My STD Scavenger Hunt, Courtesy of Kaiser Permanente
The time HIV/AIDS marked the spot
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I wasn’t worried about getting my STD results — at least, not any more than the average person. My decision to get tested wasn’t a panicked response, and I had no lesions or sores to speak of. But I got tested anyway because it’s the right thing to do. As far as I knew, this was maintenance, a formality. I was about as worried as when you go to the dentist.
At least, that was how I felt on day one.
Three days had passed since my test, and I was getting anxious. The doctor said they would call with my results in 24 hours. I wish doctors would take time frames more seriously. Because to a patient, no news is always bad news. It leaves you with no choice but to self-diagnose.
He’s only waited this long because you have HIV.
I had been on a 48-hour bender thinking thoughts like this one, conjuring up all sorts of strange outcomes. Scenes played on a loop in my head, ones where doctors, always wagging their fingers, broke the news that I had contracted an especially aggressive form of genital warts. Another told me I contracted a rare strain of chlamydia found only in the Philippines. I was to be patient zero in North America.
The other game you play when you’re waiting on STD results is one you might call Sexual History CSI. This is when you go through each of your romantic encounters — the good, the bad, the ones that happened at concerts — since your last test to determine who, in the event that you have an STD, might have given you it. It’s an unproductive exercise that quickly devolves into a game of snap judgment.
Eventually, I realized the mental gymnastics were not helping. It was, after all, the middle of the workday. I had to stop focusing on my test results and start teaching these kids.
I put my phone back in the office then grabbed my iPad to take attendance.
Hopefully they leave a message, I thought.
Halfway through my lesson on how to take a proper slap shot, the iPad screen lit up. It was my STD results. Much to my surprise, they sent them via email. The subject of the email made my heart sink into my feet: TEST RESULTS: GONORRHEA.
As a Millennial, and I’m of course speaking generally here, I’m predisposed to reading things written in all capital letters with caution. Whether a passive-aggressive text from your parents or a baby boomer’s manifesto in the Facebook comments section, my generation knows that few pieces of quality information arrive in all caps.
Nevertheless, I opened the document and clicked the attached file. It loaded at the same speed music did on Napster in 1999. Eventually, the one-page PDF appeared. I scanned the document as two students beat each other with hockey sticks nearby. This was none of my concern, for I found the word I was looking for: NEGATIVE.
I was relieved, but not for long. They had only sent gonorrhea. Did this mean I tested positive for everything else?
“This is what you get, you filthy monster,” I said under my breath.
But I was saved from another trip down the rabbit hole when another email, titled: TEST RESULTS, CHLAMYDIA popped up on my screen. It was also negative.
By now I understood the cruel game Kaiser Permanente was playing. I would have to wait for each email to arrive individually. My lesson, as far as I was concerned, was over. I signed into my gradebook and gave each student an A for participation.
Ten minutes passed. Assuming the servers at Kaiser had crashed, I pictured hundreds of IT guys working tirelessly outside the doors to the “STD Blood Work” department. I didn’t know what else to call it. Then, realizing it was lunch hour, I pictured a far more likely scenario, involving the same employees, now sporting devil’s horns, eating Reuben sandwiches in front of their desks with my mustard-stained test results resting beside them.
“I don’t normally like sauerkraut, but these are delicious,” one says to the other. “Hey, look! This guy has hepatitis B.”
Twenty minutes later, another email came. A plastic puck whizzed by my face, but HERPES and SYPHILIS had arrived, so I would wait to address it.
Both tests said I was in the clear.
Testing negative for herpes was big for me. I had held a secret fear since the tenth grade — two calendar years before I lost my virginity— that I had this disease. Many young men conclude they have herpes when what they really have is an unsteady hand and an electric trimmer designed for the contours of their face. In my opinion, WebMD doesn’t provide nearly enough contrast between herpes and razor burn.
Only HIV/AIDS remained. Alas, the storyteller in me regrets to inform you I did not have this, either. The bell rang shortly after the AIDS email arrived. I dismissed my class then went upstairs to grab my lunch.
I was angry at Kaiser Permanente for what they put me through. I could see how it was more cost-effective to send STD results via email. But did they really have to do it one by one, like some sort of sick scavenger hunt? And did they have to send AIDS last?
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. For a moment, I knew how it felt to be confident and happy like one of those old people from a herpes medication commercial. Canoeing down a river with my lover, I knew she was satisfied. How could she not be? We were eighty-two years old, in great physical shape, and able to make love without risking an outbreak.
Life couldn’t get much better than that.
