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Avatar universal

Extremely anxious

Hello Doctor...I am a 25 year old healthy white female. In my past I have had several unprotected sexual encounters with different men. The last one was about 3 years ago. To my knowledge none of these guys have been with other men, injected drugs, or have been diagnosed with HIV. For 2 years now I have been in a committed relationship and recently the stupid sexual decisions of my past have begun to haunt me. I have been on the internet for the past week scaring myself half to death and decided yesterday to go and get tested. I am extremely scared to get my results and worry that I may have HIV. I was just wondering what you thought my chances were for having contracted HIV??


PS...Only one out of those encounters released inside of me.
6 Responses
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239123 tn?1267647614
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
The chance you are infected is zero for all practical purposes.  Among all sexually active women in the US, the overall infected proportion is about 0.1%, i.e. 1 in 1,000.  Almost all the positives are women with obvious risk factors; most were the regular (not one-time) partners of known-infected men.  So your risk is hundreds of times lower than 1 in 1,000, probably 1 in a million or less.

Getting tested was wise, not because you were at real risk, but because this obviously has been weighing on your mind, and your negative test result probably will be much more reassuring than my words can be.  Anyway, CDC recommends that every person in the US be tested at least once, regardless of risk-- just to be super safe.  So you may as well get it out of the way.

Kick back and have a nice glass of wine tonight, as a pre-celebration of the test result, since you can be virtually 100% sure it will be negative.

Best wishes--  HHH, MD
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
Thank you so much for your reassurance, I really appreciate it. However I have one more question. One of those men was my boyfriend my freshman year in college. He was not exactly faithful and we had unprotected sex, stupid I know. Would this raise the chances of my test coming back positive?
Helpful - 0
239123 tn?1267647614
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Nope, not if he wasn't an injection drug user or bisexual.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
I know I am probably being irrational but I am still petrified. I have this horrible feeling that I'm going to be that 1 in a million. I have a few more days till I will be able to get my results and I can't stop thinking about it. I feel like I'm going crazy. Any advice on how to calm my nerves?
Helpful - 0
239123 tn?1267647614
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Sorry, all I can do is provide the facts.  Try to think objectively.  Do you have any idea how low a risk "one in a million" is?  If you live in the US, the chance you will be struck by lightning someday is 1 in around 20,000, which is 50 times higher than 1 in a million.  You also have one chance in 1,756 of being dead within a year of an accident, such as auto wreck, drowning, a fall, etc, etc.  That's 570 times higher than 1 in a million.

Try to mellow out and have that glass of wine.  And don't forget your seatbelt.
Helpful - 0
277836 tn?1359666174
Dr Hunter
           You should post the above somewhere on this forum so you dont have to repeat it so much LOL.And as for the glass of wine i think i will have some dessert wine with my cheesecake.
Helpful - 0

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