Lessons from a gonorrhea test - Ian 22

“My friend Levi- the playboy”

I have never been tested for and found to have an STI. But I am about to tell you a story about my friend Levi. He is not one to have the same woman in his bed every night. He has around three girlfriends that I know of, and there are probably others who I don’t know. I wonder if they know how many are in this relationship.
One weekend I visited my friend in the school hostels, it was a Saturday afternoon, and we were supposed to hang out before catching a game. On this day, Levi was not himself. He looked like he was so preoccupied with something. I asked him whether one of his girls had finally discovered his games and decided to dump him or if all of them had dumped him!

“Things were about to get serious.”
“Dude!” He said while looking at the floor. I knew whenever he called me “dude”, it was something serious. I moved my chair closer to his, but not too close (personal space is essential). I asked him what was going on, and that’s when he pulled a brown bag from his backpack. I saw it was branded and had the name of a famous hospital on it. Now I was concerned.
He told me that he was not doing well this past week. He told me that whatever he would share was very personal, and I told him I was ready to listen. “I found out I have gonorrhoea.” What?! I was taken aback. Are you serious? I asked him how he felt, and he said he felt pain when urinating. His testicles were slightly uncomfortable, and the most concerning thing was that he noticed a discharge from his penis. This was something he had never seen before. He intended to wait and see whether the symptoms would go away, but things only got worse, especially the pain, and he decided to go to the hospital about four days after getting these symptoms.

“Getting tested, receiving the test results & making difficult calls.”
He was taken to the lab, where tests were done, and when the results were out, the doctor told him that he had tested positive for gonorrhoea. The doctor asked him about his sex life, and he decided to be honest and admitted that he had more than one girlfriend and that most of the time, he had unprotected sex with them. He was informed that having more than one girlfriend and not using protection really put him in danger of getting sexually transmitted infections.
The doctor told Levi to ensure that he told all his girlfriends about this test result so that they could go for testing and get treatment. This was one of the things that were stressing him when I visited. He did not know how to tell them, but he knew he had to.

“My takeaway”
This experience had left him scarred. He swore to take a long break from any and all relationships. From this experience, he took away something important; to always use a condom. It is something he’ll never forget after this. This could happen to anyone, but it’s essential to always condomize. As for myself, my takeaway was that it is always necessary to use a condom because you never know.