Today is “National HIV Testing Day”, so I’ll give my pitch on HIV testing – which won’t be quite what you hear from others…<\/p>\n
For the most part, the people who die of AIDS these days are people who don’t get tested<\/a> and don’t find out they’re poz until it’s too late for treatments to be effective. There’s no need for those deaths… None whatsoever.<\/p>\n If you’re worried what it will mean to test positive – give up that fear and go get tested. Becoming HIV positive today is not the death sentence it once was. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll die of something else – like old age or in a car accident or something. But that’s not the case if you don’t get tested. Then the chances are you will die of AIDS.<\/p>\n In other words – don’t be afraid of HIV, be afraid of not knowing your poz.<\/p>\n You don’t have to get tested every 3 or 6 months unless you want to. The goal here is to catch your HIV before it starts doing really nasty shit to your body. You’re probably<\/span> fine if you catch it within a year of infection – but definitely don’t wait more than 2 years between tests. There are strains of HIV that are more aggressive than others that need to be treated fairly quickly.<\/p>\n