Expert: Kristen Brannock, MPH - 11/21/2005

Question
I am 23 years old, and have two small children.  I was recently assaulted and they cannot find my assailant.  I do know quite a few details about this man, and was hoping that someone could tell me my risk factor of becoming infected after the assault, but none of the doctors I have seen are willing to give me a ballpark.  Can you?
He is about 30-something.  Calls Minneapolis home.  Is originally from Germany.  A pilot. He strangled me and raped me vaginally without a condom, but someone heard the struggle and found me, he did not have an opportunity to ejaculate.  He also had not enterred me anally with his penis, just his finger.  He is bisexual, also.  To my knowlege, in his profession, he is tested frequently for drug use...so I am assuming he does not use intavenous drugs.
I have been on the CDC website and there are many statistics regarding age, gender, city, all that stuff....so I was thinking it was possible to give me an idea if my test could come out positive....if I should prepare myself or rest easy seeing as it will be a few months before my husband and I know for sure.  
I am being treated profalactivly for HIV/AIDS, and took all of the one shot pills for the pleathera of other STD's.  But, I need an honest answer.  Even if it is bad news.  The fear of the unknown is killing me.  The sooner I know, the sooner I can keep moving one way or the other.
I am scared, quite honestly, please let me know if you can help me.

Sincerely,
Mother of Two

Answer
I am so sorry to hear about what happened to you. The assault is bad enough without having to worry about your health. I'm afraid that I cannot give you much more information than your doctors have. They would know more than I would since I am not a doctor. I can tell you that since he did not ejaculate that is a good sign. Pre-seminal fluid can transmit HIV too though which is a concern-but the likelihood with that is smaller than had he ejaculated. Taking the HIV prophylaxis is a good sign since it may work to keep you from contracting it if in fact you were exposed.

I know the wait is extremely hard-I have been there as well. The window period for HIV is 1-6 months but only a small percentage of the population take as long as 6 months to seroconvert. You can always test at a month (or 2) post-possible exposure and then again later. Even though it would not be definitive, it could help put your mind at ease to know you are passing each month without seroconverting. You could also look into having someone test you for the actual virus and not the antibodies. It is not common to test for the virus because it is expensive but there may be a way to get such a test and this would shorten the window period remarkably. You could also look into "blood-pool" testing. I know that North Carolina does this testing now and the window period is shortened to about 2 weeks. I'm not sure about other states though. I'm sorry but that is about all I can tell you. I wish you luck with your recovery and the coming months.