Week 1

Hello my name is David and I am a fifth year senior. Prior to coming to UCF, I attended the University of Florida for two years. This is my first year at UCF and so far I can say I like it because the school looks so modern and is very spacious. I picked up this class because I didn’t know too much about HIV/aids and I had to pick an elective so I thought it would be a good idea to pick an elective class that I would enjoy learning and be interested in. For my first assignments in the class we had to conduct simulations on two illnesses that can be found in HIV that are very serious to one’s health. The illnesses that we had to simulate were having PCP and Thrush. When I saw we had to simulate having PCP I thought to myself “that’s a drug, what does that have to do with HIV,” but when I looked it up I found out that it wasn’t. PCP stood for Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia not Phencyclidine, which is what the drug PCP stands for. So when we had the three choices to choose from to simulate this illness, in which I chose to sprint, I then understood why sprinting could simulate the feeling of having PCP. PCP is a fungal infection found in the lungs that make you feel short of breath, have rapid breathing and shortness of breath among other symptoms. After you sprint for a long distance you are going to feel those symptoms that so I kind of thought to myself after I stopped sprinting “man, this is what people with PCP feel like sometimes. This is crazy.” It was a good simulation because this is probably about the closest I would feel to having this illness without actually having it. I learned that it is important to watch who you have sexual relations with, to always wash your hands, and patch up your open cuts because HIV can be contracted by simply touching someone else’s cut with your cut, putting their blood in your system or even accidently putting their saliva in your system as well by means of ingesting it or touching an open wound.

The other simulation we had to conduct was having the illness of thrush. I had absolutely no idea what it was so I was eager to find out what it was. Upon finding out that it is a yeast infection that is found in the mouth specifically the roof of the mouth, gums and back of the throat, I thought that is very disgusting because it is supposed to look like cottage cheese and I hate cottage cheese! To conduct the simulation we had to stick two cotton balls in our mouth on both sides of our cheeks and eat a cracker following by swallowing water. I must say, this is my first time sticking cotton balls in my mouth and I can say that I didn’t like the experience. The cotton balls were too fuzzy and when I was chewing on the cracker, I was also chewing on the fuzz from the cotton ball. I couldn’t enjoy eating the cracker and worse of all I was trying to swallow the cracker without swallowing the cotton balls with it! I was able to swallow a tiny piece of cracker but the rest I couldn’t so I spat it out. Along with the first simulation, I learned that this simulation was affective in showing me how it would feel like to have thrush. Like it feels to have thrush, it was difficult to chew on the cracker because those cotton balls were like bumps in my mouth that wouldn’t allow me to chew properly because they were in the way. Having HIV/aids is an extremely serious disease which is why it is widely talked about and taught in preventive measures because the illnesses that can come along with it can also kill you or make you even more ill making the process of fighting this disease so much more difficult and to recover.

I like these simulations because I feel this is the best way to experience illnesses without actually having them and I learn best doing it this way.