It’s also important to keep in mind that HPV is incredibly common and there are approximately 150 strains of the virus, most of which cause no harm and present no symptoms. The majority of sexually active adults will have at least one HPV infection during their lifetime and not even know about it. In fact, HPV is so common that we often refer to it as the “common cold of the genitals.” Our HPV Patient’s Guide has lots of great information on HPV if you’re interested. 

The most important thing you can do for yourself is to get a PAP screen every three years. You may also want to consider the HPV Vaccine (Gardasil-9) if the cost is not too prohibitive.

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I would add that simply because someone does sex work, this does not mean that they have HIV. In fact you have indicated that this person told you that they do not have HIV and that they are “well-reviewed” on their profile. Whether you engage in sexual contact with someone who does sex work, or with someone you met online or at any other venue, it is important to consider precautions you may want to take against infections. As already noted, oral sex is generally pretty low risk for HIV but other infections such as HSV, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea can be more easily passed this way. Regardless of the partner, condoms are a good way to prevent or to decrease the chance of passing these infections.

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Health Nurse

Let us know if this does not answer your question or if you have any more questions or concerns.
Health Nurse

If you are interested in learning more about HIV and its transmission, you might find our HIV and AIDS information page helpful. In addition, our Know Your Chances charts give a quick breakdown of high risk and low risk transmission depending on the type of sex and the infection in question. And remember, we always recommend routine STI testing (HIV, syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea) for all sexually active adults.

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Health Nurse

For more information on a variety of sexually transmitted infections please visit STIs at a Glance or for info about transmission risk check out Know your Chances.

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Health Nurse

I don’t know what the discharge might have been, but it can be common to have some irritation to the urethra after having sex. During intercourse there are lots of microbes (non-harmful, normal healthy bacteria) that can be passed between partners. While these microbes don’t necessarily cause an infection they can get up into the urethra and cause some irritation. Staying well hydrated, urinating frequently (especially right after sex) and drinking cranberry juice or taking some cranberry supplements can help with this discomfort.

Finally, yes some STIs could be passed from your finger’s to a male partner’s genitals, if your fingers had been touching your own genitals first and there is an infection already present. The most common things would be infections passed through skin to skin contact such as HPV, herpes or even syphilis. So for example, if a person has an active herpes outbreak on their genitals and touches the sores, then immediately touches their partner’s genitals, it would be possible to pass that infection to the partner.

You might find our STIs at a Glance chart helpful as it gives a quick overview of how different infections are passed.

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Health Nurse

Let us know if this does not answer your question or if you have any more questions or concerns.
Health Nurse

Keep in mind, however, that while herpes is easily spread (which is why it’s so very common!) it is only being passed when the virus is active. Typically this means that it’s only spreading when the symptoms of blisters or lesions are present on the skin. When the blisters heal, the virus goes to “sleep” on the nerve pathway and is not being passed until it wakes up again. The frequency of when the virus “wakes up” and spreads from person to person varies. Some people only ever get one outbreak in their lifetime, while other people might have 2 or 3 outbreaks per year.

If you’re interested in reading more about herpes and the virus that causes it, have a look at our Herpes: Patient’s Guide.

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Health Nurse

Given the type of sex you described I would recommend getting a full STI test which would include:

(1) Gonorrhea and chlamydia testing from the throat, rectum and urine. Wait at least 2 weeks after sex before doing these tests for the best accuracy.

(2) HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis B and C blood test. We find that most of these infections would show up by 6 weeks after they passed to someone, but we still recommend doing a final test at 3 months just to make sure.   

It’s great that your blood tests came back negative, but the main factor is how long after the sex did you do the test? Even just a rough idea would be enough information; you don’t need to be exact to the day. If it has been at least 6 weeks from the time when you had sex until your blood test that is a great result and means there is a high chance you are fine, but we still recommend a final test at 3 months to make sure.     

As most STI/HIV do not show symptoms we recommend that people go for regular testing every 3-6 months if there is a chance something could have passed to you.

Condoms offer great protection against HIV and other STI.  I am unsure of the situation in India but in Canada we are also finding that PREP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is becoming very popular in terms of a tool that can stop HIV passing to you.

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Health Nurse

For this reason it is important that you get any STIs treated appropriately and that any ongoing partners also get tested and take the treatment right away to avoid the infection going back and forth between the two of you.

At this point, the person you had sex with after you took the medication, should get treatment for the STI and you both should wait until seven days after treatment before having sex.

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Health Nurse