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Panicked again, I am tired

I was emotionally okay this morning. I replied to a few facebook messages from friends and emailed my lecturer to explain about my late reply to her email.

I can't disclose too much here, but I am a research student, my course is research based. One thing, I am not a science student.

So, as I'm doing research, I have a supervisor and I have a thesis to be completed by the end of this year. Progress is not very good as I was pretty much in a bad mental state in the past month or so. I did tell her about my condition but I did not describe it in detail, merely telling her that I am having some problems. She is a kind lady, thankfully.

After I replied to her email, I started doing some work because I told myself that I needed to resume my work if not I wouldn't be able to complete in time.

But, I don't know how I got sucked into this state of panicking and worrying since afternoon. I have previously read that if a person is infected by HIV and Hep C at the same time, due to some sort of reaction between these two viruses, HIV seroconversion might be delayed. There had been documented cases of this happening.

So, to cut the story short, I made an appointment tomorrow to see a doctor. In Australia, you need a doctor's 'paper' in order to have tests done. So, my main purpose of visiting the doctor tomorrow is to convince her to let me do the HCV PCR Qualitative test to detect the presence of Hep C virus. I hope I will be able to convince her because the standard test used is the HCV antibodies test. But I couldn't wait anymore because the HCV antibodies test has a window period of 6 months! And the PCR test has a window period of less than 4 weeks.

I hope by being sure that I was not infected with Hep C in that risky exposure, I would be able to trust the HIV test results that I have/will receive in the future.

Some notes to myself:
1) Hep C is not so commonly transmitted sexually, as it is normally transmitted through blood-to-blood contact. However, the fact that I had receptive anal sex means that there is still a risk.

2) Hep C may delay HIV seroconversion. In other words, it may delay the production of antibodies. But the current fourth generation test that detects Antigens as well as Antibodies.

I'm going crazy. I don't know how I can stop this and when I will finally have peace.

Comments

  1. U need some break, bryan, after all these're done and u get a conclusive test that really put it off ur mind.

    ReplyDelete

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