7 week negative test but experiencing many (all) HIV symptoms

[scaredwithherpes]

hi everyone. I have genital herpes and I'm African American

I had unprotected sex with a man who says he is HIV negative but refuses to show me papers that substantiate it. I will never do that again if I am actually negative

10 days after my mistake my nightmare started

I had swollen/pain in lymph nodes on my neck in the back and front, armpits and groin.
I had low grade fevers
muscle aches
5 mouth ulcers
tiny pink bumps on my arms and chest
diarrhea for a month
appetite loss
loss of 8 lbs
I ha a rash on my wrists
and recently i've had tingling in my feet and hands along with red bumps that have turned dark brown on the tops and bottoms of my feet
I tested negative for hepatitis, mono, syphillis at 7 weeks. my doc ruled out cat scratch disease and a few other things

my HIV 1/2 test was also negative
I had a negativ naat test at 10-11 days after exposure

I have been depressed, crying most of the day, missing work and school, estranging my friends. and I'm pretty convinced I have HIV and I took an RNA pcr and antibody test again this sat at the 8 week mark. they promised to rush my results and I should get them tomorrow.

I just want to know if anyone else has had all these symptoms and had a definitive negative test. I wish I could believe that I'm in the 90 somethig percent who test positive by 7 weeks but my body is telling me otherwise

I'm not one of those ppl who had oral sex and got a cold and thinks I have aids. my friends think I'm being irrational. do u all think so? what else can it be? I need solace. please help me. and tha in advance

[joggen]

1. Acute retroviral syndrome- fever, sore throat, rash, etc.

2. Yes.

If you have further questions please start your own thread.

[Lneed_help]

Please help

[reallyregret]

Dear joggen,

Would just like to seek your help on something. You mentioned Hiv tests will always turn positive within 7-10 days from the onset of symptoms. Do the symptoms you mention include the onset of generalised swollen lymph nodes? or only the other more pronounced symptoms such as fever and rash, stuffs like that?

Also, is the rapid
orasure oraquick test included under your category of Hiv tests?


Thanks.


reallyregret

[osano]

Great! Take care, move on, and God bless!

[joggen]

Glad to hear. Take care and please use condoms in the future.

[scaredwithherpes]

ok I just saw my doctor. he gave me a thumb up and said "everything is fine". he was with a patient I kind of just walked by the room and looked at him and that was his response. omg. I know it's not 3 months yet but I figured after all I went thru, by now seroconversion would have happened if I have HIV. ok I guess I am crazy. thank you joggen for helping me get through this. I have to post this in the other thread. omg. praise god. I still didn't see hm yet but he wouldn't have smiled and gave me thumbs up and said everything is fine if he was about to come in here and tell me I have HIV.

[scaredwithherpes]

ok well i'm an hour away from my doctor's office to learn the result of my 8 week test. if it is negative my next post on this forum adterthr information will be to "crazy" people like me. calming them down. cuz after the stuff I experienced if I am negative, I will not allow anyone to let their symptoms dictate their health. I swear

[joggen]

Because you were at very low risk to begin with and the tests are VERY accurate at 7 weeks. As I demonstrated for you, the chance that you have HIV is 1 in a million with your negative test result. If there are cases where health people take longer than 6-8 weeks to have a positive HIV test then they are too rare to be concerned about.

The 3 month 'official' window period was set years ago when the testing technology was not as sensitive as it is today. Doctors through their vast experiences with testing over the past 2-3 years have observed that it never takes longer than 8 weeks for tests to turn positive. There are multiple reasons why the official window period has not changed with the technology, mostly due to the fact that government agencies would rather err on the side of being overly conservative, even if it means putting people through a few extra, unnecessary weeks of anxiety.

[scaredwithherpes]

just answer one last question and I'll leave u alone. and thanks for your advice so far

why are u confident that I don't have HIV when my last test was only at 7 weeks. and for some reason or another there r ppl who (the 5 or so %) who do indeed need to test out to 3 months?

because it seems as if u all are saying that immunosupressed ppl need to wait for 6 months. and everyone else has to wait for 3 months although most of everyone else get conclusive results at 6-8 wks.

so what I think ur saying is that there are some ppl (very small few) who are not immunosupressed that need to wait 3 months.

am I misunderstanding? aren't there some relatively healthy ppl like me who still don't teat positive until 3 months?

[joggen]

Again, I think you need to consider anxiety and depression as the cause of your symptoms.  Clinical depression can produce a host of symptoms on its own and can make people believe that they have serious diseases also. And you need to get off the Internet and stop trying to diagnose yourself. I have peeling skin on my hands and I don't have HIV. You're trying to link every little thing that is going on with your body with HIV as if HIV is the only possible explanation when in reality it is the least likely of all possible causes. You don't realize how irrational that you sound.

Feel free to report your test result, but otherwise please do not post any additional comments.

[scaredwithherpes]

no. I'm just trying to figure out what's wrong with my body. even the lead infectious disease doctor at my hospital can't tell me. furthermore he can only tell me that he is "pretty sure it's not HIV" tho he allows me to test everytime I see him. I'm afraid he thinks in the back of his head it is HIV but doesn't want to alarm me.

don't get me wrong joggen, your posts make sense, but my body is just giving me a hard time accepting it. in addition to everything I listed my body is still tingling. the skin in my hands is peeling. and I have linear fissures all over my arms. which I read is a complication of herpes in HIV infected people. it's called the knife cut sign.
this is so depressing. why is it happening to me? why can't I just get a dianosis of something else?

I'm so scared to go for my result today. cuz this will be definitive. they will either detect the virus If There r no antibodies or the antibodies If it has supressed the virus.

please god make me be ok. please pray for me, everyone who believes in Jesus Christ

I should have been more religious before. I wouldn't even be in this situation :(

[joggen]

Needle stick? You need to take these types of concerns up with a mental health professional. It just seems that your mind is coming up with any possible scenario for you to have acquired HIV, however unrealistic. This preoccupation of yours has taken its toll on your relationships because your friends don't know how to respond when you are being irrational like this. Please do yourself a favor and make an appointment with a therapist or discuss these concerns with your physician and see if you can get a referral.

[scaredwithherpes]

I think I know this thread by heart right now. my hands and feet are tingling so bad I can't sleep. :(. this would be easier If my doctor could give me an alterior diagnosis. I called the guy who I'm afraid exposed me again. he claims he is in another state and has no access to his papers but swears I don't have HIV from him. idk if I believe him. I thought he was a good person before this but now I see him as a monster. and if it wasn't him I'm starting to think that i acquired it by one of my mom's tennants. he was in and out of jail and a street person and we argued all the time. he is no longer in her house but maybe before he left he got me with a needle in my sleep. I've had plenty needle sticks in the past 2 months and they aren't so startling that they could wake me up. ugh. but still I tested negative at 7 weeks. I hope that really means something.

[scaredwithherpes]

I forgot to type about the sore throat and the low grade fevers. that aside however I will take your advice and stop the nonsense. because i'd say the same thing to someone else who tested negative at 7 weeks considering the information available from researchers about HIV testing. it's just my symptoms (which did include sore throat and fevers) that make me think otherwise. but you're right. symptoms don't mean anything. our bodies respond to viruses the same way. I'm actually a nursing student so I know this. it's just hard when it feels like everything I'm experiencing has a basis in HIV. either way thank you. I'm a stranger to you and u care enough to covince me that I'm looney tunes and not suffering from ars. I hope that you are blessed and your blessings are in the same measure of your kindness. youre a wonderful person and thank you. u made me feel better.  

[joggen]

Yes, you are being irrational. What you are experiencing is essentially a delusion which is very common on HIV forums. The delusion comes from the mistaken belief that one can identify 'signs' of HIV infection (which in reality do not exist), reading misleading information on the Internet which falsely links very common conditions of the body to HIV, and not having adequate medical training to correctly interpret what is going on. Feeding the delusion are the very real symptoms of anxiety, which people also erroneously try to link to HIV. What results is an endless cycle that feeds upon itself: the more anxious people get, the more they search for information on the Internet, the more they are exposed to false or misleading information, etc.

HIV is never diagnosed by symptoms- it can only be diagnosed by blood tests. A negative result on an HIV test will always trump any symptoms that someone may be experiencing. If somebody is actually experiencing ARS symptoms, HIV tests will always turn positive within 10 days of when symptoms begin. None what you have listed even remotely resembles ARS: you don't mention fever, which is almost always present during ARS; you don't mention sore throat or flu-like symptoms, which are also common. Read the list of symptoms that anxiety can produce at the top of the forum; several of your symptoms such as tingling in the extremities, appetite loss, and muscle aches are entirely consistent with anxiety. People do not seem to realize that emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression can make a person physically sick. Since you have had a negative result at 7 weeks it is impossible that your symptoms are due to HIV.

The chance that you have HIV at this time is close to zero. Somebody gave you some statistics in your other thread, but didn't tell you the whole story. Here is the breakdown of the chance that you have HIV:

Chance that your partner had HIV: conservatively, no higher than 1 in 20.
Chance of catching HIV from two exposures: 1 in 500.
Chance of a 7 week test turning positive: conservatively, 1 in 100.

That means that the chance that you have HIV at this time is 1/20 * 1/500 * 1/100 = 1/1,000,000 (that is 1 in 1 MILLION (!)). I'm sure your doctor performed the same type of analysis, which is why he told you that you are in the clear. Doctors have the ability to analyze individual situations including risk when they assess a patient, which is why he doesn't even think that you need another test. When you ask advice of non-medical professionals on a public HIV forum, they have to stick with the 3 month window period since that is what the official medical authorities stipulate. I'm sure that the doctors on this site (Dr. HHH  and Dr. Hook) would agree with your doctor that you don't have HIV, so if you are still concerned I would encourage you to post in the Expert forum to get their opinion.

I am confident that you don't have HIV based on the back-of-the-envelope calculation that I provided and suspect that most of your symptoms are probably emotionally-driven. You are probably not even concerned about dying in an accident over the next year even though your chances for that are 500 times higher than the chance that you caught HIV. Most of the people that I know from high school who have died lost their lives in a tragic accident not from HIV/AIDS. Your fixation on death is definitely irrational and doesn't reflect the reality of living with HIV in today's world: yes it is a serious condition but it is treatable and new and more effective medications are coming out every year.

The emotional state that is reflected in your posts concerns me. If this continues I hope that you will get off of HIV forums and seek a therapist. There may be other reasons behind your anxiety such as guilt or regret over your sexual encounter and there is no substitute for personal counseling in addressing these issues.