Gary Barg, Editor-in-Chief
Late in the audience Q and A session at a recent Fearless Caregiver Conference, a gentleman stood up and asked if we knew which group presently has the fastest growth rate of HIV in the United States. The audience gasped when he related it was actually women 60 years of age and over.
This was an important lesson for anyone with a senior loved one, but not a new one to anyone living in South Florida. As a matter of fact, in the first issue of Today’s Caregiver magazine, (July 1995), we spoke of a new group forming to help seniors deal with safer sex issues. In the condo canyons that line the South Florida beachfront, the ratio of single senior women to single senior men is drastically disproportionate at a rate of 7 to 1. It is possible for these “Condo Casanovas” to be having relations with multiple partners in a single high-rise building or senior community, as well as be visiting area (to put it genteelly) ladies-of-the-night.
Of intense concern is the impression that since they are not in one of the commonly thought “high-risk” groups and there is no chance of unwanted pregnancy, there would be no need for safer sex behavior among seniors, such as condom usage.
Just when we thought we’ve had every uncomfortable conversation with our senior loved ones regarding their health and mortality, the most important (and most difficult) still needs to be held.
If you or your loved ones are in demographic groups in which you thought that AIDS could never strike - think again. Imagine how difficult it was for your parents to have had that first conversation about sex with you when you were a teenager and remember how woefully unprepared they were for the “talk”. Now it is your turn.
Just remember to be a little more prepared than they were in their late night conversations and feel free to blush a little. But have the talk. For their sake and yours.
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