HIV/AIDS exposure. Scared to death

[reallyworried88]

Dear Doctors,

I'm writing to you because I'm extremely worried.
I have read this forum for two weeks, but I really want an answer from you.

Here's my story:

On March 13th 2010, I had unprotected oral sex with a sex worker in Geneva, in Switzerland.
She was a young 19 years old French girl. She looked beautiful and healthy and she told me that she started to work as a sex worker the same day and I believed her...
I performed a cunnilingus on her, than we did the "69" position (fellatio + cunnilingus at the same time).

One week after, on March 20th 2010, I had unprotected (as usual) sex and oral sex with my girlfriend. We are together since almost 6 years, and we don't use any protection. I know that she's faithful. Since my "sex worker" experience, we only had sex once, and that was on March 20th 2010.
8-9 days after that, on March 22th, I got fever, cold and sore throat and strong diarrhea. Those symptoms were gone after 2-3 days, except the Diarrhea that lasted for 1 week.
I started to be very very scared, when my girlfriend got the same symptoms as I did, only 5 days after our last sex intercourse. That was on March 25th.
And today, we got the same symptoms again, both she and myself. We are both sick, we have sore throat, cold and diarrhea.
Now, I'm just scared to death... I can't sleep anymore... I'm very scared to have caught HIV/AIDS and to have transmit it to my girlfriend.

Of course, I haven't told her

1) Is it possible that I caught HIV/AIDS during my unprotected oral sex with this sex worker ?
2) What are the odds to have caught HIV during my exposure, in  % ?
3) Is it possible that my girlfriend caught HIV/AIDS during our unprotected sex/oral sex intercourse, and got the same symptoms as I did ?
4) Can I continue to have unprotected sex with my girlfriend ?
5) When should I get tested ? After 4 weeks ? 6 weeks ? Or 3 month, up to you ?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Best regards.

PS: Sorry for my average English skills, my main language is French :)

[reallyworried88]

Dear Doctor Handsfield,

Thanks a million times for your accurate answers.
You are doing a wonderful job and you're helping a lot of people.
Thanks for your time, thank you for everything.
I feel much better now, you have successfully reassured me.
I'll do the HIV test 8 weeks after the exposure date, just to be 100% sure that I'm fine.

Best regards.

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

Welcome to the HIV forum.  If indeed you have spent 2 weeks reading the forum, you should be able to predict my responses.  There is almost never a specific response to a particular exposure:  all oral sex exposures are zero to low risk, and that is what I'll be saying about yours.  Also, you should have seen that symptoms NEVER help in predicting whether or not someone has HIV, since the symptoms of a new HIV infection are identicical to those of other, far more common day-to-day infections.  Testing tells whether or not someone has HIV; symptoms do not.

The other standard response is that oral sex is an extremely rare source of HIV transmission, because saliva inactivates the virus.  Finally, your description of your commercial partner makes it very unlikely she has HIV.  (But my guess is that you weren't really her first customer.  Still, in the US and other industrialized countries, on average fewer than 1 in 1,000 sex workers have HIV.)

You describe typical symptoms of a common viral infection, maybe influenza (flu), which you then gave to your girlfriend.  You might have caught it from the sex worker, but you'll never know.  New HIV infections do not cause diarrhea and "cold" symptoms, i.e. no stuffy nose, cough with phlegm, etc.  And HIV symptoms cannot start sooner than 10 days after catching it.

Now to the direct questions:

1,2) It is almost impossible you caught HIV.  Less than 1 chance in many million.  Your odds of winning the lottery jackpot are higher.

3) Not possible; too fast for you to get symptoms, infect your partner, and then her get HIV symptoms.  All that would take several weeks, minimum.

4) Of course I cannot guarantee you aren't infected with HIV or an STD, whether from this particular sex worker or elsewhere.  But if it were me, I would continue unprotected sex with my wife without fear of infecting her.

5) On the basis of your risk and symptoms, you don't need HIV testing at all.  But if you need the negative test result for the psychological reassurance it might give you, have a single HIV antibody test 6-8 weeks after the commercial exposure.

Bottom line:  You're overreacting to a very low risk event with respect to HIV.  All is well.  I hope your and your partner's colds clear up soon.  

Regards--  HHH< MD

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

Thanks for the thanks.  Take care.