Progress, and the Clinic

I'm making a lot of progress on my research (which is why I am here after all). All of my supplies are in, the nurses and clinicians have been trained in specimen collection, and Witness is living up to his reputation as the fastest transporter between the clinic and the lab. I'm still working on getting the system for processing the samples in the lab to run more smoothly, but I think the few remaining kinks will work themselves out in the next few days. I really enjoy spending time in both the clinic and the lab and working on something with such tangible public health implications. The nurses and clinicians in the clinic are so great to work with. They are friendly, and ask me enthusiastically every day how many samples I have and tell me with pride how many they each collected! I mentioned that I do HIV counseling and testing in the U.S. so one of the clinical officers has allowed me to interview some of the patients (those that speak English). I spent about an hour with a young couple this week (she was 24 and he was 26) who had never had an HIV test despite having been offered the opportunity to test for free many times and were very scared. We talked about what they would do if they tested positive, what they would do if they were both negative, and what they would do if one was positive and one was negative. Eventually they decided to do the test and they were both negative, much to my relief. I've never had a positive in Chapel Hill, but I'm sure I'll have positives here and many will be nice, smart, in-love young people like I saw this week.