How Do You Know If You Have HIV?
The Road to Discovery
Having HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is not an easy thing to deal with. But finding out if you have it may be even harder. HIV lurks quietly in your body for years, even up to ten years, until it fully develops into AIDS. And by then, it's too late. Finding out if you have HIV can only be done through tests.
These are the symptoms of having HIV. After a quick review, you will notice how the beginning symptoms are nothing more than what a normal flu would feel like. This is why many people go years without ever having a clue, and in the meantime they continue with normal sexual habits. The disease is easy to spread and hard to fix.
Initial Stage (Few Days to a Month After Infection
--Fever, headache, sore throat, swollen lymph glands, and rash
Chronic Stage (Years After Infection)
--Swollen lymph nodes, diarrhea, weight loss, fever, cough, and shortness of breath.
Final Stage - AIDS (Around Ten Years After Infection)
-- Soaking nights sweats, shaking chills, chronic diarrhea, shortness of breath, cough, white spots or lesions on tongue and mouth, unexplained fatigue, headaches, distorted vision, weight loss, skin rashes and bumps.
-- Opportunistic Infections: Tuberculosis, Cytomegalovirus (herpes), Meningitis, Toxoplasmosis, Kaposi's sarcoma, Lymphomas.
The point in which you start having Opportunistic Infections is when HIV has developed into AIDS. The body is then unable to fight off normal infections that we all may encounter frequently. AIDS then becomes a battle against those infections. Treatment of HIV will still continue, but a normal life will only be obtained when these symptoms are eliminated.
It is often suggested, if you are sexually active, to get testing for HIV (and all other STDs) at least once a year. (If you live in Albuqueruqe, New Mexico, click here for information about free testing and treatment.)
