Tuesday, May 13, 2008

HIV test

Today I needed to go back to my camp for a HIV blood test because of my return from an overseas exercise. I keep arguing that I had already done an HIV test for my ORD recently; this was really a stupid thing that I was griping about. Can't you be more flexible and take my previous HIV test results without me having to come all the way back for another test?

HIV infection has basically four stages: incubation period, acute infection, latency stage and AIDS. The medics don't even know how the HIV works, or the stages, or the incubation periods. They only know HIV causes AIDS and that's bad. Do they even know what HIV stands for?

The initial incubation period upon infection is asymptomatic and usually lasts between two and four weeks. The second stage, acute infection, which lasts an average of 28 days and can include symptoms such as fever, lymphadenopathy (swollen lymph nodes), pharyngitis (sore throat), rash, myalgia (muscle pain), mouth and esophageal sores.

The latency stage, which occurs third, shows few or no symptoms and can last anywhere from two weeks to twenty years and beyond. AIDS, the fourth and final stage of HIV infection shows as symptoms of various opportunistic infections.

I had already taken my HIV test 3 weeks ago, which is less than a month, which means it's still valid, and the result is negative. So if I were to be tested now, and tested positive, that means the infection would have been in Singapore, and not in the foreign country that I went to for the exercise. And I would have already passed my acute-infection stage, which will have physical symptoms (which of course I would have known before even taking a HIV test.) The way the SAF does things is really stupid.

A HIV test 3 months after the probability of infection, really dumb right. Okay, anyway, this time the medic was better, he managed to draw blood on the second try without penetrating my biceps (as compared to the previous n00b medic), they were unprofessional, joking, laughing, gloating that he managed to draw blood from my tougher veins to the other medic who failed previously, and opening doors/handles with gloved hands and blood samples being held.

Ugh.

Posted by MK at 8:08 PM