babyshan4699

So, we had a pretty uneventful day today at the hospital and so me and the docs talk time was greatly increased. We got to talking about some things he has seen amongst HIV+ ppl and after a long discussion and some sadness I felt for those infected I decided to post some of these things here..
1) Normally those that have swollen nodes during the HIV incubation period, have them in the absence of any other symptom, basically this means its betetr to be sick along with your swollen nodes then to just repeatedly have them, another interesting thing is that the ppl who do have swollen glands, wax and wane with them from the beginning of there ARS period, they do not get them out of nowhere a few yeard down the line

2)Most symptoms of HIV do not appear until after the 8-10 year period, therefore the sunus infections, mout sores, armpit soreness and muscle aches that ppl associate with having been infected are probably due to soemthing else: stress perhaps?

3)Mononucleosis (EBV, kissing dieases) does show many of the same symptoms that ARS seems to have, however, Mono last significantly longer and actually will always be in a person it is just dormant. The symptoms associated with Mono can last anywhere form a few weeks to a few years and are often triggers for some other auto immune disease such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, etc.... (these disease are also associated with making someone tired, have flu like symptoms, swollen glands and of course muscle aches)

4) testing after one possible exposure is recommended but at teh time of counseling it is usually made pretty clear that your chances of testing positive are very miniscule exspeically in the absence of ARS symptoms, blood during the exposure, sex with an at risk person and Anal sex. however even with these risks present the chance is still much slimmer then those considered high risk.

5) for all you hetero's worried. Vaginal secretions are a strong barrier against infection as is a circumsized male penis, why? well because most times the penetrator of sex is at the least possible risk of having anyhting enter his body, the small opening of the penis is extremely difficult to be a passageway for the virus. Even in homosexuals the penetrator is unlikely to become infected after a one time exposure just because the passageway is pretty minut.

6) As for the presense of menstrual blood. most of the time menstrual blood is less of blood and more of tissue (remember from like 6th grade girls!) and the blood that is present is often already dead, therefore the white cells are dying along with it, basically this does not really propose much more of a risk then its absence unless the male is bleeding in some way too.

7) unfortunately this disease has discrimatory characteristics and is much more prevalent in the black and latino communiteies then in the caucasion ones, in my city alone 74% of HIV/AIDS patients were black and 17% were latino, a meer 8.5% were white and a very small percentage were of other ethnic backgrounds.I do live in a large U.S. city and the hosp I work in happenes to be in a homosexual community, most of our patients are Gay, but not just gay, they are gay and black, we have had just 4 women in the hospital in the past 6 months who were HIV + 2 of them were black and IV drug users and the other two were latino and partners of Iv drug users and bi sexuals these two women were the only women in the past 6 months to have HIv and be pregnant and only one of them delievered an HIV+ baby. This baby was our 10th baby born + and all of the babies born + were african or latino. I should note that we have the most deliveries in the city.