HPV: A College Woman's Story

Editor's Note: This is second in a two-part series about HPV. In the first article, the author imparts facts about the sexually-transmitted disease and how it affects college-age women. This piece tells the story of the author's friend, and the impact HPV had on her life.

She was intelligent, beautiful, and confident.  Since the first day of freshman orientation, I was jealous of Monica.  As the days passed and our friendship developed, that jealousy turned into pride.  I was proud to have a friend who was so smart, strong and caring.  In addition to those qualities that made her such a good friend, she could hold her liquor and melt any guy with a casual smile and a twitch of her hips, which made us great partners in crime.  During our interview last Sunday, Monica and I laughingly reminisced on those first few naive months of freshman year, before Monica contracted an STD which would change her life.

We might as well start from the beginning.  As a high schooler, Monica described herself as quiet and studious.  “In high school, I wasn’t popular.  I wasn’t unpopular; I had a group of friends, and was respected by everyone.  I wasn’t made fun of, but guys didn’t really go for me.”  She did not drink or party in high school, and pretty much kept to herself.  However, when she came to college, she became less reserved.

It is common for people, especially females, to change their lifestyle when they come to college.  The old preconceptions and reputations of high school which once trapped them into a social niche are suddenly gone.  Parties, alcohol, and guys are now accessible to these inexperienced girls.

“I went to college and suddenly I was attractive, suddenly people wanted to get with me…I felt powerful.”  Monica was a beautiful girl who loved to be social and have a good time.  Unfortunately, that led to some negative consequences.  She admitted that she had sex with three different men during her first week of orientation and three more throughout the rest of the semester.  She had sexual contact (skin-to-skin genital contact without penetration) with many more.  During her account of her sexual life, I could not help but raise my eyebrows a bit at this period of promiscuity. 

Despite my skepticism, she was completely honest.  “I had never had any experience with sexual diseases and never worried about it.  Now looking back I realize that my behavior was very risky…but I felt on top of the world, felt attractive, felt wanted.”

It was not until Christmas break that Monica began to notice some bumps on and around her genitals.  Monica remembers feeling very panicky and frightened.  She did not want to tell her family, so she decided to make an appointment with a doctor at her school’s women’s health center when she returned.  After taking a pap smear, the nurse practitioner who worked with Monica told her that she had a strain of HPV which caused genital warts.  Monica did not know anything about HPV and was in a complete panic.  Her nurse practitioner was very helpful and informed, and was able to explain a great deal and help calm Monica down.

Going through the trauma of discovering that she had contracted HPV was really only the beginning for Monica.  Every week of the entire spring semester, she had to have treatments done at the health center which involved using liquid nitrogen to burn off her genital warts.  Monica had to lie on a table with her feet in a set of stirrups while a doctor and an assistant treated the warts around and inside her vagina.  It was obviously not a pleasant experience, yet she kept her composure as she explained what she had to do.  Every day she would look in the mirror and hope that the warts would run their course and disappear.  “It was very discouraging.  I would look in the mirror and hope hope hope nothing was coming back and it inevitably would come back.  I would just wonder when this is going to be over.”

The warts finally cleared at the end of the semester, but Monica’s pap was still abnormal.  This meant that she would have to receive treatments at home, which meant she had to tell her mother.  “My mother is a pretty conservative woman.  We’re able to talk about most things but I never talked to her about men.  Sex was not an open subject in our house.”  Monica gritted her teeth, picked up the phone, and blurted out that she had HPV.  She chuckled and told me that her mother had at first misheard her and thought she had said she had HIV.  “That was interesting…”

Monica proceeded to see her gynecologist at home.  When she described her first appointment, she broke down in front of me for the first time.  Her first appointment was for a procedure called a colposcopy with a biopsy.  She cringed as she remembered lying on the table, feet in the stirrups, while a doctor and assistant with whom she was unfamiliar inserted a speculum and took a series of biopsies of her cervix.  “This was my first colposcopy, and it wasn’t the pain, but I cried the whole way through.  Silently.  I didn’t even know why I was crying, I knew people had worse things done to them.  I just felt violated.”  After relating this to me, she took a minute to compose herself, but there were flecks of hurt in her eyes that refused to go away.

As her pap smears continued to be abnormal, the situation became more and more frustrating for Monica.  Eventually, she had to go through cryotherapy, which she described to me very directly.  “Basically they stick a tube up your vagina and freeze your cervix off.  They basically kill your cervix and let it die and fall out of you.”  I had to laugh at this rather blunt description, and she laughed along with me through her tear-stained face.  “It’s pretty much deep breathing and count till one hundred because it really frickin hurts.”  After cryotherapy, Monica had to deal with blood and discharge from her vagina for weeks.

Today, Monica’s pap is still abnormal, although her symptoms have improved a great deal.  In retrospect, she tells me that her overall physical life will not be changed by HPV.  However, it is clear that she as a person has changed.  “I feel less invincible.  I feel vulnerable, but in a good way.”  After her experience with HPV, Monica is much more aware of her surroundings and much smarter about her sex life.  She describes her feelings towards men to be a little “more resentful,” but admits that some of her resentment is from her emotional experiences, and not her physical disease.

As I look at my friend today, I see someone who has been through a lot.  She is not the confident wild woman that she was when she began college, but an older, more cautious version of her prior self.  It is not that she is a completely different person:  she still has the same personality traits and a wild streak that makes everyone want to be around her.  Yet behind her smile, there is a waver of uncertainty which was not always there. 

She is a woman who has suffered the consequences for some bad choices that she has made and having learned from her mistakes, is now ready to move on.  Some of you may read this story and see the mistakes Monica made and see weakness, but I can only see strength in her recovery. 

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