How I Recover My Happy Life from HPV

I had always been living an unhealthy carefree lifestyle where I went from parties to parties. I was always looking for ways to get drunk on the weekends. I figured it was college so I slept around a lot with no holding back.  Little did I know that outrageous lifestyle of mine would one day alter how I live for the rest of my life.

It was a Saturday that I decided to shave my genital area. I couldn’t help but notice the irritation as I was shaving then finally realized it was from a small wart. At first, I dismissed and ignored it as a normal wart that could happen to anyone. Unfortunately, the irritation and the pain didn’t stop and continued to grow into a much more uncomfortable level. When I noticed two more warts popped up in that area, I started to panic. I immediately scheduled a doctor appointment to find out what it was. Deep in my mind, I already knew the cause.

The doctor said I was infected with HPV after carefully examining me. At that point, I couldn’t even hear what he was saying afterwards. I felt like my life was over and all those careless parties had finally caught up to me. I couldn’t even pin point exactly when I got infected. I was still in college at the time and I thought there was no way out.

I was drowning in the fear of one day I had to tell my parents or if they found out by themselves. A love that I could build a stable life with seemed impossible, and my friends would all leave me. Desperation and depression were consuming my life. As my grades started to suffer, I knew I could not go on living like this.

I started to go to my school’s counselor and told her everything. I remember I was crying at some point during that counseling. However, it was helping a lot to have someone who would listen and give me advices. The counselor said she would help me practice telling my parents. Thanks to that, I felt a lot more confident, and also because I found from researching on my own that HPV is not that uncommon and that I was not alone in this struggle. My doctor also gave me a lot of advices regarding safe procedures that I can do to still be able to have a healthy relationship in the future. A realization that a normal life would still be possible with HPV made me tremendously happy.

One weekend I decided to go visit my parents. After having lunch with them, we were just hanging out in the living room and I decided to tell them there. I carefully and calmly expressed my conditions just like how I had practiced with the counselor. A frightening look appeared on my dad’s face at first, but seeing my mom held my hand after the speech seemed to calm him down. After a long silence, he said he wanted to go with me to my doctor appointments to be able to know more about the details. I was surprised that my parents would fully accept me like that and I would never take that for granted.

After that day, I felt like the weight on my shoulders have been lifted off and that I could fully accept myself. I even went on and told all my friends. Some decided to support me, and some stopped talking to me but, to be honest, I could not careless if they did not want me in their life. In a way, this has helped me realize about the true relationships I could build in life.

Now I am working a full time job with good money and I am one hundred percent happy with who I am. I know one day I would be able to find a lover who would completely accept me just like my parents, that counselor, as well as my best friends.