Just Let Me Know Where You've Been

25-year-old living with high-risk HPV since June 2011 (dormant as of Jan 2013!). This is my chance to talk to others with the same virus, help those that I can, and hopefully find others that can help me. Talk to me, ask me questions, be my friend. If you would rather talk via email, my email address is [email protected]. This is a SEX-POSITIVE, QUEER-FRIENDLY blog.

[whaleambergris-deactivated20181]

Can someone explain me what is HPV?

Is it fatal? Can you catch it just by touching it?

[touchme-or-dont]

HPV is a STI (sexually transmitted infection) that is pretty easy to transmit. Mouth contact, genital contact, fluid transmission - all can spread it. With the low-risk, wart strains can be spread from touching, which is why just wearing a condom doesn't always block everything. Really, all forms can be transmitted easily and the best bet is to just protect yourself all of the time. Protection doesn't make anything less exciting or sexy and it keeps you safe. If you do touch with your hands, make sure to wash them before touching yourself or anyone's mouth. Will it guarantee nothing happens? No, but it will help.

[touchme-or-dont]

I have set my yearly pap for June 13 - Friday the 13th. It was supposed to be in July but I'm moving in July and I'm hoping that if things go horribly wrong, I will have some time to get it together with my gyno here. I don't want to have to immediately find a gyno out there but I know there are a lot of trans friendly gynos in Portland so that is who I'm hoping to find. Wish me luck!

[touchme-or-dont]

For the past two days, I have had some intense pains in the area where I believe my biopsy was. My stress level has been at an all time high so I'm trying to tell myself that that's what it is, but I talked to the roommate that was having stomach pains and then found out she had HPV and she said they sound very similar to hers. When she went to the doc, they never said for sure that they were related or what they were, but it did lead to a diagnosis. My coworker just had to get additional procedures for her cervical cancer and she said she's never had these pains. I'm going both ways and I really don't know what to do at this point. Has anyone else had these? My period ended recently so it can't be that but it is in that general area.

[hpvoutlet]

GREAT NEWS!

So recently my dentist has started using new equipment and oral cancer monitoring! I think this is so great especially for the HPV community! I just wanted to let you all know that this type of thing is out there. They use a special light to detect cancer in your mouth. :) It’s something you can ask your dentist about for those concerned about oral HPV.

[touchme-or-dont]

It may not seem like it but I'm very much still around. I seem to not be getting emails when I get messages though, so it takes me forever to realize that anyone is trying to get in contact with me. Feel free to blow up my inbox if I'm not responding and maybe one of those will trigger an email. I've stayed away from posting on here due to an abundance of negative thoughts. I mentioned before that I'm going back to therapy but I have also started going to a psychiatrist for medicine and am currently being treated for anxiety and bipolar disorder, which is a brand new diagnosis for me. Going from no doctors to two doctors has pretty much raised my stress levels to the point of my body starting to revolt again. The spotting and discharge have started again and I'm putting a lot of energy into not thinking about how compromised my immune system might be because of the stress. My insides feel completely dirty most of the time but this medicine gives me cotton mouth so I've been drinking a ton of water, which has, surprisingly, helped me feel a bit cleaner. Always a plus. The roommate is also bipolar and his comes with shopping/spending problems and lots of anger. Mine seems to come with deep, deep depression and hypersexuality. Mix that with my trauma and you get the clusterfuck that my sex life has turned into - needing it like it's an instinct and dissolving into panic attacks once I get it. And all of that is what introduced and kept me with the ex. All in all, I'd say that I'm lucky that I've only ended up with chlamydia and HPV.

[femscinerd]

A commonly-used HIV drug has been shown to kill off the human papilloma virus (HPV) that leads to cervical cancer in a world-first clinical trial led by The University of Manchester with Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) in Nairobi.

Drs Ian and Lynne Hampson, from the...

[touchme-or-dont]

The ex and I are not talking again, officially 2 weeks at this point. I've been basically doing everything possible to keep myself busy but I woke up with cramps that have only been topped by the birth control incident, which has kept me home from work today. Which means I have nothing to keep myself busy at all and am beating myself up. I have somehow made it back around to my health, how I haven't been taking good enough care of myself and how I'm going to let this all get out of control again, about all of the habits that got me to this place. And the fact that I made it known to the ex that this was all starting to cycle again weeks ago and he blew it off. Again. Despite everything. And I feel like such an ass for believing him again. I know that if I talk to my therapist about him, then the HPV stuff will come up and dealing with all of this alone is going to be a nightmare - much worse than before.

[touchme-or-dont]

This blog is 2 today!

I actually kind of can't believe that. But I really have invested 2 years into this and incredibly proud and don't plan on stopping. And on the front, I have become so stressed recently that I have started to spot again, which freaks me out. I ran out of my vitamins awhile ago and they aren't the easiest things to find, since I have to find vegan pills, and now I'm just worried that I've slacked too much on my health. I'm hoping the spotting stops, it's too much like before, and I just need to force myself to get vitamins and take better care of myself. It's hard when I've been as down in the dumps as I have been lately but I've realized as of today that I have got to stop leaning on the ex and just take control of my own recovery and well-being. He is never going to be the support that I need him to be. I will make it somehow. I supported myself before him and even though that got me in a lot of trouble, I can make it work again. One step at a time and one day maybe I won't need his touch or his support. One day this will all be a distant memory.

[touchme-or-dont]

Are the therapy sessions you're doing group sessions with your ex?

No, my therapy sessions are individual sessions and don't physically involve him. But when I told him that I needed to go back, he told me that he knew how rough it was on me and that he wanted to be my support through it. Super sweet, right? But then he sent someone else to check on me, threw his own crisis at me out of nowhere, and then disappeared for a day and a half. I feel like it's a super whiney response on my end but I was really hoping he'd come through for me.

[touchme-or-dont]

Started therapy on Thursday and the ex has already disappeared. What did I expect?

[plannedparenthood]

Someone asked us:

I have received an abnormal pap smear and have been called in for a colposcopy. Is it likely that this is HPV?

Yes - it is likely that the abnormal cells detected from your Pap test are the result of HPV. But no need to freak out yet - there are more than 100 types...

[touchme-or-dont]

I am already starting to regret making this therapy appointment. It's still two days away and I can already feel myself turning into the same person I was around my gyno appointments and my prior therapy appointments. I'm sitting at home, scared out of my mind for no reason, destroying my skin by picking holes into it, and questioning everyone's motives. I was thinking that maybe I'd skip it, hoping the roommate would forget about it, but he got an email reminder this morning. This is going to be a really long, slow process.

[touchme-or-dont]

This horribly, horribly racist girl that I work with thinks we are besties (my guess is because I'm one of the few white girls that sits around us and she doesn't quite catch all of the sass and snarkiness that I throw her way). Anyway, she told me yesterday that she has HPV and that it has come out of dormancy and is now cervical cancer and she's working to get her money and appointments straight so she can try to nip it in the bud. Hers was dormant for about 2 years but she makes it sound like hers was pretty far long before and they had already done some procedures back then. I told her that I had HPV, too, and that mine hadn't gotten that far but to let me know if she needs anything. I don't mind helping out for things like that, but as soon as she opens her mouth about anything else - making fun of people with any sort of "strange name" or making fun of "ghetto people" etc etc - I pretty much go back to cutting her down and/or ignoring her. What sucks worse is that she told me that her younger sister just found out she has liver cancer and I think she's going in for the same surgery that killed a close family friend of mine. None of us knew until after she died how dangerous the surgery was because she didn't want to scare her daughter. And I didn't tell this girl any of that because I'm assuming that things have gotten a bit better over the years and I have no idea the severity of her sister's cancer or surgery. But if it's the same thing...I hope she makes everyone aware of her chances.

[touchme-or-dont]

Since my mental health has been a topic on here plenty of times before, it only seems appropriate that I mention that I am starting therapy again next week. This came about after an...incident with the ex that has pretty much sent me spiraling and cannot be dealt with on my own. And if people in my life knew, nothing good would happen. So I am going to go to therapy, get it all out there, discuss more HPV fears, trauma talk, relationship issues, and just hope that moving in a few months doesn't cut it all short. At 25, these things can't be pushed off any longer. They are gonna be Thursday nights, right after work, which gives me that night and the next two days to recover before I go to work again. But I know people much older than me who haven't dealt with their trauma and I know I'm not far behind them. Will the ex care? Sure, enough to be happy that I'm going but I knew he hates that I will talk about him. He refused to let me say his first name to my last therapist. Now, he has 0 say.

[touchme-or-dont]

There was a lawyer in the town that I went to college named Herb Garfinkel, so a friend and I took to calling our cold sores Herp Garfinkels. I hope that poor man never finds out. This is brought to you by my current Herp Garfinkel.

[touchme-or-dont]

My HPV has been dormant for a year!

It has also been 6 months since I had a pap smear and I still have 6 months to go before I need another one. Which is fantastic, as I doubt that I would actually be able to handle getting another pap done right now. I will take the small blessing that I don't have to add a stressful week of waiting for results on top of everything else going on. I theoretically only have one more appointment with my gyno before I move across the country, only one more time to see her, and then I will have a whole year to find a good doctor in my new town.

Not to mention that I didn't realize ANY of this without someone pointing it out to me! That's a major progression from where I was this time last year. I hope to put more and more space between me and the hectic two years of my active HPV, though I know it will always be in the back of my mind.

[touchme-or-dont]

Help is gladly appreciate it I've been thinking about maybe I have caught and std I'm so scared I've regretted everything

I just saw this in my inbox and I know that it is older because of the other messages surrounding this. I'm hoping that this anon is one of the others that I have talked to but if this is someone else, I am incredibly sorry and please reach out to me again.