I crawled out of bed, which has been my home non-stop for the past two days, to write this, as it has been burning to get out for some strange, exhibitionist, narcissistic, self-indulgent reason.
This entry has been left unprotected as a public service announcement of sorts. I wrote it for someone’s zine, anyway, so exposition will be inevitable if she publishes it.
On Saturday night I had another date with a guy that I quite like. I met him online in December and it is January 14th now. When we have been together, I have managed to successfully keep him out of my pants, and this has involved no maneuvering or hard feelings or required any explanations. He has been quite mature about the whole thing (and here I can see a few readers laughing because they know just how mature he is, but lordy, that be another damn essay) and has not questioned me at all.
This past Saturday night I happened to have a hole in the crotch of my vinyl trousers, and while we were fooling around he found it. He slipped his fingers in and I figured, it\’s okay, just keep your pants on, Cassandra, and there won\’t be an issue. After awhile he slid his fingers back out. I did not even notice what he did with his arm and the next thing I knew his fingers were in his mouth. Oh shit! Oh shit! His hand quickly moved back down my stomach to the top of my plastic and began to slide under, but I managed to reach for his hand, shake my head and say \”No.\” The question was finally asked, \”Why not?\” It was time for The Talk. I hesitated, then looked away, staring at the wall, out the window, at the stereo. \”It\’s something you don\’t want to tell me.\” No shit.
See, I have HPV.
Human papillomavirus. The most common, contagious and least preventable of all sexually transmittable diseases. One out of four sexually active people between the ages of eighteen and thirty have it, but most never know it because most strains are invisible. There are around thirty strains. It is possible to have several strains at once. At best, you never show symptoms. What symptoms? Genital warts and lesions. Yeah — yum. That is only the half of it.
Some strains of HPV develop into cancer — cervical cancer is the most prevalent but there are now studies that show it can also cause cancer the uterine cervix, as well as anal, penile, vaginal, vulvar, oral and respiratory cancer. It can even cause warts to grow on your lungs to the point where your lungs will be so blocked that doctors will not be able to put a tube down your throat so that you can receive oxygen. The cancers are treatable but many are lethal. There are 4,000 cervical cancer deaths in the United States alone every year, and cervical cancer is almost always caused by HPV. This is why it is utterly important that women get Pap smears as soon as they become sexually active — to make sure they are not developing cancer.
One can not show any of the symptoms of HPV for years and then suddenly develop the warts out of seemingly nowhere. They often flare up due to stress, friction of the genital area, sex with a partner who has HPV, smoking, medication changes, diet changes and sometimes simply just because they feel like it. There are topical solutions available by prescription only to treat the warts, but sometimes a doctors visit is necessary to have them medically removed by cryogenics or burning them off with acid. Lesions are always removed in this manner. It hurts like all hell and leaves scars.
Obviously, this is a disease that is transmitted through oral sex as well as penetration which is why it is utterly important to always practice safe oral sex. Condoms do not prevent this disease because it is passed through skin to skin contact of the mucous membranes, which means that you can pass it from your genital, anal and mouth area to someone elses\’, but that you can not get it on your hands or other places on your body.
I only learned how serious all this was about two and a half months ago. It changed my life. I thought my life was fairly over when I found out and I went to some fairly drastic lengths because of that. One of the results was I stopped having sex, or rather, I stopped the sort of lifestyle where I would meet someone, get into bed with them whenever (be it two hours or two months later), tell them \”By they way, I have HPV — no, not HIV, HPV,\” and when they would ask what that was, shrug casually and say \”The disease that causes genital warts.\” By telling I was absolved; by acting flippantly, they asked no questions and proceeded as eagerly as we had started.
I did not know any better.
One would think that simply saying \”I have genital warts\” would be a deterrent to most people, and frankly, it was to quite a number, but I still found a few who were more than willing to fuck me, or at least do any number of other sexual acts with me. I have to admit that though I clung to those people sexually — they were my rare open arms, or rather, beds with the sheets pulled down in a world with the bedroom doors slammed in my face — I lost all sexual respect for them the moment I told them and they proceeded otherwise. What the hell was wrong with them, I would think to myself, that they would want to subject themselves and all their future partners to something as nasty as genital warts? Even when I did not know how dangerous it was, I still considered it to be a terrible thing on a superficial level. After all, warts are not pretty, let alone sexually attractive, and genital warts can be quite painful. Take it from someone who knows.
I do not have contact with any of the people I was with last summer or autumn, except one. I am in the uncomfortable position of having had that one person develop into one of my closest friends. Though our interactions are no longer sexual, we see each other frequently. Every time I see him I am faced with and reminded of the fact that I exposed him to this horrible, life threatening disease, and that he is, in turn, exposing other women. I have not found the ovaries to tell him yet. I do not know how I will ever manage, though I know I need to.
I know I ought to go back throughout my sexual history and inform all my partners that I have exposed, or at least as many possible. I only learned I have HPV this past June, the day before my twenty-first birthday. I have, in fact, informed all my new partners since then, however if I remember correctly I had my first high grade wart in March of 2000. I remember because I had just developed it a few days before the last time my ex-fiance and I had sex for the last time, and I would not let him go down on me because I was embarrassed.
I did not tell him about it. I did not tell anyone about it. I did not go to the doctor. I did not know what it was! I thought at best I had knicked myself really badly while shaving and that it had swollen up \”worse than usual\” (usual turned out to be, I found out years later, low grade warts that were flaring up when I would shave and then have sex with my then-boyfriend), and that at worse it was a really bad pimple as the result of the massive stress I was under at the time.
Yes, I was fucking naïve. What do you want? I was eighteen and dumb — how smart could I be, I was engaged to a heroin addict, for chrissakes and was living a horrible lifestyle myself. At any rate, I had never learned about HPV in sex education at school. Genital warts they had taught about, sure, but not that they lead could lead to cancer and not that they were so prevalent. We were also never shown pictures of STDs in sex ed, and the words they used were sparse, not descriptive and unhelpful. Besides, I was too busy falling asleep in class when I bothered to show up, and I thought I already knew everything there was to know about sex because I was having it… oops. Yet another example of the school system letting a kid slip through the cracks.
Another case of my life slipping through the cracks is the little issue of whom I actually caught HPV from. Actually, that is more like my life taking a nose dive off the fucking crack. The first two people I had consensual sex with I was with until I was five months shy of eighteen. I had two non-consensual partners before that, but had not shown any symptoms. I had been in long term relationships for almost three years at that point and said to myself time to have some goddamn fun! I had already developed a crush on a sweet but notoriously promiscuous guy in the Pittsburgh area, so I went home with him for a weekend as soon as I had broken up with my last boyfriend.
I waited until I was in the car on the way to his house before I asked him how many partners he had previously had. The number was in the sixties. This did not bother me. I asked if he had been tested. He said yes. What I failed to ask was if he has tested positive for anything or if he had ever had anything or had ever shown symptoms of anything. Oh well. My poor phrasing. Again, young and stupid, but it was good enough for me, so we bought condoms and proceeded.
About two months and four partners later, none of whom I checked the sexual history on, I developed low grade warts. Another ten months and that was when I had my first high grade wart. Any number of these people could have infected me with any number of strains, but my bets are on the highest risk partner.
My boyfriend from when I was diagnosed asked me if I would be mad at the person who infected me if I found out who it had been. He was furious with me because I had unknowingly infected him, and I suppose he was trying to feel justified in his rage. Truthfully, I would not — I really would not. My body is my own responsibility and by entering into sex I am handing its well being over to another person (and I am not saying this in a \’woman as a submissive person in a sexual act\’ manner — I think that all partners hand their well being over to their respective partners when they enter into sex, regardless of gender). It is my responsibility to make sure the person I am handing my body over to is healthy. If I do not ask and I become infected, then I should not get upset that they did not tell me something they might not have known in the first place. It is always my responsibility to take care of myself. Just like it is my responsibility to keep from spreading my disease now.
I had The Talk with the guy while lying there on his couch. I had to sit up at one point because I was crying. I am fed up with this situation, but there is nothing I can do about it. It has been almost three months since I have had sex, and that is a long time for me — a really long time. It has been almost three months and I am afraid I will never be able to have sex again.
The transmission of every other STD can be prevented, even though there are always risks. Not HPV. HPV is basically always transmitted eventually. I have the high grade form of the disease. My cunt is a fucking lethal weapon, pun perhaps intended. Who is going to want to touch me, fuck me, lick me, love me, ever again with the knowledge that they, too, could get this disease, and they, too, could get cancer, and they, too, could die?
I did not say that to this guy, not in so many words. I managed to keep my tears in check and simply said \”I am afraid I will never have sex again\” to explain why I was crying. He told me that was nonsense and questioned me for a good half an hour about treatments, cures, prevention, alternatives. This guy was either really desperate to get in my trousers or likes me enough to make an effort. At some point I said something about how no one ever wants to have anything to do with me once they find out I have HPV — that is it, the date continues for about another half hour but then \”it\’s late and I have to get up early in the morning\” and then I never hear from them again — and he told me that was ridiculous and he was not just going to \”drop me like a hot coal\” just because I have HPV.
I did not believe him when he said we would make plans for this coming weekend, I figured that I would never see my Circuits of Steel CD again, and that when he told me to keep in touch it was just one of those things people say, but I called him tonight anyway, just for the hell of it, just to make sure. He did not answer the phone, so I left a message. I figured that would be it.
He called me back. We talked for thirty minutes and made plans for Saturday night.
I still do not think I will ever get to have sex again, but I have a little hope now that someone might love me again one day, though I do not think it will be this guy. Some day, though, someone. And hey, well, maybe I will find someone with the same lethal strains of HPV and we can worry about cancer together while we boink our brains out, though that seems too much to even hope for.
Women can get tested for HPV by having a Digene Hybrid Capture test done, which is done in the same manner as a Pap test and can be given along with it. Most insurance companies over the DHC.
From Dr. Joe Glickman\’s Health Science Report:
The diagnosis of genital warts in men usually requires (1) a visible characteristic wart, (2) a biopsy of a non-characteristic wart, or (3) a Digene test of a biopsy specimen or a penile urethral swab. A urologist is the proper specialist to examine men for genital warts.
Vinegar is sometimes used to identify areas of HPV infection. It is used in a 5% acetic acid concentration as white vinegar available in most pharmacies. Vinegar misses 78% of HPV infections, but when whitening occurs on the skin after application of vinegar, it very accurately suggests HPV 90% of the time. In other words, there are many false negatives (low sensitivity) but few false positives (high specificity) with this test.
I urge everyone who has ever been sexually active with more than one partner or who has had a partner who has been active with more than one other person, to be tested once a year and to be keep a watchful eye out for any raised or discolored skin areas in the genital or anal regions. If this occurs, please see a doctor immediately.
