Genital warts issue

LegacyUser

My story is significantly different from most of those I have read on the issues of genital warts and HPV (and there have been no satisfactory responses on other forums I've posted this in), so perhaps I should provide some background.

I'm a 24 year-old guy. One day, when I was ten years old, I found a line of small brown bumps on the underside of my scrotum. I was concerned and mentioned them to my mother. She brought me to the family doctor and he diagnosed them as warts. Now, I have no idea how they got there. I certainly was never touched as a child. He offered to freeze them off, but I chickened out at the prospect of having my genitals torched with liquid nitrogen.

I didn't think about girls at that stage of my life. When I was a teenager I started to become interested in dating, but I also had naive views on HPV such as "if the warts are gone, I won't pass anything onto a future partner". I was afraid of the liquid nitrogen and decided that I would wait until I had a prospective sexual partner before having them frozen off. But I never had a girlfriend or a sexual partner of any kind (which is another matter altogether), and that's how it's been to this day. I eventually had them removed anyway when I was 19, and the procedure was fine. The warts never moved from that particular spot until they were frozen off (I can still remember the spot), and after the procedure they fell off and never reappeared.

I always assumed it was no big deal until a few years ago, when I found that it generally lay dormant after treatment rather than being "cured", was the dominant cause of cervical cancer in women and read accounts of women who claimed they would run a mile if a man they were dating told them they once had genital warts. There is no test for HPV in men who are asymptomatic, and even though the strains that cause genital warts are not those that cause cancer, people may have more than one strain of the virus. It's been a cause of lingering anxiety ever since then.

So, some (non-medical) questions:

1. What sort of details should I mention to a prospective sexual partner before becoming intimate? Is there any particularly ideal way in which I should tell?
2. I gather that the conjunction of "being a virgin" and "having genital warts" is surprising to people. How would this be taken? Should I mention both facts at once to a prospective partner, or mention them separately unless asked?
3. I can't focus too much on something I have no control over, but should I expect women to run a mile after telling them? Would I be better off on an STD dating site, as some have suggested?

LegacyUser

Did the doctor explain to you how you could have gotten these warts at just age 10 with no sexual contact?
Did you have common warts on your body that may have spread?
I think there are over 70 -100 different types of HPV [human papilloma virus].
If genital warts are their own particular strain that are only got through sexual contact, then perhaps this is not what you had.
Common warts are normally found on hands but can appear anywhere on the body and be frozen off. Maybe you just had some common warts that happened to form on your scrotum. I don't know if that's possible or not??
Common warts are normally pale to brown, and genital warts are usually described as cauliflower like.
You need to ask your doctor if they were just common warts that happened to appear on your genitals as a child. When you have this established, find out if they behave the same way as the genital wart strain of HPV does.
I'm just curious because I always thought it was impossible to get genital warts without sexual contact.
If you can explain it better it would make it easier for prospective sexual partners to understand your situation and how to work around it.

Uriel.

you are unlikely to have had the traditional type of genital warts that most people think of.

Genital warts, as we know them in terms of HPV causing strains seen in sexual transmission do not hang around for 9 years like you had.

There's not much you can do now that they have been removed (e.g. second opinions etc...).

I don't think you need to discuss this with potential partners to be honest, even if it was genuine Genital warts that we know is spread via sexual contact and you have had no recurrences in 5 years, then you are not likely to spread the virus to potential partners. It is not really the same as say HSV, were there is often viral shedding going on.

OP, if I was in your position I would just completely forget about it and move in with your life.

LegacyUser

My son kept getting warts on his fingers and we'd have them frozen off. He eventually got one on the shaft of his penis... like many little lads he had a comfort habit of sticking his hand(s) unconsciously down his pajama bottoms when watching tv. He had the wart frozen off and touch wood no more have reappeared and he is now very conscious of where he places his hands as he doesn't want to have to go through that again. It was not a sexually transmitted wart and can't be passed on if it's no longer there. The doctor explained that to me. You probably got yours the same way. Speak to your doctor for reassurance.

LegacyUser

definitely talk to your doctor and try to determine which strain of wart this is... but as far as i know, if you are showing no visible symptoms they can't test for the specific strain.

I can only speak from experience... Ive been recently diagnosed with HPV (warts) despite all the precautions in the world.... im now in a position where I feel no man will ever touch me again, how do you approach the subject with a prospective boyfriend, after a romantic first few dates.... sit them down and say 'btw i may give you warts if you sleep with me?' cue the man running screaming for the hills.

from what you have posted... Im unsure if you do have hpv (as another poster stated theres so many strains) so please do talk to your doctors, but if you do have the hpv strain that causes genital warts, please give any prospective partners the choice, they need to be informed that you have this, there's a 70% risk of spreading this even with condoms, a fact i didnt even know before i got diagnosed.

Im not sure i can offer much words of wisdom.. its not easy coming to terms with what i now have, i wish you the very best of luck and i do hope you meet someone special.

LegacyUser

This has gone roughly in the direction of medical advice which as I understand it is against the rules of this forum, but I shall nonetheless address this as best as I can.

curious about the warts wrote: »

Did the doctor explain to you how you could have gotten these warts at just age 10 with no sexual contact?

No. The first question he asked me was whether I was touched, and when I understood the question I said no. I don't remember if he said anything else about them then. When I was nineteen the doctor was surprised to see them even after I said they were warts. He did not discuss how else I could have contracted the warts, and frankly I don't think he believed me.

curious about the warts wrote: »

Did you have common warts on your body that may have spread?

They only appeared in the spot I mentioned earlier. I never had any warts on any other part of my body.

curious about the warts wrote: »

I think there are over 70 -100 different types of HPV [human papilloma virus].
If genital warts are their own particular strain that are only got through sexual contact, then perhaps this is not what you had.
Common warts are normally found on hands but can appear anywhere on the body and be frozen off. Maybe you just had some common warts that happened to form on your scrotum. I don't know if that's possible or not??
Common warts are normally pale to brown, and genital warts are usually described as cauliflower like.
You need to ask your doctor if they were just common warts that happened to appear on your genitals as a child. When you have this established, find out if they behave the same way as the genital wart strain of HPV does.
I'm just curious because I always thought it was impossible to get genital warts without sexual contact.
If you can explain it better it would make it easier for prospective sexual partners to understand your situation and how to work around it.

There is apparently a distinction between "high-risk" and "low-risk" strains of HPV, "high-risk" being the sort of strain that is by far more likely to cause cervical cancer in women while generally being asymptomatic in men.

The view that warts appearing in the genital area (whatever strain of HPV they represent) can only be spread by sexual contact is what I'm up against here.

imageverfication wrote: »

My son kept getting warts on his fingers and we'd have them frozen off. He eventually got one on the shaft of his penis... like many little lads he had a comfort habit of sticking his hand(s) unconsciously down his pajama bottoms when watching tv. He had the wart frozen off and touch wood no more have reappeared and he is now very conscious of where he places his hands as he doesn't want to have to go through that again. It was not a sexually transmitted wart and can't be passed on if it's no longer there. The doctor explained that to me. You probably got yours the same way. Speak to your doctor for reassurance.

I do not have the authority to contradict the explanation of your doctor about your son's condition, but this is not the same as what my doctor said to me when I was nineteen, immediately prior to freezing them off. On the subject of how long I could be a carrier, and on whether my strain (whatever it was) was more contagious than others, his words were that "the jury's still out". He did on the other hand say that if they were removed I could "avoid some awkward conversations". This was in November 2005.

going anon: all warts are caused by at least some strain of HPV. Where there are warts, there is HPV. What strain of HPV is another matter.

Uriel. wrote: »

you are unlikely to have had the traditional type of genital warts that most people think of.

Genital warts, as we know them in terms of HPV causing strains seen in sexual transmission do not hang around for 9 years like you had.

There's not much you can do now that they have been removed (e.g. second opinions etc...).

I don't think you need to discuss this with potential partners to be honest, even if it was genuine Genital warts that we know is spread via sexual contact and you have had no recurrences in 5 years, then you are not likely to spread the virus to potential partners. It is not really the same as say HSV, were there is often viral shedding going on.

OP, if I was in your position I would just completely forget about it and move in with your life.

Do you have any medical authority on this matter? I did not ask for medical advice, but I am curious.

Of course I'd like to have the assurance to forget about this entirely, but with the amount of uncertainty as to how contagious this virus is or was, and how long the virus can remain in the body, it strikes me as unethical to not mention this to a prospective partner. And the way I see it, at least naively speaking, those who would leave me after telling them about my own history would cause an even bigger fuss if I were to have sex with them and they were to find out later.

LegacyUser

OP your doctor's have behaved very poorly.
Sure, one froze the warts off, but nobody seems to have explained anything in much detail to you.
So you know that some strains have higher risks than others of being linked to cervical cancer, but you don't know exactly if your strain was one of these, you were just told "the jury's out", I can understand that sometimes things are only medical theories, but did he inform you of any studies that had been done, did they even tell you what strain you had and all that they DO know about it?
You said that the doctor didn't seem to even believe your story, and said that removing them would "avoid an awkward conversation". This is ridiculous!

OP you are right to think that you should inform potential sexual partners about this, but why people here are saying to go back to your doctor is because you seem to know fairly little about the warts yourself.
How would the conversation go? You describe what you did here, and the girl is possibly going to ask,
"are they contagious?"
"how did you get them?"
"if they are not regular genital warts, then why did you get them on your genitals?,
and so far your answers just seem to be "I don't know" to all of these.

The first question you've asked is what type of details you should tell the girl, and you will not be able to do this without going back to see a specialist who can answer your questions as best they can.
Then you might be able to explain to a girl,for example: that it was an unusual strain that can appear on genitals without sexual contact, or that it is one of the lower risk or higher risk ones, or that it is a strain that is not likely to be contagious or else very contagious etc.
You need to be able to answer these things.

If you can find out as much information as you can about it, even if it is unusual or theoretical medical explanations that you get given by a specialized doctor, then there is much less chance of a girl freaking out about it all, as long as she has an idea of the causes and risks involved.
I think it would scare most girls if you just answer "I don't know" to their questions.

I don't know the best way of exactly how or when to bring it up with a girl, but I hope there is someone else here who might be able to help you with that, or someone who has some experience of the situation.
I do know though, that if you are armed with more detailed information about it, and can explain it better, then there is more chance of the girl accepting it and working around the issue. I think it would be a good idea to mention you are a virgin, just to eliminate any doubt that the girl might have that it was sexually transmitted warts.
I'm sure there are people who have had warts that still manage to have great sex lifes in a safe and responsible way. Best of luck OP.

LegacyUser

A fair point. Truth be told, I always perceived my situation as one I had very little control over because the damage has been done, i.e. the warts were removed, so I presumably have no way of getting a diagnosis from, say, a specialist in these matters. I'll see if I can get any reassurances from a specialist anyway, based on my past account. Of course, the reassurance may not come, but it's worth a shot.

LegacyUser

Curious Fellow wrote: »

A fair point. Truth be told, I always perceived my situation as one I had very little control over because the damage has been done, i.e. the warts were removed, so I presumably have no way of getting a diagnosis from, say, a specialist in these matters. I'll see if I can get any reassurances from a specialist anyway, based on my past account. Of course, the reassurance may not come, but it's worth a shot.

You say you mum went with you to the doctor's when you were 10. If it is possible ask her exactly what the doctor told her about them, he would probably have explained it better to the parent.
If it is not possible to speak with your mum, then get your file checked for both occasions you attended doctors for this issue. Everything that they discovered should still be recorded on your medical history file. The name of what strain you had should be there, and once you know this you can do more research on that particular strain.
Regarding people you could ask more questions to, maybe a dermatologist, someone who works in a GUM/STI clinic [even though yours were not sexually contracted they might still be of some help], or a better doctor either local or in the hospital.

Definitely gain access to your medical records to try and find out more about what type of warts these were, because they don't sound like regular genital warts which are usually described as cauliflower like, can weep, be painful and itchy etc. but I suppose they could be brown too. Another thing that causes brown spots on the scrotum is 'angiokeratomas of Fordyce', but I don't know if that is linked with warts only a doctor could tell you. Maybe ask about it. I hope whatever medical expert you speak to is able to answer some of your questions, and is able to help you and give some good advice.