Roadmap to HIV Therapies

Ask About the Experience of Friends and People You Trust

One of your greatest resources for information about living well with HIV is other people who are doing exactly that.  Don't hesitate to ask your friends questions about their treatment decisions and how they worked out for them.

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Learning about other people's experience with a particular therapy or treatment-decision plan can help inform your own decisions. Talk to friends, people in support groups and others who are experiencing similar health conditions. Ask them about what kinds of treatments they are using. Why did they choose those treatments and what have their experiences have been?

But great caution should also be exercised when using the experiences of others as a source of information. The fewer people you ask, the less reliable that information will be. Remember, what works for one person won't always work for you. Just because someone you know had a bad experience (or a good one) with a particular therapy doesn't mean that you will.
 
There are many factors beyond our control that affect how each of us responds to a particular treatment strategy. The personal experiences of others should be only a piece of the pie as you gather information. The most reliable picture of a therapy's actions will usually come from well-designed studies, but even these cannot predict how you will respond.

Adapted from: www.projectinform.org