Exactly What Happened When I Didn't Realize I'd Caught Chlamydia

In the weeks leading up to my visit, Id been seeing a woman Id met via a dating site. This was well before Tinder made spontaneously rubbing bits with a nearby stranger normal. At the time, it felt as though Allison and I were doing something pretty wild and seemed to become more comfortable with risk as a result. Over the course of just a few dates, our condom use went from exemplary to sloppy to non-existent.

Id been recently tested for sexually transmitted infections and discovered that Id managed to get the ripe old age of 25 without ever having one. I wasnt terribly surprised by this as, until I discovered that there was a way to meet women that didnt involve trying to start a face-to-face conversation with one, Id had a string of serious relationships. Before eschewing condoms completely, I told Allison that Id been tested and didnt have anything. She told me that she hadnt been tested in several months but hadnt noticed anything was up. She was on the pill and, on the face of it, everything was hunky dory.

Turns out, Allison was in the 70 to 95 percent of women who have chlamydia and dont develop symptoms. Just hours after I arrived in the little English town in which I grew up, it transpired that I was in the estimated 10 percent of men who do develop chlamydia symptoms. Id convinced myself, however, that there was no way I could have picked up a sexually transmitted disease from Allison and instead thought that I had a urinary tract infection.

A previous girlfriend experienced UTIs pretty regularly, especially after longer or more boisterous sex sessions. When this happened, she decamped to the bathroom with a magazine for hours at a time, emerging only to swig cranberry juice and tell me that she felt as though she was pissing shards of glass. Pissing shards of glass is exactly what it felt like when I went to excrete all the gallons of tea I was being served by my British parents my every waking hour and so. I went on a hunt for cranberry juice and a copy of US Weekly, confident that some combination of the two would knock my UTI right out. I should mention at this point that the evidence that cranberry juice-or US Weekly-can clear up a UTI is pretty thin on the ground . But I was as convinced that this would be the cure to what ailed me. In the staid little English town where I was born and raised, there was not a drop of the stuff to be found. That only mattered for the next hour or so because, after that, I started to notice that my penis was leaking something like snot.

Even my ability for wishful thinking couldnt prevent me from acknowledging that this was an STI, not a UTI, and that white-knuckling it through the next week was not an option. (Had my parents had a computer at the time, I would have figured out very quickly that I was likely dealing with either chlamydia or gonorrhea.)

The good news was that there was a sexual health clinic within a 15-minute drive of my parent's house. The bad news was that I didnt drive and needed a ride. Now, there comes a point where the ignominy of asking your mother to drive you to the sexual health clinic is actually better than the searing pain of going to the bathroom, the horror of a leaking penis, and the fear that other unknown symptoms werent far behind.

(I didnt know it at the time, but had I let my condition go untreated, I could have developed epididymitis and wound up with pain, tenderness, and swelling of the testicles.)

My mother made it clear how displeased she was about the burgeoning lifestyle that I was compelled to tell her about. She then informed me that one of her old classmates from high school was a nurse at the clinic. Eventually, she agreed to drop me off there with the caveat that Id have to find my own way home.

Testing for chlamydia has evolved since the turn of the century, but in this instance, the nurse-who knew I was my mothers son at a glance-took a swab of my urethra by scraping an implement along inside of it. Based on my symptoms, she was confident that chlamydia-the most frequently reported bacterial sexually transmitted infection in the US-was the cause and gave me antibiotics that seemed to clear up the infection within 36 hours of my taking them.

With the diagnosis confirmed, I knew that I would need to tell Allison immediately. Though my chlamydia symptoms were no walk in the park, in women they can be much more serious. A pamphlet I was given at the clinic explained that, left untreated, chlamydia can spread to the uterus, fallopian tubes, and cause pelvic inflammatory disease. This can lead to infertility, chronic pelvic pain, and even a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy.

I met with Allison within a few hours of arriving back Stateside and advised her that she had ought to get checked without delay. Somewhat shocked, she confirmed that she would and, for reasons lost in the mists of time, that was the last time we spoke.

In the prevailing years, Ive tightened up my safer sex game and, based on the results of twice yearly testing, I havent contracted an STI since. Thats particularly good news because, since this rather embarrassing visit home, chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics.

According to the World Health Organization , some recently detected STI strains dont respond to any available antibiotics at all. This alarming new intel means that best course of action is, as always, to use condoms with a new partner until you get tested.