longwayround
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There is no single number because the sensible interval depends on what you are actually doing, not on some universal schedule.
The pattern most services use is roughly annual for anyone who is sexually active, and more often if you have more partners, if you have had an infection recently, or if you are on PrEP, which carries its own testing schedule regardless.
Whichever you pick, expect several rounds and expect new ones between them. That is the normal course rather than a sign the choice was wrong.
The distinction is deliberate. A routine test of cure is recommended for pharyngeal infection because the throat is harder to clear. For genital infection it is not routinely recommended in the same way.
What is recommended for everyone is a retest a few months later, which is about reinfection rather than whether the treatment worked.
Your friend has it backwards. A large share of these infections produce no symptoms at all, which is exactly why screening programmes exist. If symptoms were reliable there would be no need to screen anyone.
Half the threads on this forum start with someone who felt completely fine and tested positive on a routine screen.
Also worth knowing the follow up is a series rather than a single appointment. Typically bloods at three, six and twelve months, sometimes continuing until it is negative or clearly stable.
If your three month result is not what you hoped, that is a reason to keep going with the schedule rather than a verdict.
Early side effects are common and most settle within the first few weeks as your body adjusts. Tiredness and stomach upset are the usual suspects.
What is not a wait it out situation: rash, fever, breathing trouble, yellowing of the eyes or skin, or anything severe. Those are call today.
It is not routine for everyone, so there will be a specific reason in your case. The usual triggers are neurological or eye symptoms, or results that do not behave as expected after treatment.
Ring and ask which of those applies to you. That single question turns this from a vague dread into a defined reason.
If it turns out to be that, you would also want a full screen rather than treating the eye alone. It got there from somewhere.
Knowing the timing in advance genuinely helps. I spent the first two months treating each new one as proof the treatment had failed, when it was just the expected pattern.
Treatment clears what is visible. The virus is still in the surrounding skin for a while afterwards, and that is what produces the next one.
The practical question is how predictable your sex life is.
On demand, sometimes called 2-1-1, means dosing around a specific occasion. It suits people whose exposures are occasional and who know in advance. It also means fewer tablets overall, which is the reason a lot of people switch.
Daily suits people whose sex is frequent or unpredictable, because there is nothing to plan.
Your friend is right. Pubic lice spread through the kind of close contact where other infections also travel, so finding them is generally treated as a reason to check for everything else.
A pharmacy can sell you the treatment but cannot screen you.
Resistance is a genuine and serious problem at population level, and it is largely not your problem next week.
Gonorrhoea has worked its way through several classes of antibiotic over the decades, which is why treatment is now an injection rather than the tablets people remember. Isolates with reduced susceptibility are being found and monitored, but the CDC has said it has not confirmed a US case of treatment failure with the currently recommended therapy.
If you were both treated properly and you both waited the abstinence period your clinic gave you before having sex again, you are not passing it back and forth. There is nothing left to pass.
The loop people describe almost always has one of two causes: one partner did not finish the course, or you resumed sex too early. That gap is where most of these stories actually happen.
The one thing that genuinely raises risk is not attending the follow ups. Everything protective about your situation depends on you going back when they ask.
You do not need to clean the whole house. There is no reason to steam the sofa or shampoo carpets. What matters is items in direct and recent contact with your body: bedding, towels, underwear, the clothes you actually wore.
Same for me, found on a screen before a coil fitting. No symptoms then, none during, none after treatment.
Two things my clinic pushed and I’d pass on: make sure any current partner gets treated at the same time, and take the retest they offer a few months later. That second one isn’t about whether treatment worked, it’s about picking up reinfection from an untreated partner.
Also ask the team about peer support. Talking to someone who was a year ahead of me did more than anything I read.
It’s more common than people realise and it’s exactly why site-specific testing matters. A urine test doesn’t tell you anything about your throat or rectum. If you’ve had that kind of exposure and only one sample is taken, an infection can sit there undetected.
Your friend gave you good advice. I now ask every time rather than waiting to be offered.
Your GP spotted something specific rather than guessing. A rash in those two places is one of the classic signs, and it’s the reason you’re being tested rather than being sent away with cream.
The thing to hold onto while you wait is that this is a very treatable infection, and it being picked up at this stage rather than years later is the good version of this story.