As Erica Rimlinger said
The 13th to 19th April 2025 is Stiwareness Week.
When I saw the lesion for the first time, I knew that it looked known. After working in HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention (STI), I saw enough pictures to recognize herpes. When the first signs of pain appeared, I was confused and thought: “It can’t be right.” So I followed the advice that I had often given customers: I used a hand mirror to take a closer look. The lesion in the mirror was definitely undoubtedly a textbook picture of a herpes lesion. I couldn’t believe it.
I immediately called my gynecologist. When I saw her, my outbreak exploded into the herpes version of a worst-case scenario. Nerve pain spontaneously shot from my lower back to the tips of the toe. The outbreak triggered an inflammatory disease of the pelvis, and the swelling became painful and difficult. I didn’t leave my home for days.
To my surprise, my gynecologist minimized my situation and told me: “Maybe it’s not a herpes.” I assured her that she did not have to play my concerns. I spoke to people about Stis all the time. I was the person who spent condoms and lubricants in correctional facilities and rehab centers. I was the person who showed foils of STI -Symptoms. I had seen herpes. I knew herpes. And now I seemed to be officially familiar with herpes.
After my doctor took a whepper-inducing swab of a lesion, I have to wait a few days to get test results. Because I had so much pain, she immediately started treatment and gave me an antiviral. In the following week her office called. After working as an employee of the STI -Clinic who provided people with their test results, I knew this call script. If the result were positive, I would not receive my results by phone. I would be asked to return to the office to personally discuss them with my doctor.
Although I was not surprised that I would find out that I would return to the doctor, I was surprised by my doctor’s non -chalant attitude for diagnosis. I had just learned that I had an incurable STI that would influence my health and my relationships for the rest of my life, and my doctor kept saying me: “Don’t worry! You can still have children.” If she had asked, she would have known that I never planned to have children, but I planned to continue to have relationships. She did not ask about my sexual history or gave me information about how I can pass on my diagnosis compared to past and future partners. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It will clarify.” She gave me refilling about outbreak medicine and left me alone with a raw, burning shame.
I felt like a professional fraud. How should I prevent StIS in the community if I can’t prevent it in myself? Due to my fog of shame and self -accusation, I did not give myself the grace and empathy that I gave my customers. And I could have taken some consolation from the statistics around STIS. The fact is that the use of condoms prevents stairs in only 95% of the time if they are used perfectly. The only 100% guarantee against STIS is abstinence.
Even if condoms significantly reduce contact, they do not cover every part of the gender. In addition, you do not have to experience an active outbreak to give someone herpes, and if you never experience an outbreak, you may never know that you have it. Even Sti -tests do not regularly contain herpes screening.
I just became one of the almost 1 out 5 people in whom herpes was diagnosed, and although I would never look down on a customer, I never thought about how much they look down on themselves.
The professional shame was accompanied by a feeling of personal shame and fear when I prepared myself to call my former sexual partners. I was in my life at a time when I was regularly together, so I didn’t know how or when I joined herpes.
I called my youngest relationship partner first. He was someone I still considered a close friend. When I chose, I was worried that I would be a big disappointment for him. What if he didn’t want to be friends anymore? What if he was disgusted or angry with me?
I am glad that I called him first. I breathed out fully when he reacted with support and friendliness. He made me feel like nothing broken or dirty or wrong with me. His reaction was exactly what I had to do to improve the nerve to continue to describe former partners. I wish I had a strategy or a script and messed up through the remaining calls. Some went well: others didn’t.
After my diagnosis, I could not reopen for months and dated for several months. Finally I overcame my fear and decided that I would share my diagnosis after we had put the app in SMS, but before we personally agreed. My first personal date after my diagnosis told me that he was okay with my herpes when I revealed it through text, but asked me seriously whether he could catch herpes when our fully dressed legs were accidentally touched under the table in the restaurant. It was our last date.
Amanda in Vancouver with her partner Keith in 2024 (Photo/Kayla Beler Photography)
This experience was strange and disappointing, triggered an important change in my perspective. This is my diagnosis and I know that, so my new dating rule was: I would not allow anyone to feel less than. My diagnosis was part of my life, but I wasn’t. For the first time I felt like I was in control of the story.
Almost four years after my diagnosis during a working meeting, when we discussed the need to find more Ste patient lawyers to share their stories, I wondered if I should come out as a patient myself. After the meeting I went to my boss’s office and said: “I will share my story.” I was a little nervous to share my diagnosis, especially since I was switched off as a queer that day when I won an award for queer women. (I hadn’t hidden my sexual orientation or my Sti diagnosis: I simply hadn’t discussed these topics at work yet.) My boss agreed to have my story told, and with my published blog I had the feeling that I had completely taken possession of my diagnosis.
When I diagnosed herpes for the first time, I felt defeated personally and professionally. I wondered how I would love to find and whether I would only have worth it to love. This way of thinking is now so far from the truth of my life. I have a great partner and we have created a great life together. I will not minimize my herpes diagnosis: it is significant and can be devastating. Occuptions can also happen with medication. But I hope everyone with this diagnosis knows that they do not prevent them from getting what they want in life – and they will not prevent them from being loved and loved.
