Unprotected Oral Sex - FLU like symptoms

[questionNYC]

Thanks very much for your time ... I really,truly could use a medical experts opinion to provide me peace of mind.

In the past two months I have had unprotected oral sex (without ejaculation) with about 5-6 different partners.

I know this is low risk ... however I am worried sick.

I recently came down wth a fever of 104 and had to be admitted into the emergency room. I had aches, chills, night sweats (heavy ones) and my chest hurt (and did produce sputum with an expectorant)

I did NOT have a sore throat or swollem lymph nodes.

At the hospital they did a chest X-Ray and said there was some slight fluid in my chest that appeared "grey". - they diagnosed me with early pnemonia and put me on Levaquin and gave me an inhaler - said the bronchial tubes were restricted.

We initially thought this was flu, so i took tamaflu and antiboitics. My fever has gone but I did have it from Sun-Wed.

Ive never been this sick before ... do my symptoms sound like ARS?

Is productive cough and lower respiratory issues with extremely high fever and no swollen lymph nodes or sore throat indicative to ARS?

Please provide me some feedback. I now have to be nervous until I take an antibody test in three months.

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Welcome to the Forum.  Sometimes unrelated chance occurrences raise concerns which are hard to shake, particularly when there is an element of unfamiliarity or you feel bad as you clearly do.  Let me remind you however, that the quoted figure for HIV risk, if one has oral sex with an infected partner (and you say nothing about your partners so, on  a statistical basis, it is unlikely that your partners had HIV) is less than 1 in 10,000 and, in my estimation that is too high. Some experts state there is no risk at all from oral sex.  Neither of us on this site have ever seen or reading the medical literature of a convincing instance in which HIV was passed by oral sex.  On the other hand, in the course of your activities there may have been kissing or certainly other contact.  If you partners had the flu, mono or some other non-STD community acquired viral infection, you could have very well have gotten one of them.

As for your symptoms, they are nonspecific and could be the flu, could be mono or could be something else.  Of all the things they could be, ARS is at the bottom on the list.  Thus, the symptoms of the ARS are TOTALLY non-specific and when people experience "ARS symptoms" they are much more likely to have something else, usually some other, more typical virus infection.  When this has been studied in the US, less than 1% of persons seeking medical care for "ARS symptoms" are found to have HIV, the remainder having symptoms due to other processes. In contrast, over a given year, there is almost no one who has not had a viral illness, night sweats or both (sometimes on multiple occasions).   For a person to try to judge their HIV risk based on "ARS symptoms" is a waste of time.

You can go and get tested for HIV and for other STDs but I would urge you not to worry.  There is really no reason to worry about HIV.  Hope these comments help.  EWH

[questionNYC]

also: there was only one leukoplakia

[questionNYC]

also - i am a gay 25 year old male who performed the oral sex.

while i was sick i did notice white leukoplakia on my lower gum that soon went away