Offended Moments: Starting with the Doctor

In my first year of having HSV and HPV I have definitely been offended by the way people have acted and what they have said. It started off with my doctor who was very nice to me before I got herpes. After that I had to go in for lots of pap smears and rechecks for my pre-cancer cells and things started to change.

I tried to ask questions and she never had the time to answer them. She always had her hand on the door. She acted disgusted to touch me and made sure she got out of the room as quick as possible or at least this is the way she made me feel.

So in the meantime I have switched doctors and things are going much better in that department. I have also experienced lots of things in nursing school. There was one time my instructor was giving a short talk about HPV and while she was explaining what a wart looked like all the students were like "yuck" and the teacher said "yeah, stay away from those people". I couldn't believe what I had just heard from a medical professional and our future medical professionals.

There was also another time when I was in my clinical rotation and all the nursing students were sitting around talking and the topic of STDs came up. At one point in the conversation everybody was saying how they would never get near anybody with herpes, HPV, or any other STD and how they couldn't understand why someone would date a person like that. They just preceded to say how disgusting those people were. I really wanted to just stand up and say well you know what? I have it! But I didn't.

It is a tough situation to deal with. I'm not embarrassed of what I have and I'm not afraid to tell people. Probably the only thing that stopped me was that nursing school is hard enough by itself without going through the whole thing with people giving you dirty looks and talking behind your back which is probably what I would go through if everybody knew my situation. I figure when I am a nurse I will have more power to stand up for people with herpes as well as other STDs.

I know that I am not a bad person because I have this. I'm no different then anybody else except I was unlucky, but yet in another way I was also lucky because lots of good things have happened since I was diagnosed with HSV and HPV.

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