Antibiotic Treatment for STDs
If you have a sexually-transmitted disease, it won’t go away on its own. Every day you wait to get treatment for a sexually-transmitted disease, you enable the disease to cause more damage and you make the treatment plan more complicated. Waiting to have an STD test and to find out if you have a sexually-transmitted disease only hurts you — it never helps you.
Early Detection Means Easy Treatment
Did you know that chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and trichominosis can be easily cured? That’s right, but only if they are detected early. When you get an STD test because you have a symptom that might be from a sexually-transmitted disease; or you think you might have been exposed to a sexually-transmitted disease; or it’s part of your regular testing schedule because you’re in a high-risk group; you can detect a sexually-transmitted disease soon after you’re infected. If you test positive for chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis or trichominosis, the treatment is usually a single dose of antibiotics or a shot of penicillin — because you caught the disease early. It’s usually that easy.
Late Detection Means More Complicated Treatment
If you decide to wait to get tested, you’ll probably wait until a sexually-transmitted disease gets so bad that it’s become a problem for you. Perhaps you get a strange rash on your hands or your feet, which is a sign of second-stage syphilis. Or perhaps you have a sex partner who tells you he has a sexually-transmitted disease, and that you’re the only person he slept with lately. When you wait, all you do is make a cure less likely and make the treatment more complicated.
What might have been a single dose of antibiotics becomes several visits to the doctor for a series of shots to treat your STD. What might have been a simple shot of penicillin turns into a regimen of testing and treatment to keep the sexually-transmitted disease under control. What might have been an anonymous phone call with a doctor to get a prescription winds up being a very public hospitalization that you have to explain to others.
The Longer You Wait the Worse It Gets
While you wait to get an STD test, you suffer from the symptoms of the disease, which can be uncomfortable. You also give a sexually-transmitted disease more time to inflict damage on your body — and some of that damage might be irreversible. You also increase the risk that you’ll pass the sexually-transmitted disease to someone else, unless you abstain from having sex.
You Can’t Be Anonymous if You Wait too Long
If you’re worried about other people finding out you have an STD, you can follow the instructions in our free guide to anonymous STD testing to get a truly anonymous STD test and get simple treatment for your sexually-transmitted disease over the phone — but only because you detected the disease early. If you wait too long to get tested and you must go to a doctor for a more complex treatment plan, you just lost your anonymity.
Do you think the doctor is going to take your word for it that you have an STD? No, the first thing the doctor is going to do is test you for the STD you say you have. Once your positive test results come back, he is obligated by law to report your personal information to the state health department, who might visit you at home to talk to you about notifying your sexual partners.
