Long time lurker, first time poster. And I definitely have HIV phobia, of that I’m sure.
I’m a straight male living in New Zealand. I’ve tested numerous times for HIV over last 5 years,
always negative, always low/no risk exposures (protected intercourse, cunnilingus).
Over 18 months ago I performed unprotected cunnilingus with a random hookup (no other sexual acts beyond kissing and fingering). Freaked out I went to an STI clinic where I convinced them to prescribe me PEP 36hrs post exposure against their better judgement. Tested at day 1 (negative), and day 25 (negative). No missed doses.
5 months post cunnilingus (4 months post PEP completion) went to a DIFFERENT clinic as anxiety had gotten the better of me, for an STI screen including 4th generation HIV. To my horror, I had a call saying I’d come back “slightly reactive” on the Elisa (index of 1.08 or words to that effect). They thought it was a false positive but ran Western Blot as protocol which came back as negative. Phew
Unfortunately I was unable to move past the initial Elisa result, and after struggling with anxiety went for another test at the same clinic 12 months post cunnilingus exposure, even though they advised me NOT to test again (7 months after initial tests). Once again Elisa came back on the border and Western Blot negative. Told I was conclusively negative by the clinic specialist
Thought I had moved on, but have now slipped back into the anxiety of thinking perhaps the Elisa is picking up really ‘low level’ evidence of the virus (somehow affected by the PEP perhaps?) and the WB is somehow ‘missing’ the virus and reporting false negatives, or there’s been a laboratory WB testing error...twice. Compounding my anxiety is the fact that I’ve never recorded slightly reactive Elisa results before (to my knowledge anyway...).
I guess my question is: Can I put my faith in the 2 negative WB tests taken 5 and 12 months post cunnilingus, regardless of the Elisa results. Bonus point question: why Am I now getting reactive Elisa’s when historically I haven’t?
Thanks