That said, you are right that your concerns clearly have little or no basis in science. Oral exposure to HIV is almost never a risk:  performing oral sex on an infected man, with ejaculation in the mouth and swallowing infected semen, carries an infection risk of roughly 1 in 10,000. That's equivalent to giving BJs to infected men once daily for 27 years before transmission might be considered likely. Also, when babies are nursed by infected mothers, only around 15% become HIV infected after 6 months, swallowing a few ounces of HIV inected milk every day. And saliva never transmits HIV -- in fact, saliva kills the virus. Finally, blood itself is little or no risk of swallowed. For example, people who perform oral sex on HIV infected menstruating women are not known to have been infected themselves.

The scenarios you mention are outlandish, but I think you know that (intellectually):  the possibility that the valet would have taken a sip of your water is of course very unlikely, and the notion that he might have ejaculated into the bottle of course is ridiculous. But you know that. All I can add is that IF such things happened, you still would be at no risk of HIV. The same is true of other blood borne diseases, such as hepatitis B or C. There also would be little or no risk of any other STI.

So I recommend you do your best to stop worrying about HIV or other infections in this circumstance, and that you not be tested for HIV or any other infection. And given your self-professed OCD -- and in the spirit of my opening comments -- I will caution you that there is little point in asking about any "what if" or "could I be the exception" sorts of questions. You can be 100% certain that there are no scenarios you will think of that would change my basic advice to not worry and not be tested.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD

Thank you very much for your extensive reply, I truly appreciate it, and the site. Yes, I know I suffer from severe clinical OCD. In order to close this chapter for good, and since I have a right for a one more question, I would ask you this: can HIV virus even be transferred from a positive person - to inanimate object - to another person? Since I have this precious chance of having your ear, I would like to finally rest assured and give myself a break. I am NOT a sexually active woman at all, so what would be the chances ever for me to get infected in a normal environment (inanimate object, a  superficial scratch from my lady hair stylist and similar everyday activities). I had numerous tests over the years, many of them done due to my  abnormal fear that I can "somehow" catch it from normal daily activities. Thank you again , I am truly grateful.

Not being sexually active means you will never catch HIV -- assuming you also are not a needle-sharing drug user. You need have absolutely no worreis about HIV (or other STIs) from day to day contact with other people. It simply does not happen.

Medical scientists usually are loathe to say "never" or "always". When I say "little or no risk of any other STI", I mean the same as for HIV:  I can envisions hypothetical scenarios in which it could happen, but for practical purposes such transmission has not been known to occur. What the the circumstances in which a contaminated object MIGHT transmit HIV or other STI? Imagine things like sex toys, shared by persons within a minute or two (before fluids have time to dry), when one person is infected -- e.g. after the toy was in an infected person's vagina and then entered another's vagina or anus. But as for day to day non-intimate contact between people in the normal course of human interactions, you can consider yourself to be at zero risk.