Blog #5

In this week’s blog, I’d like to start off by saying that I’m exhausted from last week’s assignment. I must say this was the longest assignment that I’ve ever had to do. It was a good assignment to do though because it allowed and obligated us to learn about other illness that we might not have been familiar with such as HIV wasting syndrome, Herpes simplex, and Kaposi's sarcoma. Yesterday on Tuesday I watched the two mandatory movies that have to be watched for Assignment 4, Silverlake Life: The View From Here and Common Threads: Stories From The Quilt. Before watching Silverlake Life, I thought that this movie would be pretty interesting because the teacher said that this video would be graphic, so I thought this movie would provide the harsh realities of one dealing with the AIDS disease. I didn’t know that while watching the movie however, that I would get emotionally attached to these people. First I want to say that I do not care if two gay people are in love and show it in public. While watching the movie, I liked seeing the realism of their love and how they were completely devoted to each other. I was very sad to see how Tom was slowly dying and suffering from his pain. I was sad to see his transformation from him smiling, being happy, to his horrible and saddening death. When I saw the part when Mark found Tom dead wit his eyes opened, it broke my heart so bad and I was emotionally touched. I was so crushed to remember the clip right before he died when Mark asked him how he was feeling and Tom would reply something like “not good,” or “I am in pain” and then the transition to him being dead. I can’t believe how skinny Tom got and to me, even though this is not a good thought to have, his condition at death reminded me of how the prisoners in the holocaust looked when they were skin and bones when their bodies were found. You could see almost all his bones in his body in good detail, especially his hip bone. I am very happy to have watched that video because even today I am still thinking about it and wish AIDS never existed so that no one would have to suffer.

Common threads was another good video because it showed the lives of other people who had this disease and had their love ones recalling memories, good and bad ones, and how they coped with it. I found the AIDS memorial to be an excellent idea because it gives a physical visual of actually how many people have died from this disease. As people died, the Quilt gradually expanded, and was located in a big open field which it expanded to 14 acres around the time the video came out in 1989. I am really have to watched these videos because it gave me a first time view of how it would be like to live with the disease, how to cope with it, how much they suffered and how much their love ones suffered as well.

Did you know?........
In a recent study done by Chicago State University researchers, one- third of Illinois inmates were found to be getting tattoos (The Body, 2009). From data collected from 526 women and 1,293 inmates, 29 percent of males got a tattoo while behind bars (The Body, 2009). However, women were recorded in having more sexual intercourse than man at 19 percent (The Body, 2009). Since condoms and clean needles are not being instilled in these prisons, it is leading to more risky behavior among incarcerated persons (The Body, 2009).
The Body. (May 18, 2009). Retrieved October 7, 2009, from http://www.thebody.com/content/whatis/art51793.html