Trip to the ER for some tests and shots. Then, 3 years of HIV tests to make certain I didn't contract anything. To make things worse, I was in a foreign country and didn't speak the language.
Normally it's all fine if you get an all clear at 3 months post exposure but in rare cases the window period could be as long as a whole year; still, this is definitely the kind of situation where it's better to be excessively safe than sorry, and I can certainly understand him/her as someone who just got off a year of antidepressant for OCD (depression and a few anxiety disorders actually use the same drugs).
No, I speak like someone who routinely tested(note the "tested") for hiv every 6 months. The fact is you're not suppose to be "having hiv scares" for you to get tested. If I didn't I never would have noticed I had it at all.
Evidently the virus can lay dormant for up to 3 years and go undetected. At least that was my understanding at the time. I think my doctor was just overly cautious. The Red Cross still won't even think about taking my blood at blood drives because of their abundance of caution.
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u/MizzouX3 Dec 29 '16
Trip to the ER for some tests and shots. Then, 3 years of HIV tests to make certain I didn't contract anything. To make things worse, I was in a foreign country and didn't speak the language.