"I remember I was online and one of my guy friends from high school said, 'So how's the STD?' or something like that. It really upset me for a long time. It really bothered me that it was something people were talking about and knew about. I hadn't told many people, so he probably found out from [a previous sexual partner].
Sarah* found out she had contracted Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) just weeks before she left home to begin her freshman year at Tufts University. While she was out of the country that summer, her doctor had tried to get in touch with her about an irregular pap smear.
"[My doctor] wrote a letter to my house and put my name on it, and at the last minute, someone put 'To the Parents of' instead of just my name, so the letter went to my mom," she said. "It said, 'You've had an irregular pap smear; you need to come in for more tests.'"
The letter upset both Sarah and her mom. "I didn't know what it meant," Sarah said. Her mother told her to call the doctor for more information - but this only led to more stress for Sarah.
"She told me that I had [HPV], it was never going to go away, I was going to have it for the rest of my life, and I was going to have to use a condom with every partner for the rest of my life," Sarah remembered. "I'd have to use a condom with my husband when I got married. I started crying and freaking out."
Her distress caused her mother even more concern. "It was so horrible," Sarah says. "Of course my mom was upset, wondering why I was so upset, but I didn't want to tell her."
In the end Sarah told her mother about the situation - and found her to be incredibly supportive. "She researched [HPV] and found out that although there is no cure, most people get rid of it within a year," Sarah said. Sarah's mom also discovered that "Seventy percent of sexually active adults have it or have had it" and that "guys can't get tested."
"It was really great that my mom was so supportive and was doing things that I was too upset to do on my own," Sarah said. What was not great, however, was Sarah's realization that her doctor had given her totally inaccurate medical advice. So Sarah sought out a new doctor to perform her cervical biopsy - a doctor who was as miffed by the previous doctor's behavior as Sarah and her mother were.
Going into the procedure, Sarah was nervous. She had heard horror stories about girls who were unable to walk for a week after having the biopsy, and because she was about to leave for a wilderness trip, the threat of side effects loomed. Luckily, though, she didn't have any physical side effects from the procedure and was able to trek up a mountain as planned.
Despite the absence of physical side effects, the disease still infiltrated Sarah's view of the world and herself. Her new doctor gave her a clean bill of health a year and a half after her diagnosis, but for Sarah, feeling "clean" is much more complex than a regular pap smear printout arriving in the mail.
"In my experience, there's this total condemnation and shame built into STDs," Sarah said. "Part of the education is looking at scary pictures of genitals thinking those people are bad people for having that happen to them: 'Don't be a slut; otherwise this is what will happen to you.'"
Even Sarah's own friends were quick to place judgment on her. Soon after she was diagnosed, Sarah confided in a friend from high school who also had an STD: herpes.
"She's had it since she was really young," Sarah said. "She was actually raped when she was 13. I knew she had it before I was ever friends with her. It was a point of gossip - which sucked for her because it wasn't even her fault."
Sarah's compassion for her friend's situation, though, garnered her little in return. "She was like, 'Well, you know, you should have worn condoms; that's all there is to it,'" Sarah remembered. "She was so unsympathetic."
After doing research, Sarah realized that was not in fact "all there was to it."
"I've since learned that it's nearly as transmittable with or without a condom," Sarah said. "Condoms help to prevent it, but even if you're the most responsible person, you still have pretty good chance of getting it."
"You can have a serious boyfriend who's been tested, and even if you use a condom, you can still walk away from that with an STD," she said. "It doesn't mean you're a bad person if you do."
While Sarah was away on her wilderness orientation, she started to notice "things [she] wouldn't have noticed or thought about before." She felt uncomfortable when the other students made jokes about STDs, implying that people with STDs were dirty.
The disease changed the manner in which Sarah views American sexual attitudes. "I've noticed in the media and in a lot of ways this attitude that we have that's a very promiscuous attitude - that promiscuity is OK as long as you use a condom," she said.
"We kind of got a bad deal in the age we live in," she added. "In so many ways, we are expected to be - and want to be, and are allowed to be - so sexual, [but there's] also a double standard in a lot of ways."
Sarah said she is unsure how to improve the current state of sex education in this country. Noting the condom bowls in "every nook and cranny" of Tufts Health Services, she said, "That's great, but at the same time, just because you have a condom doesn't mean it's a good idea to have sex with that person."
"On the one hand, condoms prevent so much," she said. "But on the other hand, they don't prevent everything - that should be in the same sentence, always."
Sarah finds the taboo around STDs to be both frustrating. "[You] hide it from everyone because you don't want people to know, but so many people have it - it seems really stupid," she said.
Her childhood friend's response notwithstanding, when Sarah started to confide in others, she was amazed by how many girls came out of the woodwork and confessed to also having HPV - which led her to consider how many more of the girls she knew might have the disease, but remained undiagnosed.
Sarah also thought about the multitude of guys who could be carrying HPV, but have no idea since they cannot be tested. "It's a massive and crazy thing to think about," she said.
Sarah said she worries about the spread of STDs on college campuses. "Herpes is very prevalent on college campuses, [which] means that things are getting through, with or without condoms," she said. "If AIDS ever [got] into the college pool, [just think] how devastating that would be."
* Names have been changed
