Feel like I am going insane. Help!

[LeLani]

So I'm freaking out right now and it's driving me insane. I thought I would talk to people in this forum because the more I search online, the more crazy I become. It's consuming me.

I am a female who fooled around with a girl who had unprotected vaginal sex with a man who may be HIV positive (he had a Positive Singles app on his iPad... why else would he have that??!?). Here is my story.

Before I did anything with this girl, I physically drove her to Planned Parenthood to get tested. She got a rapid pin prick test and I saw her paperwork that said she was negative. Fast forward a month and we fooled around. The girl fingered herself then fingered me. About two weeks later I got really bad nasal congestion that lasted for about 10 days.

I'm freaking out now because this girl got tested at the 4-6 week mark. So I'm afraid maybe she got test too early. So my questions are:

1) How high was my risk?
2) Is nasal congestion related to seroconversion. I don't believe I had swollen lymph nodes but it's possible maybe I did.

Any advice would be great. I'm having nightmares and losing my mind!

[Jeff G]

You didn't have a risk for HIV , fingering isn't a risk for HIV because HIV is fragile and rendered unable to infect as so as its exposed to air . The risk from acquiring HIV sexually comes when you engage in penetrative vaginal or anal intercourse .

ALTHOUGH YOU DO NOT NEED 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!

[LeLani]

Even though the girl had her own fluid on her fingers and almost immediately fingered me? I've read studies about female to female transmission. There was only one confirmed case (which they suspected was related to drawing quite a bit of blood) where the girl had HIV transmitted to her through via her female partner. I guess I'm just afraid of exceptions.

I'm pretty adamant about getting tested for STDS and get tested within the designated window periods and get a yearly so I'm not worried about those. I guess I'm just paranoid about HIV  And the nasal congestion didn't really help.

[Jeff G]

There are tons of misinformation out there but you can rest assured you wouldn't have got HIV even if she were positive , and we always do assume the partner in question is indeed HIV positive when doing these assessments .

You do not need to test for this no risk situation but the proper time to test for HIV if you had a risk would be 6 weeks post exposure and again at 3 months to confirm the result .

You can put this out of your mind now , it wasn't a risk .

[jkinatl2]

Even though the girl had her own fluid on her fingers and almost immediately fingered me? I've read studies about female to female transmission. There was only one confirmed case (which they suspected was related to drawing quite a bit of blood) where the girl had HIV transmitted to her through via her female partner. I guess I'm just afraid of exceptions.

I'm pretty adamant about getting tested for STDS and get tested within the designated window periods and get a yearly so I'm not worried about those. I guess I'm just paranoid about HIV  And the nasal congestion didn't really help.

Under no circumstances can HIV infect through fingering. The one reported case of female-female transmission has enough holes to drive a truck through. The fact that in the 30-plus years that we have researched this pandemic and only documented one case of female/female transmission with the softest possible science (patient report) speaks volumes.

HIV is a very delicate virus that simply cannot remain viable outside the human host. Even in the anaerobic environment of a IV drug needle, the glycoproteins dissolve within minutes at most. No one in the history of the pandemic has ever been confirmed to have gotten HIV through fingering, and you will not be the person to rewrite science.

There was absolutely no risk in the scenario you described. Absolutely none.

[LeLani]

Thanks so much. I feel so much better now!