My dad, what a man . . .

My job at times seems more like my pimp than anything else. I work A LOT, but I also enjoy my work. The other day I had a patient in with suicidal ideation. His life hadn't been easy, but within moments he started acting like a typical person who's been in the system. He's a recovering heroin addict who's mother died a little while ago, and he is HIV positive. What does this behavior look like? He started off by wanting to know if he could take a shower. As I was gathering supplies he went from asking for a bar of soap to demanding for a comb, a tooth brush, deodorant, socks, shampoo, lotion, and well you get the idea. Then in the dining room he gathered up what could have been seen as more supplies for the day rather than food. Two bowls of cereal, a banana, two milks, a pudding, three juices, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When he hadn't finished eating it all, he asked me where he could put it. I explained to him that I really couldn't hold the snack food for him. He said that's all right and proceeded to hide it in the back of the freezer.
When it came time for his evening finger stick, I went through the motions like I would with any other patient. Wash hands, glove up, take an alcohol swipe to the finger, set up the machine, scan the patient's id bracelet, stab 'em, make 'em bleed and get the specimen necessary to measure his blood sugar. It was only when I was taking apart the machine when a little bit of his blood ran out onto my gloved hand did I get it. The swirling motions of this potent red fluid amazed me as I thought, "This is the shit that could kill ya."
I suddenly had genuine empathy for this man. I know HIV isn't the automatic death sentence it used to be, but it is still very real, and it still does kill. I remember as a kid hearing news reports and my father's very loud opinion on the matter.
My father was a simple Midwestern man who joined the Navy at 17. He clung to all of his childhood beliefs and tried like hell to teach my siblings and me to think like him. No formal education beyond high school, but a PhD in hard knocks was how my father managed to form his opinions. He felt that gay men didn't belong in boy scouts because they might molest the children. I only 14 at the time challenged this idea because in my adolescent mind I somehow could rationalize that gay did not immediately equate pedophile.
My dad also felt that HIV and AIDs was God's personalized cancer for "niggers, spics, and fags". In his mind, the only reason it was starting to infect heterosexual couples was because of "those god damned flip flops."
It is 17 years later since my father and I had conversations like that. I took this black man's hand who regardless of how he got infected, now has one more burden to bear, and I wonder how pops might feel about his own daughter being a flip flop.