Gonna PEP You Up With My Love

Been a bit quiet the last couple of weeks, I know - sorry about that. I guess after the good result and the slight confusion about what it could mean and the ongoing struggle against trying to pretend I can be a CD4 Sleuth and work out who infected whom because that way madness lies. No, after the high CD4 count, I felt like such a weight was lifted from me, that thoughts of medical intervention, of anything else are all so very far off as to make worrying about the disease utterly risible. My partner and I went to the clinic and had a very breezy chat with a Health Advisor about what would or wouldn't present a risk were it to transpire that he tested negative or of a different strain if, God forbid, he was positive. It wasn't quite at the point of asking whether or not I could cut him and fuck the wound, but we were asking questions about how long the virus remains active outside of the body because, well, putting it bluntly, we like the stuff that carries the virus and want to check about things like if I cum first and then touch him, or finger him, how much risk does that pose (minimal; moderate, respectively).

It was all very healthy and I think both of us felt very responsible for having been, had a lovely chat with the guy at the counter to book ourselves in for a full screen to double-check for any other lurgies that could be lurking (although we'd know by now, surely?) and then walked out, hand in hand, laughing at the stuff that happened.

So, when he went in to talk to a doctor about whether or not he needed PEP for having been inside me for a few seconds, we both felt pretty stupid. It was tense to relive those fifteen minutes of the test, albeit remotely from where I was, half-heartedly, working that day.

He's negative, as of last week, and the doctor recommended that he didn't start PEP for the very minor degree of risk to which we'd allowed him to be exposed. This is a good thing, not just for his seronegativity, but the scare it gave both of us to have to confront the possibility that a moment of reckless passion could have resulted in an entirely different scenario. There'd be no serosleuthing going on there. It would be me infecting him, and I'd find that hard to deal with.

It really is that whole, "You, me and HIV" threesome sometimes.

Tags: PEP, HIV, AIDS, Serodiscordance, Living with HIV, HIV testing, CD4 count, Health scares, Love