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When you notify partners, say which site. Otherwise they book a standard screen, give a urine sample, and the thing that matters never gets sampled.

Do keep the review appointment rather than deciding for yourself whether it is working. If it genuinely is not, there are other options and switching is normal.

Ring the clinic, because this is exactly the kind of question they answer in thirty seconds and the answer depends on where in the course you are.

The general principle is that a couple of missed doses spread out is usually managed by continuing and finishing the full number of doses rather than starting again.

Reactive means the screening test picked something up and further testing is needed to say what. It is not the same as a confirmed diagnosis, and it is also not nothing.

For some infections the screening test is deliberately set to be very sensitive, which means it occasionally flags samples that turn out negative on the confirmatory test.

If he will not go, ask your clinic what they can do. Some services can arrange treatment for a partner without them attending, and where they cannot, partner notification can at least get him a letter telling him to be tested.

You understood correctly. It is a recognised approach for certain bacterial infections where the partner is treated without a separate consultation, usually because getting them through the door is the bottleneck.

Whether it is available depends entirely on where you are. Some places do it routinely, some do it in limited circumstances, some not at all.

The headlines are usually about a single unusual isolate somewhere in the world. Real, worth watching, not a description of the average appointment.

What is not normal and does need a call: a rash, numbness or tingling, or severe vomiting that stops you keeping doses down. Those are different from feeling generally grim.

Do mention them if you are being assessed, mainly because they help confirm the diagnosis rather than because they need anything doing.

Also worth remembering that a positive test at three months does not automatically mean someone cheated. It usually means the treatment window was not respected on one side. Have that conversation before the other one.

The second application, if your product calls for one, is part of completing treatment. Not after the first round.

Worth raising with your clinician rather than treating as settled. The honest summary is that it probably does not help, not that quitting will clear them.

Which is exactly why PrEP programmes include regular STI screening as part of the monitoring rather than as an optional extra. The people who designed the programme assumed this question would come up.

Several things at once. HIV testing regularly, because taking PrEP while unknowingly positive is the situation the schedule exists to prevent. Kidney function, because that is the main thing to keep an eye on with some regimens. And routine screening for other infections, since PrEP does nothing about those.

Describe the old reaction precisely. Feeling sick on a course years ago is a very different conversation from hives or swelling, and people label both as allergy.

If you both want the risk lower, daily suppressive treatment for you is the single biggest lever, and it is a reasonable thing to ask for on exactly this basis rather than on outbreak frequency.

Part of the delay is which test gets used. Looking at a sample under a microscope is quick and cheap but misses a lot of cases, whereas the molecular tests are considerably more sensitive.

So months of negatives can mean it genuinely was not there, or that it was never looked for with a test capable of finding it. Worth asking which one was run on your samples, and worth saying plainly if repeated treatment for something else has not changed anything.

One thing the timing conversation usually misses, and it is the one that is actually urgent: if HIV is a possibility and the exposure was in the last three days, that is not a waiting question at all.

PEP has to be started within 72 hours and the guidance treats it as an emergency, so it is a same day call rather than something to schedule. If you are outside that window it stops being an option and everything else here about test timing applies.

Get the date in writing along with your follow up blood test schedule. Those two appointments are the structure of the next year and they are easy to lose track of.

Let us know how you get on if you feel like it. And for anyone reading later: this is the one on this board where waiting to see is the wrong instinct.

The clinic notification service will handle this one too if you would rather not. Ask them to include the site information in the message.

The same logic applies across most of this board. Contacts of gonorrhoea and chlamydia are frequently treated without waiting for their own result.

Plan for the recovery honestly: loose clothing, time off anything physical, and no sex for the period they specify. People underestimate the second week.

Ask the clinic for the specific dates to retest on. Different infections have different windows and trying to hold all of them in your head is how people end up retesting for the wrong thing.

Do not apply the insecticide lotion to broken skin without asking first. Absorption and irritation both change when the skin barrier is gone.

Viewing 25 replies - 1 through 25 (of 26 total)

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