In the episode, Vickie discusses her second chance at life after her HIV diagnosis, the power of community, and how social work and education saved her life.
Vickie Lynn, PhD, MPH, MSW is an assistant professor of instruction in the USF School of Social Work whose research focuses on implementation science, evidence-informed interventions, and health care delivery for people dual and multi diagnosed with HIV, mental health, and/or substance use disorders.
In this episode, learn more about how she’s uplifting others through education to have better health outcomes, not only for themselves, but for their families and their community.
Learn more about the School of Social Work at the University of South Florida here.
Chris Groeber: Hi my name is Chris Groeber, and I'm an associate in research in the University of South Florida's College of Behavioral and Community Sciences School of Social Work. Welcome to the Remark- A-Bull podcast.
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Chris: Well, hello listeners and I want to welcome you back to one of our “Remark-a-Bull" conversations and the woman I'm going to introduce you to today is a colleague and a friend and and somebody who just ...
she embodies empathy and empathetic response to people and to students and she's on our faculty. Her name is Dr. Vicki Lynn, and I've had the opportunity of learning about Vicki's story and I think it's such a poignant, important story of resilience. I want you guys to hear about it because I think, I think it's, I think it's empowering for all of us when we listen to one another’s stories. So, Dr. Lynn, welcome, and I want to just start by you telling the listeners kind of how you got to this place as faculty in the in the School of Wocial Work at USF.
Vickie: Thank you Chris. Oh, so how did I get here? That's a a heck of a long story and and I'm very grateful to still be here. So, I am currently a assistant professor of instruction in the School of Social Work. I have dual degrees in social work and public health. My PhD is in public health. This journey was not easy for me. It started ... my journey in social work probably started, oh, back in 1985 when I contracted HIV. So, at the time I did not know that I was living with HIV. It wasn't until a couple years later that I found out I was actually living with HIV and this is a time during the HIV pandemic that was very difficult because we did not have any answers. There was no scientific understanding of HIV or its progression, or we did not have any medication to help support those living with HIV, so it was a very difficult time. There was no safety nets for people.
Chris: And the stigma, the stigma was horrendous, right?
Vickie: The stigma was outrageous. I mean, I was literally disowned by family and friends. I cannot even begin to tell you how devastating, at the time, this was for me and after I actually found out about my diagnosis, it was an entire year before I met another woman living with HIV. So, for almost an entire year, I felt like the only woman in the world with HIV and I just want to do a shout out to people in the ... in the LGBT community because without them I would not be here. There were support groups in a church in Tampa. It was in little basement area – I know, a basement in Florida. But, yes, it is church that has a little basement and there were support groups for people living with HIV at the time and I was the only woman and it was all gay men and they, they really taught me how to learn to love myself no matter what. But it was a very, very difficult time. I think I I joined Act Up at the time. We used to march down Bayshore carrying coffins and urns to help bring awareness to what we were going through. There were, you know, just trying to find a doctor willing to see me was very difficult. I had a great job. I was studying to become a stockbroker. I had great insurance, but I could not find a medical provider willing to see me.
Chris: Wow.
Vickie: I was thrown out of doctor's office after doctor's office. “We don't see people like you. We don't know what to do with people like you. Please leave and don't come back.” And this was ongoing. I could not get a medical provider willing to see me. It wasn't until I met a a physician from another country; he was willing to see me. He didn't know very much about HIV, I didn't know ... the whole science community didn't know a whole lot. But this was during fax machines. I think that some of our viewers probably never, never had never used one or some of the listeners, but that's how we would communicate back and forth to try to share information about HIV. I got very involved in the community at the time. I was volunteering at some of the new age service organizations. I think that's what they were called then. That's kind of what they're called now and one of my jobs was to look in the newspaper in their obituary to try to find our clients names.
Chris: Wow, wow, wow, wow.
Vickie: Because people would pass away, but their families weren't willing to even talk about it or tell anybody about it. So, it really was a network of of people living with HIV and those social workers and other professionals who were helping to support us along the way and and we stumbled and fell multiple times because we didn't know what we were doing, but we we were we were focused on helping each other and trying to to change policies in relation to accessing care and services. It was very difficult for many people during that time. I ended up losing my job, losing my housing because I had no income, and then losing all access to medical care. There were no safety nets. I I went to Medicaid, I went to other agencies. They said, “we can't help you. You either you're making too much money or you're living with someone that's making too much money.” If ... I was told many times by Medicaid providers and and and staff people, “if you got pregnant we can help you,” because the state policies at that time were, yes, women who were pregnant could access Medicaid, but for an adult needing services at that time it was not possible.
Chris: Right, right.
Vickie: I ended up ... it's really difficult, my immune system was depleted to just about nothing. I had no T cells left. I also was having reoccurring anxiety attacks, hearing voices, seeing things. I was sleeping under Platt Street Bridge because I had nowhere to go and nowhere to live. It was a very ... I can't even explain how difficult it was and I was eventually locked in a a mental health agency and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Long story, come to find out it was age-related dementia.
Chris: Wow!
Vickie: However, looking back I can see a lot of different things but during the time that it was happening, you know, the biggest thing was there was no social safety net for people living with HIV. Today we have Ryan White, we have safety nets to help people. But somewhere along the line I was offered housing by the Tampa AIDS Network. They're no longer in the Tampa Bay area, but they offered me housing and gratefully enough, we're fast forwarding to the mid 90s when the new medication came out to help support people living with HIV and I kind of said to myself, “you know, okay, if I had a second chance of life, what would I want to do?” And the first thing that popped in my mind was to help people. “I want to help people. Okay, if I want to help people, how do I do that? Well, I'm going to need an education to do that.” I decided “Okay, I'm going to go to to to college.” That was my goal. Never my wildest dreams did I ever believe that I would graduate. Still in the back of my mind was that, “You're going to die.” That's what I was told by the medical community.
Chris: Yeah. I was going to say, that's the ... that was the message at the time. It was a death sentence.
Vickie: Yes, it was a death sentence and there was no hope and it was horrific, and I thought OK, let me just, you know, go to school. I don't I don't even know where that–
Chris: All right, so Vicki, let me let me stop. This is so funny because I talked about this every podcast ... that truly is using learning as a coping mechanism. You know, you used learning and education to cope with all the crap you had going on.
Vickie: Yes, Yes, that is yes. And I and I have somewhat, because of all the letters after my name, have kind of used that ongoing.
Chris: Yeah!
Vickie: I love to learn and I and I know the more I learn the more I can help people, the more change I can make in the community and and to me ... I'm just, and I I also believe that those the goals I had of learning and getting an education actually helped me to survive.
Chris: Oh, absolutely. I'm sure.
Vickie: They gave me hope for the future, hey gave me something to look forward to, hey gave me goals that I could, you know ... I had this larger goal of helping people. But I could break it down, “OK, let me finish this assignment this semester, this degree,” and I just kept going. Like I said, never my wildest dreams I thought that I would graduate because I really did think I was going to die.
Chris: Where were you going to school then?
Vickie: I was going to HCC.
Chris: Okay.
Vickie: I started at HCC because I was very scared of the big USF community, how big the campus was. It's like, “No, let me just start over here slow,” and I did two years at the community college and then transferred to USF and, and even when I transferred, I didn't know I was going to do social work. You know, I had social workers in my life who were helping to guide me. They were running groups, I was involved in therapy, we were doing behavioral health interventions, I was doing a lot of volunteering after work, but I when I went to school that, like, that didn't quite connect for me yet until I had my advisor at the USF level that talked to me about social work and told me, literally, social work was exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.
Chris: Didn’t know it existed.
Vickie: But I didn't know it existed. I had no understanding of that. So it's, it's just amazing. So, I got my, my bachelor's, my BSW. Then I went on to my MSW and I was working in the community. I got to do a lot of amazing things; they still do a lot of amazing things in the community. But I worked at a jail teaching substance abuse classes to male inmates. That was so rewarding. I can't even, you know, people are afraid to maybe work in that type of setting, but it was just an amazing experience. But I also worked at a psychiatric care center because I wanted to, I wanted to help people that had been, maybe, through similar situations that I had, and working in a hospital gave me a little bit more insight into the system of care and how that works and doesn't work right. So I'm like, “all right,” so, so then I decided to come back to school and get a masters in public health. Social work and public health go hand-in-hand together.
Chris: Absolutely.
Vickie: Social work is health. We seem to want to separate the two.
Cheris: The intersectionality and, more and more, the longer I live, the intersectionality between physical health, public health, and social health and emotional health, you there's literally ... you can't separate them.
Vickie: Yes, that is so true. You can't separate them and I would, you know ... I have this dream, you know, the ideal health system. You know, we talk, we've been talking about one stop shops for many, many, many years, but I really think it is the future. We can, of course, reduce healthcare costs if we integrate biomedical and behavioral health as well as medical services and, even now, I am working to integrate education and vocational services into the agencies that serve people living with HIV. So, we not only want to support people's biomedical health, their behavioral health, their social services, but we want to support them in uplifting themselves by getting an education, by going to school, by helping them find career courses, whether they want to go to college, whether they want to learn a trade, whatever that is, because I think it's a structural intervention. So, it works in not only preventing HIV, but it also works in helping people uplift themselves to to have better health outcomes, not only for themselves but for their family and their community. And I know, oh gosh ... I can ramble can’t I?
Chris: No, no, I, no. I think, I think that one of the things you're talking about is so important. The other thing that I I hear, and you've not really talked about it, is your trauma response because of all that, you would, I mean, you just went on, right? But you were living under a bridge. You had this “fatal” illness. You had all these people telling you we can't help you. You know, I'm sure you were food insecure. There were so many other pieces and parts to this, which all, like, was trauma piling on what was already traumatic just by virtue of the diagnosis.
Vickie: Yes and I was actually telling someone the other day that I, even though I've done a lot of work on myself, that I tend to bring my trauma to every table I sit at. I know, and, luckily, today I'm aware of when I have a trauma response and I can kind of back it up a little bit, you know, back myself up to readjust or, you know, whatever the situation might be, you know, that onion that we talked about peeling those layers.
When you've experienced multiple traumatic circumstances in your life, you can peel those layers, but I think it's a lifetime journey.
Chris: Absolutely.
Vickie: I think that I’ll always be peeling those layers and sometimes, I used to say this, that sometimes I really felt like I had trauma written across my forehead so that anytime I walked into a room somehow, you know, it was aware that I had all this trauma and today I know that that's not true, but I do know that I carry that trauma with me. So, it's, it's recognizing my trauma responses and renegotiating them in my brain.
Chris: Yep. Absolutely.
Vickie: It, it's changing those messages and that that kind of fuels my passion about the language we use when we talk about health and health issues, because the internal stigma that I felt, and sometimes still feel today, because I tell you, you know, even 40 years, we're almost 40 years into the pandemic now. Stigma is still alive and well today and I can walk into a dentist's office, the doctor's office, and as soon as I check that HIV box, I'm looked at sideways by people in...
Chris: Right.
Vickie: And I – it's horrible, but it still happens. We know that, you know, today, people living with HIV who are in care and treatment or who, or who, maintain and achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load have no risk of transmitting the virus sexually to other people. We're still doing testing to understand what that means for pregnancy and other things, but there's still people within the healthcare community, unfortunately, that are not up to date on HIV and its transmission and are still fearful. Now they're not ... I have to not take it personally because they're not fearful of me, they're fearful of the disease I have.
Chris: Yes, yes, yes.
Vickie: And it took me many years to separate myself from that because, you know, you internalize that stigma and “oh people are, you know, they don't want to talk, they don't want to call, you know, go out with me. They don't want to hug me.” I experience all kinds of things like that. I've been yelled out in doctor's office, “Don't take her blood here, send her out,” you know, literally screaming at the nurses not to touch me. I've had dentists literally shaking in their chairs afraid to touch me and it's ... I have just learned to not take that so personally. But I I can say that it still, on occasion, does get to me.
Chris: So all right, I don't even know where to start unpacking some of this stuff because it's, just, such ... for me it's such a story of resilience. And so, to what do you attribute your resilience, Vickie? How did you learn to cope?
Vickie: I'm stubborn. No, I I think I learned it ... I learned it from the gay community because they're the ones that opened their arms and invited me in and supported me when I didn't know how to support myself. They laughed at me when I didn't even know how to laugh at myself. They loved me when I didn't know how to love myself and I learned from them and it ... and I learned from social workers. If it wasn't for social workers along my journey, I would not be here today. They believed in me, they trusted me, even when I was at my worst, even when I I would make therapy appointments and not show up, even when I was using and abusing substances, because there was a period in my life where I used a lot of substances because I was hiding from the pain and discomfort...
Chris: Of course, nobody else was medicating you. So, by God, why not medicate yourself?
Vickie: Yes, so I really owe, I owe my life, my strength, my resilience to the social work community, the HIV community, because, really, they loved me until I could love myself and some days are better than others today, you know...
Chris: Well, I'm sure that's– I'm sure that's always a journey, right? You're never done with it. So as an MSW, did you have housing during your MSW? Tell me about that season of your life.
Vickie: That season of my life that was ... I was still living in the, what we called AIDS housing at the time when I had started my MSW. My mom passed away right around in that time, and she left me $8,000. Somehow I was smart enough at that time to take that $8,000 and invest it in a small condo. So, I actually found a private seller that was willing to help fund. I put the $8,000 down, and I was making my mortgage payments and I was going to school to get my MSW and it was a very difficult time. I was actually cleaning houses at the time so that I could pay my bills and go to school and and support myself and I was also, unfortunately, and I've not admitted this out loud to a lot of people, I was still using substances at the time.
Chris: Wow.
Vickie: I was still ... I was somehow going to school ...
Chris: And functioning.
Vickie: I was still functioning but still self medicating because I didn't like myself, and it wasn't until I took a class on spirituality in the School of Social Work that I made the decision to go into substance abuse treatment and I actually did it. I know this is so ... I did it during the summertime because I didn't want to mess up my cohort and then I was going along with the program, so I worked it out where I went into substance use treatment during the summertime so I could complete the treatment and stay intact with my degree and actually graduate a couple months later.
Chris: Amazing.
Vickie: Social work saved my life, you know, it definitely saved my life. It, it, it not only taught me how to help and support other people, it showed me how I can help and support myself and that I needed to first take action for myself to heal before I can help others heal.
Chris: Right.
Vickie: That was so important for me at the time. I'm just so grateful for all of my instructors in the School of Social Work during that time. Really, I could not have done this without them. And I ... and I had conversations with them about that. I felt safe enough to talk to them, and they didn't judge me in any way. You know, you're so scared to tell somebody, “I'm a mess I can't function anymore.”
Chris: But, you know, everybody else feels like a mess when they're doing this. I mean, I want to sanction the messiness of being an adult learner who's trying to pay the bills because I think it's a very difficult proposition managing everybody's expectations of what that means. You know what? Because as a school, we expect school to be priority. Well, you know, you would like to eat and pay your rent so, working is a priority. Well, then you've got your health care on top of it and then I think on top of that's all the garbage that we bring with us, all of us as individuals that we work against our, you know, it's our trauma and our our growing up experiences and all good, bad, and indifferent, we bring our histories and and so where does that fit in? So, I think really, I think MSW students ... I said this to Vivian Mills when we were doing her podcast. It really is about risk mitigation and how that, at any different time in your master's, you're mitigating this risk or this risk or this risk. And so it really becomes a a a game and risk mitigation.
Vickie: Yes, yes and it was such a difficult time and look now I'm getting tongue tied. I'm not sure where to go with this.
Chris: I think, I think these questions are are difficult questions in that the problems are hard. You know? And I I want to acknowledge as a, as a student, as an adult learner seeking an advanced degree, that is hard and part of the reason we do, the part of the reason you're remarkable, a “Remark-a-Bull" and remarkable is because you navigated this and so when you think back, Vickie, if you're going to talk to students what advice are you going to give students who are, like, at the end of their tether really working through this but not sure if they can do it?
Vickie: [Sighs] Self-care is vital. It took me a long time and even I still struggle with it.
Chris: What does that mean to you? Self-care. Because we say it. What? Help define it a little bit.
Vickie: Self-care for me is taking a step back. You know, I I often push myself very hard to do, to work and, and to work on my goals, which is great, but I can't keep doing that unless I refresh and recharge. So, I think that I saw a meme or or a little cartoon years ago that showed a woman with no battery and, just like our cell phones, our cell phones, they wear out within a day, you have to to plug them in to recharge.
Chris: Right.
Vickie: So that's exactly how I see and and and am more aware of myself today that I noticed because of certain things how I might react to somebody that “ooh, my batteries need to be recharged.”
Chris: Right.
Vickie: So, I'm aware today when those things occur and I can take a step back and take a walk or do a 10 minute meditation. It's taking that time for yourself to center yourself, to ground yourself.
Chris: Well, I think and interrupt sometimes that trauma spiral that we may have ourselves in. I think figuring out how to interrupt those moments can get us back on track. But it's, I think it's very individualized.
Vickie: Yes, very true, like for me it, it's reconnecting with nature, as you may know, I do a lot of organic gardening so and the past few years with COVID and being at home I was able to do more in the garden area so I could be at my desk working, and my dogs would remind me to take a break and I could go outside and do a little gardening. So, I was able, and I think that, you know, OK, we talk about self-care and, oh, I'll do something this weekend for self-care or I'll do something next month ...
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Vickie: Self-care is something that we need to incorporate in our daily routine. It's not something we do next week or the following week. It's something that we do every day.
Chris: Right. I tell people, put it in your schedule, put it in your, I mean, block an hour, make up a term for it that nobody's going to know what that is and put it in there.
Vickie: You know, waking up and drinking a glass of water and taking a shower, those could be forms of self-care and sometimes self-care is hard. You, I mean, self-care can be very hard when when you've got a lot of responsibilities and a lot going on and things just keep popping up. I think a lot of us...
Chris: It's the first thing to go.
Vickie: Yes, yes. Which is why learning those little 10 minute self-care activities that you know works for you to recenter yourself. It might be looking at puppy pictures for, you know, a few minutes or doing a meditation or having your favorite coffee drink or whatever it is that that that replenishes you so that you have, you know, more to give. You can't give away what you don't have.
Chris: That's that's absolutely– tell the tell the folks what, if you had to pick one or two things for people to know about people living with HIV, what, if you could shout it from the mountaintops, what would be what would be those things?
Vickie: We're just like anyone else. People living with HIV are simply just like everyone else, they just happen to have a virus, and I think that COVID has opened the door for our understanding a little bit more about viruses. However, the stigma still exists, but people living with HIV, as long as they're in care and treatment, they can live a long, wonderful life. They can still achieve any goal that they want to. Well, if I wanted to be a football player, I couldn't be a football player. However, you know, realistically when we set goals for ourselves, we can achieve them and that's one thing I love about being a social worker is we get to help support people in achieving their own goals and that's why I love working in their social work department. I mean, I get to touch the lives of hundreds of students every year and be a part of their journey in their career course. They might not remember me in five years or say or anything like that, but I I feel very blessed to be a part of their...
Chris: I agree with you wholeheartedly. I, literally, on the daily and so thankful that I got to be included and, you know, you follow them on LinkedIn and and other places like that you see students succeed and you just think gosh, “I was glad I was there for a glimpse of that or a glimpse of this.” And I hope I was helpful. I hope I was an encouragement, you know because we all need that. So what else do you want people to know Vickie about about living a full life with with an HIV load?
Vickie: God, I want people to know their worth and how wonderful they are it. It doesn't matter what illness or diagnosis or situation you're going through, your worth is not measured like that.
Chris: So good.
Vickie: There's a story and, and I I've told this before, so if I had a crisp $100 bill and I offered it to you, would you accept it? Most people are going to say, “absolutely yes, I would accept it. I would take it.” So, I'm going to take that $100 bill and I'm going to crunch it up and I'm going to drag it through the mud and I'm going to stomp on it and I'm going to offer it to you again, $100 bill, are you going to take it?
Chris: Absolutely.
Vickie: Absolutely. The value, the value of that $100 bill does not change based on what it went through. It's still valuable. It has the same value that it started with. So, I think that recognizing our own value and recognizing the value and worth in others is so very important and if you've been dragged through the mud and crumpled up and stomped on, know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I am so grateful for what I went through. I don't wish it on anyone else, but it's made me a better person, it's made me understand other people's pain and and uncomfortableness, you know, so that I can help support them in a better way.
Chris: Do you know that – just so you know, and I'm sure you probably know this – that so comes through in an interaction with you. From the first day I met you, that that empathic response, that rawness, that absolute humanity oozes from you, I think, in a, in a really pleasant, positive way, because I'm quite certain there were many times you could have chosen bitterness and anger and you could have taken that route. So, I'm just so thankful that you are who you are and that you, you chose to use learning as your primary coping mechanism to bring you to where you are today, because I think your story is so powerful. I mean, I just, every time I hear it and this isn't the first time I've heard, every time I hear it, I'm just moved. I'm moved by the fact that you're still passionate and you still care and you still ... you're not done.
Vickie: No, I'm not.
Chris: And I love that.
Vickie: I don't think I'll ever be done. I ... and, well, if we look at the the state of our politics we'll never be done. We're ... it, it's and I think that you know we talk a lot about advocacy work and policy work in social work, which is so very important and I've spent the past three decades focused on trying to change policy at the state, local, and state, national levels, even globally I’ve done some work, but I've come to realize that I think that sometimes our energy are best spent building and connecting, building communities and connecting with other people who are like minded because we, we can fight the system all that we want, but it– building that community where we can support each other so that we can continue fighting the system, because that ... so yeah, we kind of have to do both, fight the system, but build the community.
Chris: Well, it's almost proof of concept that connection really does matter this much. You know, and increasingly the longer I live, and that's part of the reason for these remarkable podcasts, is I want people to connect. I want people to have the benefit of your story, of your lived expertise, even if it's just a quick listen. I think that people will be better for listening. So, I I want to thank you. I'm thankful for humanity that, you know, you're still running against those windmills, like the rest of us. But I also want to thank you as a colleague and as a social worker, that you are vulnerable and that you are willing to share your story and that you genuinely want to connect. So, thank you for that, Vickie Lynn.
Vickie: Thank you very much, Chris. I appreciate it and I appreciate working with colleagues like you and I just love this “Remark-a-Bulls.” I just think it's fabulous and and can't wait to hear more about it.
Chris: Well guys, if you want to connect more with Vickie Lynn reach out. She loves to reach back. So, do yourself a favor and and build a relationship with her because you will be better for it. I want to thank you again for spending this time and, Vicki Lynn, I I look forward to seeing all the remarkable things that you continue to do. Thank you.
Vickie: Thank you.