greytide
Forum Replies Created
The important part of your post is the years of avoidance. A self collected sample you will actually do is enormously better than a perfect sample you will not. That is the whole argument for it.
Worth ringing and asking what sites they sampled as well as what infections they looked for. Four infections from a urine sample only is a different result from four infections across three sites.
If you are worried specifically, say so at a future appointment rather than carrying it silently for years. There are questions a clinician can ask that narrow this down a lot, and most people find the answer more reassuring than the internet.
I would gently suggest dropping the question. I spent a month on it, got nowhere that was defensible, and the only thing it produced was an argument.
Get a full screen while you are at it. Lice are their own problem but their presence means there has been the kind of contact where other things travel too.
Eyelash involvement in a child is a specific situation that needs assessment rather than treatment at home, for reasons beyond the lice themselves.
Both treated, both abstain until the course is finished, then move on. I have watched this exact question do more damage than the infection.
Availability varies a lot. It is in US guidance, some other countries are more cautious, mostly over what routine antibiotic use does to resistance in the longer term.
Ask your own clinic what they offer. If they do not, that is not them being obstructive, it may simply not be recommended where you are yet.
The more useful thing to know is the direction that actually matters day to day: oral to genital transmission during oral sex is a real route, and it is how a lot of genital HSV-1 happens. Avoiding oral sex when you have an active cold sore does more than any amount of hand wringing about yourself.
It is also worth checking the diagnosis is solid before you build a disclosure habit on it, particularly if it came from a borderline blood result with no symptoms ever. Several threads here have ended with the original result not holding up.
The other reason it matters is surveillance. Throat infections are where reduced susceptibility tends to show up first, so the follow up swab is partly about you and partly about catching resistance early.
Go to the appointment. It is a short swab and it is the one that actually confirms it has gone.
For anyone reading later: new visual symptoms or hearing changes with a syphilis diagnosis are the two that get you seen immediately. Please do not sit on either.
For anyone reading later: it usually gets there by hand contact. Washing hands after touching the genital area during an active infection is the boring prevention nobody mentions.
I shaved. It did nothing except make the itching worse. Learn from me.
This was us. I was treated, he wasn’t because he had no symptoms and assumed that meant he didn’t have it. He did. Both treated, no recurrence since.
Push. Trichomoniasis very often produces no symptoms at all, particularly in men, so feeling fine is not evidence of anything.
An untreated partner is the standard explanation for symptoms coming back weeks after successful treatment. This exact thing has its own thread on this forum more than once.
No. Do not put lice lotion near your eyes, this is one of the few hard nos in this whole area.
Eyelashes are handled differently. The usual approach is a bland ophthalmic ointment applied to the lash line over a period of days, which suffocates them rather than poisons them. Your pharmacist or clinic will tell you what is appropriate where you are.
For the common chlamydia regimens there is no specific alcohol interaction of the kind people imagine. The advice you see is mostly general caution rather than a documented reaction.
Ask your own pharmacist about the exact thing you were given, because they know what you are holding and it takes thirty seconds.
The most common explanation by a distance is that a partner wasn’t treated at the same time, so you cleared it and then got it back from them. Treatment failure exists but it’s much rarer.
Worth asking directly whether your partner completed treatment rather than just started it, and whether you both waited the period the clinic told you to wait before having sex again. That gap catches a lot of people out.
Short and factual works better than a build up. What you have, that you are on treatment, that you are undetectable and what that means, and an invitation to ask questions.
The build up is what makes it land as a confession. Delivered as information, most people take it as information.
Go back. Not to panic, but because there are a few different explanations and they need different responses: irritation that’s still settling, a second infection that was never treated because it wasn’t tested for, or reinfection from an untreated partner.
Persistent symptoms after treatment is one of the situations where clinics actually want to see you again. It isn’t a nuisance visit.
Worth remembering what you are actually doing. Untreated syphilis over years is one of the genuinely serious outcomes in this whole area, and an awkward message can prevent it.
There is a genuine association in the literature between smoking and both persistence of HPV and recurrence of warts. It is not the only factor and stopping is not a treatment, but it is one of the few things on the list you can actually act on.
Wanting to understand rather than be reassured is a good instinct and not a slight on him. Go with him to one of his appointments if he’s open to it and ask his team directly. Hearing it from a clinician settled it for me in a way that reading couldn’t.
Worth also asking about PrEP if it would help you personally feel safer. Some people use it belt and braces even in this situation.
It does make a difference, and it is generally the better news of the two.
Genital HSV-1 typically recurs much less often than genital HSV-2. Some people get a first episode and then very little afterwards. HSV-2 genitally tends to be the more frequently recurring one.