I got what is called an acute infection. Some people get it, others don't.

For me it started with GI pain. Like stomach cramps that got progressively worse over the next day. At the same time, my eye began to become really painful and turn red. My fever rose to 104.3 degrees F. Around that time I started having trouble standing. The worst part of it all was the GI pain. At its worst I could actually feel the food I'd eaten tracing its way through my organs, so I could feel the path of the GI tract. I switched off between, Tylenol and ibuprofen, trying to keep the fever down. I took it with water and pepto so it wasn't as painful. After I started taking the fever reducers the fever went down to about 100 and stayed there for a week or two. The GI pain lasted that long too, I found the exact arrangement of pillows to minimize the pain as I digested food. I also had a lot of random joint pain, weird things like my teeth hurting. Swollen lymph nodes.

One of the weirder symptoms was dry mouth. After two weeks all the symptoms went away. The dead giveaway was the HIV rash. It was all over my chest and neck. Right when I saw that I knew what it was. Not everyone gets the rash or an acute infection, but some people get an acute infection bad enough to put them in the hospital. Over the course of the infection I lost 25 lbs. Now I'm undetectable and other than constantly worrying about insurance, I'm fine.