I tested + in may weird thing with my body

[cooper8519]

hey what's going on everyone I'm newly positive well to me its still new tested positive in may. I still don't know my cd4 or viral load count they never told me in the hospital but I have an appointment this Thursday feb 14  lol I guess its my valentines day gift    im a lil scared weird things have been going on with my body my lymph noodles under my arms are swollen and I have developed anal warts. Its very embarrassing to talk about with my primary Dr  my warts don't hurt but the itch  n bleed at times sorry for being graphic but did anyone else go thru something like this. o yea and another thing for some odd reason my body will not tolerate hot sauce or apples anything acidic it make my stomach have a boxing match  btw no meds yet any advise and does it get better

[texaninnyc87]

welcome to the forums. good luck with your numbers on thursday, i'm finding out mine then too. the warts are most likely caused by the HPV virus and are not directly related to your HIV. Right now your focus should be on getting your HIV treated. Your doctor will help you deal with all of this and be able to get your HPV under control when you need to worry about that. HPV can go untreated for a bit without many consequences but HIV is trickier. Listen to your doctor and browse through these forums. Theres a lot of great info here and helpful people so dont be afraid to ask questions!

[emeraldize]

Hi Cooper,

After you were diagnosed positive in the hospital, did anyone send you to a doctor who specializes in HIV?  Is your upcoming doctor appointment with your primary or someone else?

Em

[mecch]

Welcome here.
Hope things get more clear with this next visit to the doc.
Besides embarrassment, is there any other reason you cannot speak about your health issues with any doctor?
Going forward, some advice, is that the way to live best with HIV is to have open honest communication with your doctors.  If possible...

[wolfter]

Welcome to the forums.

Hopefully after you meet with your doctor, you'll have a better understanding of where you're at in this journey.  I'm a bit shocked that you didn't have further testing until now.

I totally understand the embarrassment thing; I couldn't even look my doctor in the eyes when I first started dealing with the wart issues.  I finally have reached the point where I know it's best for my overall health to be totally honest with my doctor. 

Not sure about the digestive issues, it might have absolutely nothing to do with HIV?  My diet has always been spicy and I'd be distraught if I couldn't have my jalapenos with everything.

Take  care and best wishes.

Wolfie

[oksikoko]

hey what's going on everyone I'm newly positive well to me its still new tested positive in may. I still don't know my cd4 or viral load count they never told me in the hospital but I have an appointment this Thursday feb 14  lol I guess its my valentines day gift    im a lil scared weird things have been going on with my body my lymph noodles under my arms are swollen and I have developed anal warts. Its very embarrassing to talk about with my primary Dr  my warts don't hurt but the itch  n bleed at times sorry for being graphic but did anyone else go thru something like this. o yea and another thing for some odd reason my body will not tolerate hot sauce or apples anything acidic it make my stomach have a boxing match  btw no meds yet any advise and does it get better

Hey, Cooper. Good luck with your tests and everything tomorrow.

Maybe this isn't helpful at all, but FWIW, I had some similar issues that cleared up almost as if by magic right after I started ART. I went on Stribild within a month of my diagnosis, and I'm really glad I didn't wait. Do you have an HIV specialist or just your primary care physician? I'm not suggesting you should or shouldn't; I don't have a primary and only an HIV specialist. If you can only have one, I feel like I'm doing it backward.

Digestion: I have no idea, but I can tell you that I had no end of stomach troubles just before my diagnosis, so much that IBS was suspected and I was doing elimination diets to find the trigger. I'm glad it wasn't IBS because those food restrictions sucked. I'll take HIV any day. Anyway, I couldn't eat anything and had almost constant stomach/gut pain. I still don't know if it was HIV-related, but it all pretty much 'vanished' once I got my viral load down (I assume - haven't had new results yet, but I've been on Stribild for a while now). HIV is a crazy little thing, and it messes with your body's systems. Your immune and lymph systems are being diverted right now, and those are very complex. Who knows? Maybe there's some protein reaction with apples that your immune system was keeping you unaware before this? I made that up, but my point is, it's complicated, so don't bother stressing - just let the doctor know what's going on. Kind of related, I developed oral allergy syndrome a couple of years ago, and just as quickly as it appeared , it seems to have disappeared. Apples were one of the triggers.  Food is funny stuff.

Lymph nodes: yeah,mine were terrible for months before my diagnosis. Hurt like hell, felt like golfballs under my skin. This also went away almost immediately after I started Stribild. Don't know if it was related, because I had some other things going on, and had a few treatments at once. But my point is that it all ended up OK.

Warts: The others here were right, as you'll often find in these forums. It's important that you be able to talk to your doctor about this sort of thing. If you can't, it might be worth at least considering getting a new doctor. If the issue isn't the doctor, but that you wouldn't be able to talk about this stuff to anyone, as silly as it sounds, you might want to just practice saying it in the mirror until it's OK. Your health outcomes will be a lot better if you are able to communicate clearly with your doctor. He/she can't offer the best care options without knowing all the details. Medicine is like sleuthing, some seemingly unimportant (to me and you) clue could be a doctor's Eureka moment which leads to better treatment for you.

I just got a new doctor today, in fact, because I wasn't getting proper care from the first one. It took an hour with a sympathetic social worker before I stopped feeling bad about this, so I know it can be hard. But ultimately, your care is in your hands. You can and should have any number of advocates and professionals supporting you on this little trip (welcome aboard!), but in the long run, it's up to you, and you're the best man for the job anyway.

I'm sure your doctor has heard "worse" than warts, but do remember there's nothing wrong with having warts just like there's nothing wrong with having HIV just like there's nothing wrong with catching a cold or developing Alzheimer's. A *lot* of people have HPV (that causes warts) and don't even realize it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that in our initial stages of infection, previous infections that have lain dormant in our bodies can spark up because our immune systems are busy working on the HIV. So, it's normal for these odd things to happen, meaning, no need for stress as long as you talk to your doctor and see if there are any treatments or options that will make your life easier. Today's minor irritation ould be tomorrow's major problem if you don't catch it early. Again, I'm sure it's nothing, but let the doctor make the call. It's also possible that it's not warts if you haven't gotten a diagnosis. There are other problems that can affect you in this area (some much simpler to deal with than warts).

"Any advice and does it get better?" Sure it can! It can also get worse, though nothing you said here sounded alarming, not to me at any rate. I'll probably get yelled at for saying that, but I don't believe in magical thinking. Some of your fate is in your hands. Some of it is just fate over which you'll have no control, and HIV is no different than anything else in that regard. But get a doctor you're comfortable with (or get comfortable with your doctor), get any mental health issues you might have dealt with, build a network of friends and people who care about you who you care about, and I have no doubt that you'll be fine no matter what. I can't stress this enough: http://www.thebodypro.com/content/70509/not-by-ourselves-the-essential-role-of-family-and-.html

The decision to start antiretrovirals is a personal one in a lot of cases, but I personally believe hitting early is one of the best steps you can take to avoid problems later. I'm not a doctor, though, and I base that on pretty much faith in the system and my gut feeling, which isn't trustworthy. But talk to your doctor about that and what it would mean in practical terms so you can at least make an informed decision. If you and he decide you should start, there are a few options these days from one-a-days, which is probably what they'd offer, to older combos. I'm beginning to see that one-a-day is nice, but in some cases, it's better to take, say, three pills instead of the one, depending on your own chemistry and circumstances. I only say this to stress that nothing is one-size-fits-all with this disease, so don't be afraid to speak up if you have questions or doubts about what someone is telling you. The next guy you talk to will often have a different experience.

Anyway, good luck! And happy Valentine's Day.

[tednlou2]

Copper, welcome to the forums.  I am curious about the huge stretch of time between being diagnosed in May and going for your first doc appt tomorrow.  Did you drop out of care?  Or, like many, didn't have the resources to see a doc, and didn't know where to go for any kind of help?  Also, did the hospital not do any labs?  I would hope your doc would check the hospital records to see whether labs were done.  It would help to know what they were in May vs now. 

Anyway, I am just always curious about the access to care people have.  I wish ya the best tomorrow.  I have had to have my bum looked at a few times.  I was embarrassed.  I don't even like my partner looking down there anymore.  I have this feeling that it just looks old and sad now..lol.  Luckily, mine just turned out to be a big skin tag, and a fissure bump. 

Keep in touch and let us know how it goes.  Oh, don't worry about being "graphic" here.  We discuss some really graphic stuff.  You have to sometimes.  Your description was far from graphic.