Dear Doctor Frascino,

Thank you so much for everything that you do. You are really great and I really appreciate your help! I will donate $100 to your AIDS foundation.

I have a quesiton for you. About seven months ago, I met this homosexual guy online. He is very sexually active and has never been tested for HIV before. Back then, I didn't know anything about HIV. So I just asked him if he had HIV and he said no.

When I met him, I performed unprotected oral sex on him for a very long time. He did not ejaculate in my mouth, but I tasted his precum. He also gave me a blow job.

Starting a few months ago, I have been finding a few swollen lymph nodes under my jaws and on the sides of my neck. And I found a painful lump on my groin (1 cm). Now I am seriously concerned. And these swollen lymph nodes are not going away! Apparently swollen lymph nodes related to HIV appears everywhere on the body.. which is happening to me right now.

What are the chances that I got infected with HIV? I know that oral sex only carries a low risk... but I am still very scared.

Pease help me. Thank you so much for your time and help!

B

Hello B,

You essentially answered your own question! You want to know your chances of acquiring HIV from oral sex. You then state: "I know that oral sex carries a low risk . . . ." I absolutely agree. Consequently, you have a "low risk" chance of having contracted the virus. The estimated per-act statistical risk for acquiring HIV from unprotected insertive oral sex and receptive oral sex with a partner confirmed to be HIV infected is 0.5 and 1.0 per 10,000 exposures respectively (i.e. 0.5 for getting sucked and 1.0 for sucking). Pre-cum can contain active virus and is capable of transmitting the illness. Pre-cum, however, generally has a much lower concentration of virus than spunk and therefore would be less likely to transmit an infection.

The lymphadenopathy (swollen lymph nodes) that occurs with HIV disease is generalized (multiple locations throughout the body) and usually painless. "Symptoms" are notoriously unreliable in predicting who is and is not HIV infected. The only reason to worry or get HIV tested is HIV exposure risk. Since your potential exposure occurred seven months ago, why sit around and worry now? Just get a single HIV-antibody test and you'll have a definitive result. If you get a rapid test, you'll have your conclusive result in as few as 20 minutes! The odds are astronomically in your favor that you did not contract HIV from Online-Guy. So just man-up and get tested. I'm very confident you'll be WOO-HOO-ing like a banshee in heat in no time, OK?

Thanks for your donation to The Robert James Frascino AIDS Foundation (www.concertedeffort.org). It's warmly appreciated. In return I'm sending you my good-luck karma that your definitive HIV test is negative.

Good luck.

Dr. Bob