5280 Magazine – August 2019

AUGUST 2019 | 5280 | (^81)
Jack’s diagnosis. Even after he began regular
appointments with Greenberg, he still worried
about the snubs and side-eyes. It’s the reason
Jack didn’t tell anyone he worked with about his
diagnosis. And it’s the same reason he drove to
another town each time he needed to refill the
prescription for his medication. It’s partly why he
felt empty and alone and contemplated suicide.
It’s also the reason Denver resident Davina
Conner, who was diagnosed with HIV more
than two decades ago, started a podcast in 2014
called Pozitively Dee. Conner uses the show as
a forum to discuss what it’s like to live with the
disease with others who have tested positive.
“Everyone feels different about the stigma,” she
says. “It’s something that’s hard to help people
with. It’s been 22 years, and I still get depressed
because of it.”
When she tested positive, Conner had a six-
year-old daughter. “I thought I was going to die;
and if I died, who was going to take care of her?”
she says. “It was scary.” The medications were
awful back then. She took 14 pills a day, all of
which made her sick. She started drinking, a lot.
“I thought it was helping with the side effects,
but I was an alcoholic,”
thinking that those who contract HIV are promis-
cuous and that HIV treatments have harmful side
effects. In reality, the disease can affect anyone, and
any adverse reactions that accompany the modern
drugs are generally minimal. In fact, for the most
part, living with HIV means living a fairly typical
life. Rowan says the medical community is also still
trying to spread the word that people who are on
regular medication won’t transmit the virus.
The stigma surrounding the disease endures, too.
In fact, the term AIDS is so fraught that clinicians
in the field are doing their best to retire it in favor
of “advanced HIV disease.” Stigma might also be
a contributing factor in tackling one of the biggest
remaining challenges: comprehensive HIV testing.
Estimates suggest that 10 to 15 percent of people
living with HIV don’t know they have it, which
means they can unwittingly spread it. Just as it did
with Jack, it can often take symptoms of advanced
illness for a health care provider to suggest the test.
Rocky Mountain CARES’ Greenberg believes
anyone who’s engaging with any kind of health
care at all—a regular checkup with a family doc-
tor or a quick trip to the ER for stitches—should
be offered an HIV screening. But that’s simply not
de rigueur in American health care, even though
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) does recommend everyone be tested at
least once for HIV. About five years ago, when he
spent more time in the ICU at Rose Medical Cen-
ter, Greenberg helped make sure every patient, high
risk or not, got tested. He doesn’t have that same
access today and sighs when asked if stigma—on
the part of medical professionals and/or the general
public—really could be a roadblock when it comes
to testing. “I would hope that level of stupidity has
gone away,” he says, “but I suspect that’s the case.”
Dr. Sarah Christensen, a primary care inter-
nist at the Bernard F. Gibson Sr. Eastside Family
Health Center in Five Points, explains that time is
one of the limiting factors in getting more people
tested. “I have to recognize whether someone has
or hasn’t had that once-in-a-lifetime screening and
either offer it or simply do it,” Christensen says.
“Really, when people come to see me it’s rarely
that they’re just there to have me check on their
[general] health; they usually have a rather long
list, and my appointments are only 20 minutes.”
Christensen says she’s never had someone refuse
a test because of what she perceived as the embar-
rassment or outrage a patient might experience at
the mere suggestion of an HIV screening. She says
she has, however, had people who tested positive
immediately walk out of the clinic and never come
back. “It’s totally a guess,” she says, “but I sort of
think that people are like, ‘Well, it’s a death sen-
tence, I might as well go live whatever life I have.’ ”
That feeling—an overwhelming sense of dread
and a deep-seated fear of rejection—accompanied
Does My Insurance
Cover That?
Although new drugs come
along with regularity, most
modern HIV meds consist of
either one pill taken once a day
or two pills taken once a day.
The average cost of the most
common HIV drugs is between
$1,000 and $2,000 per month.
Most insurers cover the majority
of first-line pill regimens; how-
ever, some insurers do impose
high copays—around $400 per
month—for some of the newer,
one-pill-a-day medications.
Financial assistance is avail-
able for some patients via the
AIDS Drug Assistance Program
(ADAP), a state-administered
program that receives federal
funding. People in Colorado
who make up to five times the
federal poverty limit qualify for
at least some funding through
ADAP. Also, Medicaid covers all
first-line pill options. For more
information about ADAP, visit
colorado.gov/cdphe. CONTINUED ON PAGE 146