tinbird
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Please do not sit with this alone over a weekend. Services deal with exactly this every week and they will not make you wait weeks for the confirmatory result.
Ask the clinic directly what shows up before anything is run. Reception deals with this question constantly and can usually tell you exactly what the paperwork will say.
Paying out of pocket at a walk in clinic is also a legitimate choice and is often much cheaper than people expect for a basic screen.
The thing to focus on now is finishing it. PEP is a 28 day course and stopping early is the failure mode you actually have control over. Side effects in the first week are common and usually settle. If they do not, go back and say so rather than quietly stopping.
If you have genuinely done all of that, stop buying boxes and go in. There are other options a clinician can prescribe, and getting the right one is faster than a third round of the same thing.
It is deliberate, not inconsistent. Throat infections are genuinely harder to clear than genital or rectal ones, and fewer regimens reliably eradicate them.
Because of that, the CDC guidance recommends a test of cure specifically for pharyngeal gonorrhoea, roughly one to two weeks after treatment. For urogenital infection a routine test of cure is not recommended in the same way.
Go in today rather than posting about it. Gonorrhoea can infect the eye and it can be aggressive, which is why it is one of the situations treated urgently rather than with drops from a pharmacy.
Say that you were recently diagnosed. That single sentence changes what they do.
Not strange at all. Chlamydia can infect the eye, usually through contact with infected genital fluids, and it can look like an ordinary stubborn conjunctivitis that does not respond to the usual drops.
Mention the exposure explicitly when you go in. If nobody knows to look for it, it gets treated as a routine eye infection and does not clear.
The location changes things. Warts inside the anal canal need someone to look inside rather than treating what is visible outside, which is why the appointment is different.
Some home treatments are not suitable internally, so the options may be narrower.
The other part is timing. Guidance is generally to avoid sex until you have both been treated and symptoms have settled, not just until you personally feel better. Treating him a month later is not the same as treating him alongside you.
They will also want to test and treat your partner, and they will follow up your bloods repeatedly through the pregnancy rather than treating and forgetting.
It is a real limitation rather than a brush off. Testing in men has historically been less sensitive, and molecular testing is not offered everywhere for that group.
Treating the partner of a diagnosed person without waiting for a test is standard for exactly that reason.
Follow up bloods track a number that’s expected to fall over time after treatment, and how fast it falls varies a lot between people. Slower than hoped is common and is a reason to keep monitoring rather than a sign treatment failed.
The reason nobody in the room was alarmed is that they see this regularly. Ask them directly what they’d want to see and by when, so you have something concrete instead of an open ended worry.
Mine was gone at the next screen. A friend’s took longer. Same starting letter, different timelines, both fine.
The frequent screening isn’t a bad sign, it’s the safety net working.
In most services, yes, you have to have told them there was exposure at that site. They are not going to swab everywhere by default.
Rectal chlamydia is very often symptomless, so if it is not swabbed it is simply not found. A urine sample says nothing about it.
HSV-1 antibodies are extremely common in the general population and most people who have them picked it up in childhood as an oral infection, often without ever getting a visible sore. A positive antibody test tells you your body has met the virus at some point. It doesn’t tell you where, and it doesn’t tell you when.
This is why a lot of clinics don’t include herpes in a standard screen unless you have symptoms. The result frequently raises more questions than it answers, which is exactly where you are now.
Same here, rectal rather than throat, found only because I asked. Worth knowing that throat infections can be a bit more stubborn to clear, so if they offer you a follow up test after treatment, take it.