Please someone respond. I am very scared.

[hivordengue]

Hello,

I know you see alot of posts like this, but I am very scared and I am hoping you could shed some light on my situation.

My Risk. The last time i had unprotected sex was with my ex-girlfriend in oct 07 (i know she had several boyfriends before me..but i did not ask about them and now we do not talk). My last protected sexual encounter was in jan 08 with a sex worker. 

I am in my late twenties. I am asthmatic (been so all my life). I came down with pnemonia last Feb 08. During this time i was smoking and under extreme stress as i was depressed due to a break up with my girlfriend. It started when I first came down with a respiratory track infection for which i was taking antibiotics, but i was still smoking - was not sleeping well and was extremely stressed at work. It was under these conditions that i came down with pneumonia. The doc described it as an a-typical pneumonia as i was walking around did not need to be hospitalized. The pneumonia left in a month (march 08) but it seemed to have left my asthma in a bad state and I would be short of breath and feel weak until april.

Then in May I got hit by what seemed like dengue (fyi. I had ridden in a car full of mosquitoes one morning 2 weeks prior). I had a sudden onset of high fever one night and my skin turned red all over. A day Iater saw a doc and we took a dengue test and a blood count test to see if my platelets were low. The following day the dengue test came back neg ( but the doc said that is to be expected since it was early on in the sickness)  he did notice that my WBC count was low and my platelets were in the low range too - so he concluded dengue. My doc then became suspicious of my pneumonia. He felt that i shouldnt have gotten it at such young an age and that i should have bounced back from it quickly (it shouldnt have taken a month). He then began suspecting HIV. This scared the hell out of me. At the time i was in his office and my "dengue" symptoms increased instantly the moment he mentioned HIV - my fever hit and i suddenly became extremely weak and had the worst headache in my life. When I reached home I started got diarreah and began vomiting. The doc said we would have to wait after the dengue left to test for HIV. That it we should wait a month before we test for HIV as dengue can result in a false-positive. 

Its been about 3-4 weeks now. I was still getting periods of fatigue up to my 3rd week.  I have been very anxious this whole time because of the HIV suspicion. I've been doing all the wrong things and been obsessively looking up HIV symptoms online.

I am worried now whether my dengue could have been ARS. And I know that pneumonia is common sickness related to HIV. 

I also noticed how during the "dengue" I had oral thrush in my mouth - its mild and does not hurt, but I still have it now. I feel like ive had oral thrush before as I am asthmatic and I am on daily anti-asthma inhalers. But its only now that iam suspicious of HIV that I worry about it. I also drink lots of coffee which i heard that it makes oral thrush worse.

2 weeks ago my skin started getting very dry..to the point that it feels like a sun burn. This has gotten me to be even more scared.

My lymph nodes in my neck became swollen when I had dengue. They began to go down a little a week later. But last week they started to swell again, this time, my lymphnodes in my armpits and groin are swollen too. I am so anxious and scared now.

I cannot sleep well and I am extremely anxious.  Do you think the symptoms I have described could be ARS? or HIV? I've taken a test but it will take a week for the results to come back.

Please would you shed some light on my symptoms?

[Matty the Damned]

Dengue,

We can't shed any light on your symptoms because they sound typical of any number of viral illnesses, including Dengue Fever. So rather than fussing about symptoms, let's focus on your risky behaviours.

You report having unprotected sex in October last year. This is a risk for HIV transmission and you do need to be tested and it's good that you have been. However this would not be the cause of the symptoms you've recently experienced. The protected sex you talk about from January does not pose a risk for HIV transmission as condoms are an effective barrier.

I am not aware of evidence suggesting that Dengue Fever can trigger false HIV positive results. HIV is a difficult virus to transmit, particularly from female to male. and I expect that the outcome of your recent HIV antibody test will be negative.

You should know that we only deal with HIV related issues here at AIDSmeds and so your concerns about Dengue Fever are not something we can address. You should continue to work with your doctor about that.

Please take the time to read our Welcome Thread and follow the links to our Lessons to learn more about how HIV is and is not transmitted

Once again I expect you to test negative.

MtD