A scary thought...

[jeffhaley]

I'm 25 years old now, but in my late teens and early 20's I was very, very stupid about my sexual behavior. I had one night stands ALL THE TIME with different girls and never used protection. In all honestly, I would estimate that I've had unprotected sex with 50-60 girls. Talk about stupid. For my stupidity, I'm now living with genital herpes and deservedly so. The scary thing is, though, that out of those 50-60 girls I had unprotected encounters with, I would say the chances are high that at least one of them had HIV, wouldn't you? Scary...

[zmythoughts]

That is a scary thought but I am curious about something. How did you know how have herpes? Did you get tested for it or did you diagnose yourself?

[jeffhaley]

I developed a very painful and large outbreak of sores on my penis, then went to the doctor to have it checked. He took one look at it and said "That's genital herpes, no doubt about it."

[zmythoughts]

Ouch. So if you went to the doctors and that probably was embarrassing- what would be so bad about taking the home access test that's private and in your home? Then you wouldn't be thinking so much if you had it or not.

[jeffhaley]

Big difference dude... having herpes doesn't kill you!! HIV does.

[zmythoughts]

True- do you have a lot of anxiety not knowing your result though- that might kill you, all the stress and such.

[jeffhaley]

I don't have as much anxiety about it now after all of the encouraging information I've read on this forum. I should also point out that I am not anxious about all 60 of those women, because I had a few negative HIV tests mixed in there. I am only concerned about 3 or 4 contacts in particular that I had while I had an open herpes sore. At this point, I have calmed my nerves by realizing that it isn't likely that any of those 3 or 4 women had HIV, and that it also isn't likely that I would have gotten it from them after one-time exposures. So I am more at ease now realizing that the numerical odds are heavily in my favor. Still, due to the symptoms I have had, I still have that hanging shred of doubt in my mind that is hard to shake, and I cannot bring myself to go and test and put it out of my mind.

[zmythoughts]

Hmmm, well it is your decision. I think you'd feel better if you had the test. Remember how good you felt when you heard negative when you took the test before... But I must give you props on learning to control your anxiety because I sometimes get freaked out if I think about it too much.

[peekawho]

Dude, do you think the incidence of HIV is one in 50 women?  Not even close.  The odds are that NONE of them had HIV.  None.  Even if one did, the odds of getting it via unprotected vag. sex are 1 in 1000 (if I remember correctly).  That translates into an incredibly small chance of contracting this uncommon disease even with your history.  Herpes, by contrast, is very, very common.  You are intermingling the two in your mind.