Sexually Transmitted Infections

A diagnosis that makes you flinch inside. Not only because of the physical reality — the itching, discharge, blisters, inflammation, a value in your test results that wasn't there before. But because of what it touches. A sexually transmitted infection doesn't strike you somewhere random on your body. It strikes you where you are most vulnerable: in your intimacy, in your sexuality, in the zone you shared with another person.

From a medical standpoint, the process is straightforward: a pathogen — bacterium, virus, fungus, parasite — was transmitted during sex. Diagnosis, treatment, curable in many cases, chronic in some. Those are the facts. And these facts matter, deserve to be taken seriously, need to be properly addressed. But alongside them exists another level — one that appears in no test result, yet often speaks louder than the diagnosis itself.