By Amanda Dennison, as told to Erica Rimlinger
April 13-19, 2025, is STI Awareness Week.
When I first saw the lesion, I knew it looked familiar. After working in HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention, I’d seen enough pictures to recognize herpes. When the first signs of a sore appeared, I was confused and thought: “That can’t be right.” So, I followed the advice I’d often given clients: I used a hand-held mirror to get a closer look. The lesion in the mirror was definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, a textbook picture of a herpes lesion. I couldn’t believe it.
I immediately called my gynecologist. By the time I saw her, my outbreak had exploded to the herpes version of a worst-case scenario. Nerve pain spontaneously shot from my lower back to the tips of my toes. The outbreak triggered pelvic inflammatory disease, and the swelling made urinating painful and difficult. I didn’t leave my home for days.
To my surprise, my gynecologist minimized my situation, telling me, “Maybe it’s not herpes.” I assured her she didn’t have to downplay my concerns. I spoke to people all the time about STIs. I was the person who gave out condoms and lube at correctional facilities and rehab centers. I was the person who showed slides of STI symptoms. I’d seen herpes. I knew herpes. And now, I appeared to be getting formally acquainted with herpes.
After taking a gasp-inducing swab of a lesion, my doctor told me I’d have to wait several days to get test results. Because I was in so much pain, she started treatment immediately, giving me an antiviral. The following week, her office called. Having worked as an STI clinic employee who gave people their test results, I knew that call script. If the result was positive, I wouldn’t be given my results over the phone. I’d be asked to return to the office to discuss them in person with my doctor.
While I was not surprised to learn I’d be making a return visit to the doctor, I was surprised at my doctor’s nonchalant attitude toward the diagnosis. I’d just learned I had an incurable STI that would impact my health and relationships for the rest of my life, and my doctor kept telling me, “Don’t worry! You can still have children.” If she’d asked, she’d have known I never planned on having children, but I did plan on continuing to have relationships. She didn’t ask about my sexual history or give me information on how to disclose my diagnosis to past and future partners. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It will clear up.” She gave me refills on the outbreak-prevention medicine and left me alone with a raw, burning shame.
I felt like a professional fraud. How am I supposed to prevent STIs in the community if I can’t prevent them in myself? Through my fog of shame and self-blame, I didn’t give myself the grace and empathy I gave my clients. And I could have taken some solace from the statistics surrounding STIs. The fact is condom use prevents STIs just 95% of the time when used perfectly. The only 100% guarantee against STIs is abstinence.
Even though condoms significantly reduce contact, they don’t cover every part of the body involved in sex. Also, you don’t have to be experiencing an active outbreak to give someone herpes, and if you never experience an outbreak, you might never know you have it. Even STI testing doesn’t regularly include herpes screening.
I’d just become one of the nearly 1 out 5 people who has been diagnosed with herpes, and while I’d never look down on a client, I had never considered how much they might be looking down on themselves.
The professional shame was joined by a sense of personal shame and dread as I prepared to call my former sexual partners. I was at a time in my life when I was dating regularly, so I didn’t know how or when I contracted herpes.
I called my most recent relationship partner first. He was someone I still considered a close friend. As I dialed, I worried I’d be a huge disappointment to him. What if he no longer wanted to be friends? What if he was disgusted with me, or angry?
I’m glad I called him first. I exhaled fully when he reacted with support and kindness. He made me feel like there was nothing broken or dirty or wrong with me. His reaction was exactly what I needed to work up the nerve to continue calling former partners. Wishing I had a strategy or a script, I muddled through the remaining calls. Some went well: Others did not.
I couldn’t bring myself to reopen the apps and date for several months after my diagnosis. Finally, I overcame my fear, and decided I would share my diagnosis after we’d moved off the app to texting, but before we’d gone on an in-person date. My first in-person date after my diagnosis told me he was fine with my herpes when I disclosed it over text but asked me, in all seriousness, if he could catch herpes when our fully clothed legs accidentally touched under the table at the restaurant. It was our last date.
Amanda in Vancouver with her partner, Keith in 2024 (Photo/Kayla Beiler Photography)
That experience, while strange and disappointing, triggered an important shift in my perspective. This is my diagnosis and I have the knowledge, so my new dating rule was this: I would not allow anyone to make me feel less-than. My diagnosis was part of my life, but it wasn’t me. For the first time, I felt I was taking control of the narrative.
Nearly four years after my diagnosis, during a work meeting, as we discussed the need to find more STI patient advocates to share their stories, I wondered if I should come out as a patient myself. I went to my boss’s office after the meeting and said, “I’ll share my story.” I was a little nervous about sharing my diagnosis, especially since, earlier that day, I’d allowed myself to be outed as queer when I won an award for queer women. (I hadn’t been hiding my sexual orientation or even my STI diagnosis: I just hadn’t discussed these topics at work before.) My boss agreed to let me tell my story, and with my published blog, I felt I had fully taken ownership of my diagnosis.
When I was first diagnosed with herpes, I felt personally and professionally defeated. I asked myself how I would find love, and if I even was worth loving. That mindset is so far from the truth of my life now. I have an amazing partner, and we’ve created a great life together. I won’t minimize my herpes diagnosis: It’s significant and it can be devastating. Even with medication, outbreaks can happen. But I hope everyone with this diagnosis knows it won’t prevent you from getting what you want in life — and it won’t prevent you from loving and being loved.