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STDs (Expert Forum)
I am dying with anxiety
Answered by
University of Washington
Seattle - WA
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IMPORTANT
This forum is limited to questions about STDs other than HIV/AIDS. For questions about HIV prevention, or if you have general questions about safe sex (e.g., condoms, how to protect yourself from HIV and STDs), please visit the HIV Prevention and Safe Sex Forum
Some of the most common types of questions concern the risk of HIV or STD after a particular sexual exposure, and about symptoms that might or might not be due to HIV. If your question is along these lines, please visit the HIV Prevention and Safe Sex Forum.
This forum is limited to questions about STDs other than HIV/AIDS. For questions about HIV prevention, or if you have general questions about safe sex (e.g., condoms, how to protect yourself from HIV and STDs), please visit the HIV Prevention and Safe Sex Forum
Some of the most common types of questions concern the risk of HIV or STD after a particular sexual exposure, and about symptoms that might or might not be due to HIV. If your question is along these lines, please visit the HIV Prevention and Safe Sex Forum.
I am dying with anxiety
by worriedtodeath, Sep 18, 2005 12:00AM
Please help me I am so scared. About 5 months ago, I had a unprotected experience with a "traveled" woman. There were no signs to follow at all. However recently I was in Las Vegas and had a protected experience with a lady from Brazil, the sex was protected but there were hours of touching and heavy open mouth kissing. About a week after returning from the trip, I experienced a weird feeling in my mouth, almost as if I had not brushed my tounge hard enough and there was scum on the back of very back of my tounge. Later that same night I ran into the girl that I had been with 5 months ago and began to wonder if I had caught anything from her. The next day and for a couple days to follow, in the morning I had some very sharp stomach pains that hurt real bad, and then they were gone. No diaherra but more trips to the bathroom. Then they became a smaller pain that would come and go throughout the day. After that I jumped on an HIV website and lost it, I was certain that the symptoms were from HIV. All day that is all I could think about and do was go on HIV sites and panic.Finally this Saturday I lost it and went to the ER for an HIV test. I have been a mess, I have no appetite at all, crying and screaming all day, yesterday I had a salty taste in my mouth for no reason, and my tounge looks very hairy. Monday I recieved my results and they were negative,but my White Blood Count was elevated. I have been seen by two different doctors that both think I have a bit of extra white on my tounge and irritated tounsils, but say it is not trush. I forgot to mention that my temperature has been crazy. One min it is 97.8 then 99.4. I am also cold then hot all day long. I feel like I am cold on the skin level so I need a sweater, but inside like I am burning up and going to start sweating. Also thickness in my mouth where I keep spitting. I have gas like crazy, and stomach pain and burning on and off all day like diaherra is coming, and go to the bathroom so much more then usuall. Please help me, I can not understand it. We made out pretty hard core for hours with tounge and lip sucking. We both touched each other all the way to orgasim, and then we had protected sex. I was a littlle drunk and remember putting on the condom wrong then flipping it over, also I did not check if it broke. Please help me, I can not understand where else all these issues just happen to come from a week later unless I am +
I am loosing my mind, I can not function what so ever. I keep asking does the test eliminate the 5 month old experience or not, did I get HIV from kissing, did the condom in Vegas break, is my WBC high because the body is fighting the virus. I am lossing my mind, please help
I am loosing my mind, I can not function what so ever. I keep asking does the test eliminate the 5 month old experience or not, did I get HIV from kissing, did the condom in Vegas break, is my WBC high because the body is fighting the virus. I am lossing my mind, please help
Doctor's Answer
by H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D., Sep 18, 2005 12:00AM
, Sep 18, 2005 12:00AM
Useful and generally accurate information and advice was already posted by other forum participants before I saw your message. (But as a disclaimer, I didn't read those resonses in detail, though, and I do not accept actual responsibility for them.)
I will simply say that the blood test results are much more reliable as an indicator of HIV infection than the symptoms and other lab tests you describe. You can be confident you don't have HIV, unless there are other risk factors since the ones you describe. All your symptoms have many causes that individually and collectively are far more common than HIV. You don't say how high your WBC is, but HIV tends to cause abnormally low WBC counts, not high ones.
And by the way, body temperature normally varies exactly like yours. Many people assume that 98.6 is a fixed normal temperature and the highest normal temp. Not so. 98.6 is merely the average in the population, and roughly the average for each individual. Everybody's temperature varies from as low as 96 or maybe 96.5 to around 99.6 or so. (Don't hold me to exact data.)
Finally, you have seen 2 health care providers. I can add nothing more. Continue to follow their advice.
Good luck-- HHH, MD
I will simply say that the blood test results are much more reliable as an indicator of HIV infection than the symptoms and other lab tests you describe. You can be confident you don't have HIV, unless there are other risk factors since the ones you describe. All your symptoms have many causes that individually and collectively are far more common than HIV. You don't say how high your WBC is, but HIV tends to cause abnormally low WBC counts, not high ones.
And by the way, body temperature normally varies exactly like yours. Many people assume that 98.6 is a fixed normal temperature and the highest normal temp. Not so. 98.6 is merely the average in the population, and roughly the average for each individual. Everybody's temperature varies from as low as 96 or maybe 96.5 to around 99.6 or so. (Don't hold me to exact data.)
Finally, you have seen 2 health care providers. I can add nothing more. Continue to follow their advice.
Good luck-- HHH, MD
You had an unprotected experiance 5 months ago,ok there is a small risk attatched to that however most people test positive for hiv after 6 weeks and the longest you have to wait for 100% certainty is 3 months you waited longer than that so you are 100% negative from your unprotected exposure ( not even the slightest chance you have it from that exposure.) The second experiance you had was protected so there is no chance you got HIV from that either. whatever you have going on is not hiv and probably not any std but the doc will advise you on this. my advice to you is to trust the hiv test which has scientifically proven you dont have it and not to look at hiv web sites, this will only heighten your anxiety and believe me when your anxious you can fit the slightest thing to hiv. If you can't accept your test result you will never get past your anxiety and it will send you crazy and after all what else can prove you dont have it apart from a negative test? Good luck and i hope you can get past this.
BigDaddy1992
http://www.stdweb.com/pcrelisacombo.htm
hope it helps
Bigdaddy
This message is for worried to death and but lots of people could benefit from the info below.
It sounds like you need to know a little more about the microbiology of HIV and AIDs. I took a lot of chemistry and biology in college under a famous AIDs scholar (this was back in the early 90s) so it seems that one of the reasons I don't fall apart under stress, as many people on this website do, is the simple fact that my brain has a firm grasp of the mysterious mollecules that the experts are talking about.
This will make you feel better, and I'd recommend anybody on this site to read the article below. Go to this link:
http://www.state.nj.us/health/aids/rapidtesting/documents/Paul_edit.pdf
With all the watered-down websites that give you "HIV info for dummies," it's hard to get solid facts about retroviruses and what these tests are actually detecting. The link above is an article written for the New Jersey public health office. It is possible to understand without formal medical training, but it's above the level of most other things that come up on Google.
On page 2 of the article above, there is a graph of the HIV infection window that explains where these numbers come from. One line charts the viral load of the HIV itself (R or RNA), the other line shows the creation of detectable antibodies (aB). The aB rises as the R falls, over a distinct time frame; this is because the immune system starts to fight the virus.
ARS, which everyone is wondering about, occurs because the body is overwhelmed, briefly, by the presence of a stange virus and the temporary strain of one's lymph nodes struggling to mass-produce new aBs to fight off the foreign RNA. That's why the ARS symptoms are flu-like; like a flu, it's all the typical byproducts of the body fighting a foreign antigen.
J
You may find, on your anxious websurfing, references to a second "window period" when the PCR tests can turn up false negatives. Do not freak out when you say that.
The second window period of the PCR test occurs if one's antibodies (aB) have developed enough strength to kill off a large amount of the HIV. (They can never kill it completely).
BUT, if you test negative for aB and negative on the PCR, after day 11 or so from the potential exposure, it is IMPOSSIBLE you have HIV, because either the R (the virus's RNA itself) or the antibodies (aB) would HAVE to be at detectable levels.
J
WorriedtoDeath, I had a low-risk exposure with a stripper and was also convinced that I had contracted HIV. You can check my situation under "antibiotics and hiv test accuracy" posted on August 21 if you wish. I tested negative at 60 days, and will be going in for a follow-up confirmatory test in the near future. However, I'm 100% confident that it will be negative, given the negative test at 60 days.
I continue to have many of the same symptoms as you do, i.e., the alternating hot/cold feelings, excessive amount of saliva, body temperature swings (but none above 100), loss of appetite, feeling sick to my stomach