Hi. I had unprotected sex back in August of last year. It was my first time. I really didn't think about STD's till 5 months later so i am paranoid and scared you know, and a friend of mine said he saw the girl a couple weeks ago during the five months and said she has a lot of acne all over her face. Well I thought that because she wears a lot of makeup that happens b/c she told me that she stopped wearing it. and I went to the doctor a month later to go get tested and my results came back negative. I was relieved. But knowing me I scared myself to death and was thinking the test could be wrong, and bout a few weeks later I had a boil on my butt, but I am a hairy person so I'm still scared so one day I'm rubbing my neck and I notice a hard lump on the back of my hairline but it can only be felt when I put my neck down. It's still there and today I have different problems which I think are symptoms. My tongue has a white coating on it but i can brush it off. I have pain in my joints, sometimes tingling and burning in differents parts of the body, and acne on my face, especially my forehead so could you tell me if that test could have been wrong or is it all in my head b/c i scare myself all the time.

The tests that are commercially available are extremely accurate, so a negative result is almost certainly correct. As it appears to have been done within a month of the possible exposure, you need to repeat it now, at this later time, to make sure the exposure in question did not lead to transmission of HIV. If this later test is negative, then you can forget about that exposure. Your symptoms are not specific for HIV infection, and I would advise you to go ahead with the testing rather than focus on the symptoms for the time being.