Dear Dr.,
Hope you can help me out. I've been very worried about syphilis for a long time.
I had a series of homosexsual encounters about 4 years ago in Germany - some of them unprotected. After these, several weeks later I noticed my penis very sore and a slight discharge - went away after some weeks on its own. Afterwards, I had several blisters/bumps/warts...don't know how to describe them, inside my butocks. They were fairly big, about a thumb each. At some point they opened and poured some kind of liquid. A scab took over and they seemed to heal, but they came back again.
I was young, stupid and unaware of all STDs so I didn't seek medical advice until about 6 months after exposure, when I went to my GP due to the butocks rash and got a 3 day course antibiotic. I didn't mention my sexual encounters and he didn't ask either - they didn't run any tests. After I took the meds the rash disapeared like magic.
After this I noticed several different rashes in my body and a lot of hear loss, some in round patches in my head. This also stopped after a year. During that year I had a lot of flu-like episodes sore throat continuosly.
Now I'm older/not much wiser but more concerned about my health. I've done very thorough reading and I have the impression that all these symptoms match a syphilis infection way too well. Therefore went and got tested with the RPR and WS and FTA-ABS tests. All came back negative but this was about almost 4 years after the possible infection.
My worry is a possible late latent infection not picked up by these tests, as I've read non-treponemal tests would be negative most likely after all this time, and the non 100% accuracy of the FTA-ABS test in the late latent stage.
What would you recommend? Are these tests results reliable or due to my high risk exposure+sympthoms should get treated anyway? Is there the slightest chance of it being dormant and coming back with very bad health consecuences later in my life?