Dear Sasha, I’m a woman dating a man who has informed me he has genital warts. This dude is all kinds of awesome, so brushing him off because of a mistake he made 10 years ago isn’t an option. I’m worried I’ll end up resenting him if I get warts or start losing my sex drive because I’m worried about catching them.
My doctor suggested I get the HPV vaccine. I have no money but dude has offered to pay for it, if that’s the route I want to go. Because I have only had two partners and have always used condoms, the doctor said I’m “low risk” and that the HPV vaccine “wouldn’t hurt.”
The dude got warts 10 years ago, had them dry-iced off and they didn’t return. We met a few months ago and he went to get tested at a free clinic. They found a spot they thought was a wart and dry iced it off “to be safe.”
He had that same spot over a year ago, and another doctor told him it was a mole. That doctor had also dry-iced it off saying, “just to be safe” and it came back. He was told by that doctor that if it comes back, it’s a mole, and if it doesn’t, then it’s a wart. It came back and stayed the same for a year. From my Googling this seems odd, warts normally come in clusters, no? And wouldn’t they normally go away after a year or multiply?
-Safety First
Dear Safety,
Your letter comes nicely on the heels of a funny exchange I had with Shameless magazine publisher Stacey May Fowles last week at the launch of her book Fear of Fighting (mini early ’90s alt-journo review: Franz Kafka meets Candace Bushnell with a pinch of Peter Bagge). “I love you!” she yelled at me, “You totally changed my life a few years ago with something you wrote about HPV!” then she inscribed my book, “HPV is for everyone.”
This is pretty much the perfect way of classifying this virus. As health care worker Lyba Spring says, “Most people get infected at first intercourse,”so with the kids back at school and probably just wrapping up round one of inebriated promiscuity, let’s start with the basics. “Of the 35 to 40 types of HPV that infect the genitals and reproductive tract, some are high-risk and can, in the presence of co-factors, eventually cause cancer,” says Lyba. “Some are low-risk and can cause genital warts. Most people clear the virus within a year. The majority of people will clear it by the second year. If all-kinds-of-awesome dude had warts and then a spot appeared a number of years later, if it was a wart and not a mole, it could just as easily have been a new infection from a recent partner.”
When it comes to condoms and oral, Lyba says there is some research about the increased incidence of head and neck cancers that, “may be related to oral sex [and HPV] though it’s not a common mode of transmission. Condoms are great at protecting the parts that are covered and the high-risk HPV types mentioned above are often on the shaft and are undetectable for the man. Moreover, they don’t tend to bother him and cancer of the penis is rare. On the other hand, if there is wart virus on the scrotum or thigh, yes a person can get warts.”
Warts are contagious even if they aren’t showing. “That said, dude probably cleared the virus years ago,” says Lyba. As for the HPV vaccine, “Chances are, you have already been exposed to at least one of the four types covered by Gardasil (6, 11, 16 and 18), which is why the free program is for Grade 8 girls.”
Lyba says your Google mole theory, “Sounds right to me. Warts can have a variety of appearances. They can be single or in clusters but they don’t generally come back to the same spot like herpes does.”
Long story short? “When someone gets warts, it’s not the end of the world. The body clears the virus when you have a good immune system. Make sure you have regular pap tests. Again, even when there are abnormal cells, women under 30 tend to fix it with their immune system. When there is a high-grade lesion caused by the oncogenic types like 16 and 18, the cells can be lasered or frozen. Cancer of the cervix is 90 per cent preventable.” If you’re interested in researching Gardasil, here is a critical piece with good links and a spirited comments section: shamelessmag.com/blog/2007/08/big-pharma-wins-again/.
Got any questions for Sasha? E-MAIL: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM |
