oral - precum risk?

[new2me]

I’ve been reading these forums everyday for the past several weeks and I’ve been afraid of what I think the answer might be so it’s taken me a while to post. I’m hoping to get some info on risk of swallowing pre-cum during oral sex. I met a guy in a bar in early March. We went to my place, had oral sex, and I swallowed a lot of pre-cum, but he didn’t come in my mouth. I know it was stupid as I hadn’t done that for years. Anyway I considered it very low risk so I didn’t even think about it. We exchanged numbers for future meets and he called me in early April and with great difficulty told me that he just tested positive. (I’m negative). He said his only exposure in several years was receptive anal about two weeks before we met.
Obviously I don’t know what his true timeline is but he thinks he seroconverted after we hooked up. Am I at a greater risk for swallowing that much pre-cum from someone at that time period of his infection? I read viral loads are very high after infection and before seroconversion and my hiv risk shot up dramatically. I’m afraid to get tested but I know it’s reliable at 13 weeks so I have to wait. I can’t sleep and have trouble concentrating at work. Can anyone tell me what my risks are? Thanks…

[Ann]

new,

Transmission via oral sex is more theoretical than real. Saliva contains over a dozen different proteins and enzymes that damage hiv and render it unable to infect. Not only that, but hiv requires specific cells to infect, cells that are not found in any abundance in the mouth.

If it takes testing to ease your mind, you can test at (or after) six weeks because the vast majority of people who have actually been infected will seroconvert and test positive by that time. A six week or more negative is very unlikely to turn positive by the end of the three month period.

Ann

[new2me]

Ann
Thanks for answering. Needless to say I’m scared shitless. Knowing that symptoms of infection vary person to person (if they exist at all), I still have to ask: If I vomited my guts up and had incredible diarrhea 11 days after this encounter, which I did, then felt better for about 3 and a half weeks and then suddenly started having drenching night sweats for 4 days in a row and general sleeplessness, does that fall under a possible ARS category? (hypothetically using a scenario where someone is actually proven positive going through this-other than me, to answer this question).

I had heard that symptoms go away after a week or two, but is it possible for them to return after an appx 3.5 week break of my feeling fairly well? Again, I know symptoms come and go it's just that I've seen some quotes from Andy and others about symptoms disappearing after only a week or two, but I haven't seen anything specific about them coming back or not. If that's at all possible? Thanks again.

I plan to test at 12 weeks.

[Ann]

new,

We don't discuss symptoms here because symptoms or the lack of symptoms means nothing when it comes to hiv infection. Only testing will reliably reveal your hiv status.

But, I will say this much. The symptoms of ARS, if they happen at all, don't come and go, they come all together and leave all together.

It's highly unlikely you were infected via oral sex.

Ann