The Conversation Starts Here

I want to take a moment to personally thank you for joining us here at ToddHeywood.com. Our goal is to become a source of information, tactics and ideas about talking about HIV. I am a gay man who was diagnosed with HIV in July of 2007, and following my diagnosis I have had the opportunity to share my story and to answer questions to many groups and through email. What I have discovered is that many, many people want desperately to have a reasonable, informative conversation about HIV. Unfortunately, HIV 101 is lacking and as a result, people do not feel like they know enough to have a conversation about HIV– whether that conversation is with an intimate partner or with their friends. My goal, and the goal of all the bloggers you will meet on this site, is to foster those conversations.

While you might not agree with every blog post, every idea or even the bloggers themselves, I have worked to bring together a group of people who share one commonality. We all want to do SOMETHING about the failure of American culture to discuss HIV. We encourage you to comment, to become part of the conversation. Share your experiences, tell us what you have found works for a conversation, and what doesn’t. Challenge our assumptions, our ideas and our plans. As the tagline states, The Conversation Starts Here, and that means we want you to take this conversation

HIV is a serious and real threat to America. Sadly the perception is that is somehow has become a manageable disease, much like diabetes. Or as I have had people tell me, you just take a pill and everything is OK. We will work to address this aspect as well by presenting videos of my visits with doctors, blood tests and other health care related events. We will also get video of all the other things involved in living with HIV in Michigan. I hope to make sure that people walk away understanding that while HIV is certainly more controllable than it was just a decade ago, people continue to die from its effects. And while medicine has improved the quality of life of people living with HIV, it has also created significant new challenges like increased heart disease rates and diabetes as well as kidney failure. We will talk about all of this. And while we will be respectful, we will also be honest. So we will use not only clinical words, but slang words when talking about behaviors which make HIV infection a potential. I also admit, now, before one second of video has been shot, I can on swear like a sailor sometimes, and that too will likely remain unedited. It is part of who I am.

Thank you very much for being a part of this new blog, and most importantly for caring enough about yourself and your community to become part of this conversation.

Sincerely

Todd A. Heywood