Dear Ryan:

For the past 85 days, i have been living in uncertainty due to the anxiety about HIV. Now it is time for the test day. However, resources from different counsellors confuse me so much. My risk was protected vaginal intercourse (less then 30 seconds), deep kissing, and fingering (2 small healing,scabbed cracks on my finger) with an Asian sex worker in New York City. I am a student from a major university. My school clinical counsellor encourages me to take the test and she says 85 days or three months doesn't make a difference, since my exposure risk is very low. (In NY, they say the window period is 3 months, not 6 months). However, according to a counsellor from NY AIDS hotline, he said my risk is so small that it virtually does not exist. He does not advise any testing at all. I am struggling on which person to listen to and this confusion is torturing me everyday. I don't want to waste valuable medical resource, and in the mean time, I don't know if I am wasting medical resource by testing. Can you please give some advise on my situation?What kind of attitude do you recommend people like me to develop, in order to overcome the most frustrating life in our life.

By most standards, your risk for infection is very low, but it is not nonexistent. Getting tested is reasonable, by no means urgent, and likely to procure a negative result.

Determining whether or not you are wasting valuable resources is subjective, and there is no standard for measuring what is "too much" or "a waste". Different people have different motivations for telling you whether or not you should get tested, which is exactly why you need to make the decision on your own. Getting a single antibody test is clearly not a waste of resources, but getting several throughout the year might be a bit extreme. It is important to recognize the role HIV testing plays in your life and if you are using it as a tool to treat anxiety about HIV.

RMK