Have i contracted hiv?

[rajsinghb]

Hi there, 9 months ago i went on holiday to India and the weather changed dramatically from hot to cold and i caught a cold and a bad cough. a few days after my return i had unprotected sex with a lady who assured me she was clean (but she may have lied?). My cough persisted and eventually became a wet cough/coughing up a yellowy browny mucus after 2months or, when i also developed flu like symptoms for 2-3 days, pain in joints, feverish, enlarged lymph nodes in my upper armpit. I went to see a doctor regarding the cough which id had for 8weeks or so and he said it was a viral infection many people contract which clears up itself in a few months and results in flu like syptoms too. Im still paranoid and relate it all to the unprotected sex. Lately ive been having dry mouth, with skin peeling inside the cheek, and with very small purpleish marks, say 3-4 on the inner left cheek where the peeling concerns. Are these syptoms of hiv? please help :S

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

The odds of catching HIV from a single episode of vaginal sex is around 1 chance in 2000, if your partner were infected--and from what you say, almost certainly she was not.  Your symptoms don't suggest HIV and you provide no reason whatever to suggest your symptoms are related to the sexual encounter.  Almost certainly they are not.  The big question, of course, is why you haven't been tested (which presumably you had not, since dyou don't mention it).  It is nonsensical to sit around several months worrying about HIV without being tested for it.

Have an HIV test.  There is no point in any 'yes but' or 'what if' follow-up questions unless/until you have been tested.

HHH, MD

[helpasap]

get tested if you neg gave some blood ! they need blood