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I was diagnosed with HSV 2
more than three years ago. I slept with this guy
who is now my husband not too long after we started
dating. The sex was
great and I had the I'm-in-love-life-is-great
euphoria.
Until ... three days later, I
woke up to go to the bathroom and peed out razor
blades. I thought that I was chafed from a night of
hot sex, but the pain lasted three more days until I
took a little look with the mirror. I saw these
white
sores and a red, swollen knish (Yiddish for the
female genitalia).
Somewhere in my subconscious,
I knew it was herpes, but this loud, deluded
voice in my head said "You are a nice Jewish girl.
Nice Jewish girls don't
get herpes." HaHaHaHaHa. I called my doctor and
said I had a bladder
infection because I was too embarrassed to say why I
really needed to be
seen. When I went to my appointment, I peed more
razor blades into the cup,
put on that nightgown thing they make you wear and
sat my tokus on the
crinkly paper on the examination table to wait for
my doctor. She came in
and said, to my utter surprise, "You have a bladder
infection."
She drew a pen from her pocket
and began writing a prescription for an antibiotic.
I said, "wait a minute. There are these sores..."
She went on to look at my holiest of holies and said
that dreaded sentence: "I'm afraid you have herpes,
dear." My brilliant response: "No way." I wanted
to shout to her
that NICE JEWISH GIRLS DON'T GET HERPES! Well,
apparently, they do.
So, I rattled around through life with a tremendous
depression. I took my Valtrex (I thought I would
die having to hand that prescription in to the
pharmacy) and the sores and pain were gone within
two days. What I was left with was the feeling that
my life was over, that if my boyfriend who is now my
husband, and I broke up, I would be doomed. I
envisioned a lonely life with
my two cats and a tainted knish. My then boyfriend
was devastated by the
diagnosis. He had never had an outbreak and had
tested negative for other
STDs. He doesn't really talk about it , even though
I have tried to tell
him how depressed I felt.
I think it is not such a big
deal to him now. He did offer me one piece of
comfort, however. He said that life was too short
to worry about some stupid little skin condition
that it is treatable and non-life-threatening. I
think he is right, and when I feel depressed about
it, I try to remember his words. I am very lucky in
that I haven't had an outbreak since the initial
outbreak (knock on wood three times).
I hear a lot of people talking
about herpes and STDS and I realize how much
ignorance there is in the world and I have decided
that my mission is to educate the world and take a
little chunk out of the stigma surrounding STDs. I
work in the mental health field and one of our
clients thought that perhaps he had herpes. He was
devastated and really needed the support of the
staff in our program.
My co-workers would band
together and talk about how disgusting it was and
how they would absolutely die if they had it and how
this client was stupid to have unprotected sex. I
was incensed! I reminded them that about 1 in five
people have herpes, that the number of people with
STDs increases when you consider other diagnoses and
that their discussion could very well offend someone
and hurt their feelings. I didn't have the chutzpah
to tell them that it was my feelings they were
hurting! I then asked them if they ever had a white
painful sore in their mouths. "Yeah, so what?" they
said. "Well, guess what! Those sores are Herpes 1,
a very close relative of genital herpes."
"REALLY?" "Yup." I personally don't understand why
oral herpes carries very little stigma, why we even
have cute little names for it like cold sore or
ulcer, when the genital kind is just plain old
herpes.
I never hear anyone say, "Oh,
I'm having a herpes outbreak in my mouth today."
Even Dear Abby needs to get a life. This poor woman
wrote to Dear Abby to say that after her husband
died, she had sex with an old friend and
developed genital herpes. She was in her 50's at
the time and was beside
herself with shame. Abby's response was "be sure to
always use protection
to avoid a lifetime of pain, loneliness and
embarrassment." HUH? It was
almost as if she were using this woman's story as a
way to chastise the
public and tell them "Don't wind up like this
woman. Your life will be over
if you wind up like this woman."
I wrote to Dear Abby to say
that I felt she should have offered some words of
kindness and support as well as the very obvious
reminder that it is important to use condoms (which,
as we know, is not a full-proof guarantee against
herpes). I reminded Ms. Dear Abby that the
emotional recovery from the diagnosis is harder than
the physical recovery and that people will continue
to avoid being open and honest with prospective
partners as long as stigma exists. That was very
cathartic.
I have decided that I would
like to educate people and bring comfort to those
out there that suffering quietly. There are so many
of us out there, and my husband is right: why let a
treatable, non-life threatening skin condition
define our lives? I'm in school to be a nurse right
now and hope that I can bring comfort and hope to
other people. There is life after herpes, and even
if I were single now, I feel as if any man who would
reject the cool, wonderful, smart, beautiful person
that is me is not worth even a second of my precious
time. If you would like
to email me directly,
Email me Here | 