upper Savannah Care Services does not endorse the attitude that responding to the needs of one community justifies diminishing our response in other communities.