Is this a risk?

[imgoingcrazyhelpme]

My question is can HIV live in semen in an enclosed air tight package for 2 weeks, and if after 2 weeks my penis was covered in this semen is it possible to get HIV that way?

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

I think you know (intellectually) that your worry is outlandish.  Nobody at the company put semen, HIV infected or not, in the lube.  And if they did, it would not transmit HIV to anyone.

Think logically.  If a whacked out bad guy wanted to infect someone with HIV, would he choose a method that only has 1 in a million chance of working?  Woudn't he find a way to at least make it possible that his scheme might work?

Anyway, this is your OCD at work.  I hope you find a way to deal with it.  Good luck.

[imgoingcrazyhelpme]

Thank you for the long, well thought out response Dr.  I don't know how much more you can help me with this particular issue, but I read that semen on a penis carries little to no risk as mutual masturbation is not a cause for concern and I thought this way a similar issue.

The reason I ask all this is because I bought some special underwear online especially made for strip club lapdances and this underwear comes with a packaged lube.  

I put the lube in the underwear but I did it in the dark so I didn't see what color the lube was or anything.  I never ejaculated in the underwear.  

When I got home I just threw the underwear on the floor.  Flash forward a few days I pick up the underwear to wash and it smells and looks a lot like semen, I think.  It could be that it looked weird because of the lighting, I don't know.  

I'm worried that maybe someone at the company out of anger decided to put HIV infected semen in the lube packet in order to infect one random person and that person was me.

This is all very embarrassing to describe, but it had to be done as my stress levels are through the roof.  My main worry is if I'm at risk from all this?

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

Welcome to the forum.

Thanks for a succinct, brief question. Given your many posts on the HIV and OCD community forums, it is apparent you are obsessed with HIV despite various events that in fact carry little or no risk.  I have to assume the same applies here.

I don't know if HIV can survive in the circumstance you describe, but I suspect it is possible.  Of course that doesn't mean you're at risk, even if somehow you were exposed to such semen.

As you know, facts alone never are sufficient to resolve fears like yours in people with OCD.  There's always a "yes but" or other fearsome thought that comes to mind.  It never ends.  But I'm going to try to give you one more thought to remember:

In busy HIV/AIDS clinics, we never see patients who did not have unprotected vaginal or anal sex, or shared injection equipment for illicit drug use.  There simply are no exceptions.  If kissing, hand-genital contact, environmental exposure to sexual secretions or blood, or all the other things people like you worry about reallyt were risks, there would be at least a few patients in our clinics who did not have the obvious risks. But we never see them!

Anyway, I hope this has helped a bit.  If you'd like to say a bit more about the exposure event you're currently concerned about, I might have another brief comment.  But this thread isn't going to get into a string of "what if" questions.

Regards--  HHH, MD