Now I am a 19 yo college student and I contracted HPV from my very first partner. Not only did I get the HPV that causes warts but I know that the doctor said I also have CIN I. So i was wondering how normal is that because not only do I have to worry about taking care of the warts but freezing a third of my cervix. If this supposedly goes away now does that mean that it will not cause cancer in the future? I also wanted someones opinion on the laser surgery...thanks
Thanks for the thanks. You're welcome.
Pap smears aren't perfect, as your case shows; they can miss abnormalities that are present, or early cancer can progress rapidly, from no sign one year to a serious abnormality the next. In any case, don't blame your doctors.
HHH, MD
Truly thank you for your help. I did have early cervical cancer even though I had pap smears faithfully every year, somehow it slipped by my doctors until it became a problem.
You probably no longer are infected; the natural course is that the immune system clears HPV over several months. Further, your hysterectomy probably removed all the infected tissue. (Did you have early cervical cancer? Or was the hysterectomy done for another reason? HPV itself or pre-cancerous changes caused by HPV would not by themselves require removal of the uterus.)
You should not take any precautions with your new partner, for several reasons. 1) As indicated above, you probably no longer have anything to transmit. 2) Even if you still have HPV and are infectious, if the virus is transmitted to him he will never know it. Although high-risk HPV types can cause penile cancer, that is an exceedingly rare outcome. 3) If he is a typical person who has had a handful of sex partners in his lifetime, it is a good bet he already has been exposed to the same HPV type that caused your problem and now is immune to it. 4) Condoms reduce the risk of HPV transmission, but they are not perfect, because they allow a lot of skin-to-skin contact beyond the coverage area. Anyway, who wants to use condoms for every episode of sex forever, including for genital apposition without insertion? For practical purposes, condoms are useful to reduce the risk of transmission in casual, brief relationships, but are not a useful approach in long-term relationships. In short, the outcome in your former partner--who probably was infected--is what a new partner can expect, i.e. nothing.
Bottom line: You are under no ethical obligation to even mention your HPV infection to a future partner. There has been too much hype about HPV and its dangers. Catching HPV is normal, it happens to almost all of us. Don't lose sleep over it.
Regards-- HHH, MD