POZ Community Forums
HIV Prevention and Testing => Do I Have HIV? => Topic started by: worried82nyc on December 22, 2007, 04:12:22 pm
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Dear experts,
First, I want to thank you for giving so much of your time to respond to questions and be such a supportive resource. As I've dealt with HIV anxiety over much of the past couple of years, I've been a "lurker" on this forum, and benefited much from your advice to others, but I have a question with a complicating factor I haven't found talked about elsewhere.
After the end of a long-term relationship I started dating again over the summer. Luckily, a few months ago I found a wonderful guy whom I started to see romantically (I am also a male.) He said he is HIV negative and always has safe sex.
I'm worried about one night about three months ago when we were together. There was mutual oral (both ways), but without ejaculation in the mouth, mutual masturbation, and lots of heavy kissing. At some point in the action I realized that I had cut something on the inside of my mouth; there was blood in my saliva, which I saw leave a reddish trail where I was licking his body. I don't know when the cut occurred, or how long I had been bleeding; we had been kissing throughout, and I expect he would have stopped if there was an obvious taste of blood, but I can't be sure. At any rate, I waited for the blood to stop before putting his penis back in my mouth.
I remember keeping alert for blood through the rest of the session (the point at which I first noticed it was probably half-way through a period of some two or more hours) and not seeing it. The following morning I discovered that there was a pretty nasty gash in the soft tissue on the underside of my tongue, which could have been either from his teeth or from my tongue scraping against my own canines. I presume it was from there that the blood was coming.
Since then, we've broken up, and I'm afraid I've begun to fixate on whether this cut and the blood in my mouth could have made me susceptible to acquiring HIV orally? Even though he said he was negative, I always proceed under the assumption my partner is positive, and so I wonder if, for instance, some drops (or more) of his pre-cum could have gotten into the part of my mouth where the cut was, where the virus might have had easier access to my bloodstream? But since the cut was under my tongue, I don't think the damaged area would have been directly exposed to his fluids.
I'm not due for my regular sexual health screening for a couple of months, but I wanted to get your advice on whether I should be worried enough to get tested before then. As I said, this episode was three months ago, so a test would be conclusive. It's just that if this is still an "extremely low risk" situation, I don't want testing to become a sort of "crutch" when I really should be dealing more directly with my (continuing) fears of being infected.
Sorry for the long message. I look forward to your responses.
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Worried,
There is nothing in what you report which indicates that you have been infected with HIV. Yes, I'm taking the cut in your mouth and the blood into consideration when I say that.
You do not need to test for HIV as a result of this situation.
Please take the time to read our Welcome Thread (http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=220.0) and follow the links to our Lessons to learn more about how HIV is and is not transmitted.
MtD
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Now that you're back out in the world dating again I'll mention that we always suggest that anyone who's sexually active ought to have a full STD panel done regularly. That means at least annually and every six months is even better. Other STDs are much easier to acquire than HIV so it's a good precaution to make certain you haven't picked anything up.
Cheers,
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Dear Matty and Andy,
Thanks so much for your quick and reassuring replies. I will be sure to go for regular STD panels, but I'm very glad to hear you don't think this was an HIV situation.
All the best,
Worried (less now)