The Morning After

Protection after Unprotected Sex?

It began simply enough. I started noticing less and less AIDS inspired commercials. No more asking for donations or monetary support? Perhaps there was a reason. Of course, my first thought was purely one of negativity. I’m thinking, “What? No one is particularly asking for monetary handouts for finding the cure for AIDS anymore? Fighting breast cancer and autism is the latest humanitarian movement because there isn’t a cure for these things, as far as we know. So, you turn to any channel at any time and you find yourself bombarded with people asking you to join the fight, albeit through donation or volunteering against everything from animal abuse to saving music in public school systems, but what happened to AIDS commercials? Did they find a cure?” Then one evening while researching for another article (I have yet to finish), it was just on happenstance that I discovered there were quite a few reasons why the commercials had disappeared from public eye. One of the more interesting reasons to catch my attention was a little something you may not have heard of but can easily be located in black and white on the CDC website.

So what might this little miracle cure (using the word cure very loosely) be called? PEP—Post Exposure Prophylaxis. If you’ve never heard of PEP, don’t feel guilty. You aren’t alone. Unless you are like me and a research guru Queen, you were very unlikely to come across any information about it without purposely looking it up. Most people don’t spend hours on the CDC website and I have yet to run across anything about it on Facebook or Twitter- places many people spend a gazillion hours a day, so you weren’t likely to be in position for groundbreaking medical discoveries.

I no longer readily believe, as I did in the very beginning that a faceless power is purposely hiding important information in some American conspiracy Hollywood surmise. The cold hard fact is that PEP was previously available to healthcare workers only, so they were without need to advertise its existence to people who wouldn’t receive the benefits anyway. Plus, through research I also discovered that many in the health care field didn’t know of its existence either… including doctors. Surprised yet? I sure was. Especially since the article I read detailing PEP’s existence was an article written by someone who was a part of the AIDS Survival Project in Atlanta, Georgia that dated all the way back to February… of 2001.

So here’s the inside on Post-Exposure Prophylaxis: As explained before, it’s the standard care given to any healthcare worker who may find themselves exposed to the virus via accidental needle stick of an HIV-positive patient in care. Once possible exposure occurs, a two-drug antiretroviral regimen is administered that attacks this virus after it attaches to lymph cells but before burrowing into the nucleus and reproducing. The regimen lasts for a complete strenuous 28 day cycle, followed by an indefinite amount of time of follow-up’s for future prevention, counseling and making sure treatment was successful. Once data showed 79% infection reduction odds for healthcare workers who received treatment, HIV activists begin questioning whether PEP should be available to the general public. As a result, more and more cities are starting to offer PEP as intervention for those exposed by means of sex or drug use but not without a hefty price both monetarily and physically.

Although it has been referred to as a morning after pill, it is by no means some simple pill you can swallow the morning after you think you’ve contracted the virus. Once exposure occurs, the window to call the nearest clinic that offers PEP is fairly short: 24 to 72 hours. The earlier you begin treatment, the better your odds of stopping the virus before it begins to reproduce, as after 3 days it is highly unlikely to be effective. There are some clinics who offer treatment at no cost to you. Clinics who do charge, the cost of receiving treatment will set you back anywhere from $600 to $2,500 and you will be hard pressed to find a health insurance carrier willing to shell out a penny for it. There must be an absolute commitment to medication adherence as well, but this isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds. There are possible side-effects that can be mild and go away after a week or they can be gruesome and last the duration. It simply depends but common side-effects are headaches, nausea, tiredness, diarrhea. The biggest issue seems to be ending treatment shortly after beginning, thinking they’ve taken it long enough. Even medical professionals, strangely enough, commonly interrupt their PEP before the 4-week period is up. Your health is at stake here. Commitment to the future for healthy living is imperative and essential. Why would you quit when alleviation is at your fingertips?

Keep in mind that there isn’t a lot of conclusive research showing whether PEP works for non-occupational exposure, but information is definitely being gathered through the creation of the National Nonoccupational HIV Postexposure Prophylaxis Registry. What research has uncovered is that some people who take PEP still end up with the virus for several reasons: some anti-HIV drugs don’t work against some strains of HIV; The amount of HIV in the body is far too great; The virus reproduced too quickly for the medication and the immune system to control; The body’s immune system was already damaged. Another thing to keep in mind is that the nearest clinic who will even know what PEP is may be far away if anywhere at all. There is only one clinic in the city of Houston offering PEP and it is the ONLY clinic within 100 miles. Luckily, its services are free and information about it will be provided at the end of this article.

The most important things of all to keep in mind while processing this newfound information is that before you start jumping up and down and fist pumping like you’ve got it made, realize that this isn’t a license to go screwing anything that moves free as a bird. Between all the heartache of the possible money you’ll be spending; an absolute fear for your life; more than a month lost attempting to correct what could have easily been prevented in the first place and having to contend with PEP’s possible ineffectiveness after all is said and done- I would think that using a condom when it’s time to get down would seem a hell of a lot easier… and just plain old smarter.

nPEP Project Houston *

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1407 Hawthorne
Houston, TX 77006

713-936-1030
info@centerforaids.org
1407 Hawthorne St.