I am having concerns about contracting hiv. My wife is currently pregnant but we still have unprotected sex and I would hate myself forever if I gave her and possibly my unborn child hiv. Okay so I work at a apartment complex and I have heard rumors that the one guy living there has HIV, 

   Well I had been working in the building he lives in touching all kinds of things, specifically door handles that I know he has touched. I stupidly got a call walked out to my truck without washing my hands wasn’t think and went to squeeze a pimple on my face. It might have been an ingrown hair but I pushed really hard and my fingers slipped and I ripped a piece of skin off my upper face cheek and it started bleeding sort of a lot. I was wondering if there’s any possible way I could get hiv in this way. I searched online and got a lot of different answers such as that I’m certain conditions hiv can live on objects several days. This makes me very worried that I could have possibly touched either a door handle or something else with hiv if the man that has hiv might have been bleeding, touched his blood and then I later touched it. He was home at the time this all happened. I was wondering when it would be safe to get tested or if this an actual risk. 

Ian also wondering if I can continue to have sex with my wife or will I be putting her or my baby at risk.  Let me know if it would be a good idea to start issuing condoms again until I test negative.

I admit I have been sort of overthinking slot of things recently since I found out about the pregnancy but I really don’t want to put my loved ones at risk. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Ps thank you so much for having this question and answer service and for any time you may spend on my question. Thank you.

There is absolutely no chance you have acquired HIV from these events or that you can possibly transmit HIV to your wife. The main reason goes back to the earliest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic:  by the mid-1980s (40 years ago), before HIV was even identified as the virus that causes AIDS, it was 100% clear that nobody is at risk from day to day personal contact with HIV infected people. Without sex, or without direct blood sharing (like by sharing the same needles), the disease was not passed along. The small amounts of blood one may contact in day to day personal dealings (because of contact with persons' cuts, pimples, dripped blood from a wound, a little blood in food they prepared) are not nearly enough to transmit the virus.

I'll also point out that for every person you come across who has HIV (or is rumored to have it), you can bet you have been similarly exposed to ten or more others you didn't know about. Every time you pay at a cash register, are served food in a restaurant, have a haircut, sit next to someone on a bus, etc, etc, you are having exactly the same sorts of contact you describe for the rumored person in your apartment complex. All these events also are zero risk for HIV.

So please do your best to stop worrying about this. You will never be at risk for HIV unless and until you have unprotected sex outside your marriage, or share injection equipment to shoot drugs.

Also, your wife being pregnant, she probably has already been tested for HIV; testing is automatic for all pregnant women. Her test obviously must have been negative or she would have been informed of a positive result. (If not tested yet, she will be soon.) 

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises that all adults in the US be tested at least once for HIV, just in case of a forgotten or unrecognized high risk exposure. So if you have never been tested against HIV, maybe this would be a good time to do it, while it's on your mind. Of course if you do so, your result will be negative. (In case you are interested in the official CDC advice on this, here is a link. Note the second author!) https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5514a1.htm

I hope these comments settle your concerns. Let me know if anything isn't clear. Best wishes for an uneventful pregnancy, a healthy baby, and for your growing family.

HHH, MD

I wish you the best also Dr Handsfield