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What it Feels Like for a Girl

Shelly, a Kent State senior who asked that her name be changed to protect her privacy, didn’t even know what HPV was when she went to her regular gynecologist appointment two years ago. As with most routine gynecological checkups, the doctor performed a Pap test, which takes a sample of cells from the tissue of the cervix to test for abnormalities.

Because she had been going to her gynecologist regularly for three years, Shelly, who was then 19, thought nothing of the test — until she got a letter from the doctor saying the test had shown some irregularities.
“It was the call that no girl ever wants to get,” she says. “I had to go back in for another appointment to see what was going on.”
At the second appointment, the doctor performed a colposcopy.

During a colposcopy, doctors stain the cervix to see the difference between normal and abnormal cells. Shelly’s gynecologist found abnormal cell growth and had to take a biopsy. 
“I cried right there in the office while they did the colposcopy,” Shelly says. “They had to take little chunks of my cervix for the biopsy. The whole process felt terrible.”

The doctor found that Shelly had cell irregularities in the tissue of her cervix, more commonly known as dysplasia.

“The doctor told me I had human papilloma virus,” she says. “I had never heard of it before in my life. In high school sex education, I was told about chlamydia and stuff like that, but not about HPV.”

Finding out she had a sexually transmitted disease was difficult for Shelly to handle.

“When I left the gynecologist’s office that day, I was devastated,” she says. “How do you go on like normal when you know you have an STD?”
Some people may think telling those you love about having an STD would be horrible, but Shelly says her friends and family were understanding and supportive when they heard the news.

“My parents were in just as much shock as I was,” she says. “I’m just a typical girl. It’s not like I am promiscuous. I used, and still use, condoms. It’s hard to blame anybody. As parents, they had to accept it. It isn’t like I went out and contracted this on purpose.”

Shelly says her doctor told her that there was really no way to tell how long she has had HPV or from whom she had gotten it. 

“When you hear about STDs, you think it only deals with people that sleep around,” she says. “I had only had sex with three guys. I could have very well gotten it from the first one.”

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