POZ Community Forums
HIV Prevention and Testing => Do I Have HIV? => Topic started by: ThrowAwayAccount on May 31, 2013, 11:07:48 am
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On monday morning (4am) I had protected sex with a 1 night stand. I woke up the next day and had some minor lower abdomen pain on my left side. I can only describe it as being sick to my stomach/gas. The next day the pain persisted, but did not worsen. On Wednesday I woke up with a minor sore throat and then Thursday I had a slightly stuffy nose. I have not been running a fever, no muscle pains or anything like that.
I have of course been stressing out like crazy that I might have contracted something. I plan on going to get tested, but everything I have read says that the symptoms are too early, and it is too early to get tested. Anyone have any advice, I would greatly appreciate it.
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The only way to know if you are HIV positive is to test , guessing whats causing symptoms is futile so we do not discuss symptoms .
If you had protected sex then you were not exposed to the HIV virus during the incident you are concerned about .
ALTHOUGH YOU DO NOT NEED FURTHER HIV TESTING AT THIS TIME, anyone who is sexually active should be having a full sexual health care checkup, including but not limited to HIV testing, at least once a year and more often if unprotected intercourse occurs.
If you aren't already having regular, routine checkups, now is the time to start. As long as you make sure condoms are being used for intercourse, you can fully expect your routine HIV tests to return with negative results.
Don't forget to always get checked for all the other sexually transmitted infections as well, because they are MUCH easier to transmit than HIV. Some of the other STIs can be present with no obvious symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to test.
Use condoms for anal or vaginal intercourse, correctly and consistently, and you will avoid HIV infection. It really is that simple!
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I understand you don't discuss symptoms, buy I guess my question more than anything is it possible for symptoms to show up that quickly?
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I understand you don't discuss symptoms, buy I guess my question more than anything is it possible for symptoms to show up that quickly?
ARS, Acute Retroviral Syndrome, is the illness sometimes associated with the body's initial immune response to HIV. It is NOT specific to HIV, as your body exhibits similar immune responses to other pathogens, allergies, and even stress. The immune response absolutely can't start in one day. Perhaps in rare cases as early as ten days, but normally close to day 22, when your body would start producing antibodies.
At any rate, your sex was protected and you had no risk, so this discussion is purely academic.