Summary
When the HI-virus first enters your body, you may experience a short ‘flu-like’ illness.
This is known as the ‘seroconversion illness,’ and it occurs because your blood is being converted from HIV negative to HIV positive by the production of antibodies.
Everybody infected with HIV will seroconvert at some stage, but only about 80% of patients will notice any symptoms.
Seroconversion usually occurs 1–3 weeks after infection, but could take up to 6 months.
The most common early signs are flu-like symptoms that you’d expect from most 24-hour bugs.
You’ll probably start with a high fever, chills and sweats which may be accompanied by a sore throat and mouth ulcers.
Swollen lymph nodes can appear early on in seroconversion and last for a few weeks or more. After disappearing, they will probably return later on in infection and last for 3 months or more.
Many people experience a ‘maculopapular rash’ (a flat, red skin rash that's covered in raised bumps) in the early stages of HIV infection.
You are 20 times more contagious during acute HIV infection than you are during long-term infection.
This is because the viral load in your blood is far higher during seroconversion than it is at any other stage.
IN EARLY APRIL THAT YEAR OF 1985 I had a flu-like illness with fever, a rash, sore throat and swollen glands. Ten days later Victor came down with very similar symptoms. Doctors could not identify the cause for our illness. They suspected Pfeiffer glandular fever but we both tested negative for it. The cause for our condition remained undetected.
I was not aware of that post-operation crisis. He only told me later. I only knew that I paid the costs for his stay and treatment at Montagu Clinic. A receipt for over a couple of hundred dollars from that time emerged among my papers.
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- They Called You DambudzoA Memoir, pp. 190 - 191Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022