I'm not sure why you found it necessary to return. Probably you are aware it's your anxiety speaking here; all your current questions have been answered in your discussion with Dr. Hook and/or your previous threads, or the answers should be obvious from those discussions. Why do you doubt the advice you have had from your GP and HIV counselors? Probably they are equally expert in these issues and Dr. Hook and I are. The answers are yes, your test results indeed are absolutely conclusive (with or without the capital letter emphasis); and as Dr. Hook directly said, taking PrEP before the encounter could not have affected the timing or reliability of your test results. (And by the way, the only thing that can or eliminate p24 antigen from the blood is antibody to it:  the antigen component of the test is negative in an infected person, antibody must be present. That's the beauty of the AgAb [4th generation, combo] HIV blood tests.)

So all is well. Do your best to stop worrying. Hang in there with your PrEP program, but with it, you really needn't be so concerned about HIV. I'm not suggesting you should have a cavalier attitude about it -- but don't sweat the trivial details!

Let me know if anything isn't clear. Best wishes --  HHH, MD

It appears you have an inflated perspective on risks of HIV. Here are some figures. If your partner had HIV, from a single episode of insertive unprotected anal sex, your odds of catching it would be around 1 in 1,000 (per CDC). Let's say the possibility your partner has it, despite his testimony, is 10%. Now the chance you were infected is 1 in ten thousand. (Pretty good odds already!) Let's also estimate that instead of PrEP being 95% effective, the late start reduced the chance to "only" 90%. Now we're at one chance in a hundred thousand you were infected. Now let's assume your current tests are "only" 99% reliable instead of 100%. Now the likelihood you have HIV calculates at one chance in 10 million. That's zero for all practical purposes. And some of these estimates are intentionally on the pessimistic side; the chance you are infected probably more like one in 100 million to a billion (you can do the math yourself if you like).

Really, mellow out. I seriously suggest you crack a beer or something similar, make eye contact with yourself in a mirror, tell yourself you don't have HIV, raise the beer and toast yourself with congratulations both for being uninfected and being committed to safe sex, and down the beer. Then go on with your life!

Being celibate on account of all this? Of course not. For most humans, sex is too important to be relegated to non participation; such intents therefore almost never work; and when they do, safety typically is reduced -- because breakthrough episodes tend to be one-off, spontaneous, and without condoms handy. Don't be dumb about all this.