First of all I have read thru a lot of your posts and you guys and girls are pretty amazing, never have I seen a forum that is truly so supportive. I do not mean to make my situation anywhere near yours, but this just seems like such a good place to voice my related concerns.
So I woke up at 3am after my wife�s PC turned itself on for a system update. I couldn�t get back to sleep so I went and had a snack and read NPR while munching on some joes o's. I came across the article on OC related to
HPV-16 and haven�t stopped pouring over research papers since (5 hours now).
Not knowing the risks (I was young 22 she was 21), and being very drunk, I engaged in one oral sex session 4 years ago on a girl that had a history of
HPV and had part of her cervix removed a year prior to our dating. I thought at the time that
HPV only affected women, WTE of warts, and had my next girlfriend (now wife) get the vaccine before we engaged in sex. I don�t know the strain that I was exposed to, but it seems like there is a good chance that it was
HPV-16 as it makes up the majority of the 18 strains that cause cervical cancer.
I am not sure how easy it is to pass
HPV-16, but it seems to move readily between people (one study even suggested kissing as a vector), so I can�t say one way or another if I even have
HPV, just that I was exposed to a cancer causing type.
I have found out that there are 6 million new American cases of
HPV a year, and around 8% of those are
HPV-16, so that means there are 480,000 new cases of
HPV-16 a year.
There are 37,000 new cases of OC a year, and the recent study said that 65% is related to
HPV (and another that 90% of
HPV+ cancers are
HPV-16), so that means that 21,645 cases of OC are caused by
HPV-16 each year.
Thus if a person has
HPV-16 there is a 4.51% chance they will get OC cancer.
Of course qualitatively according to cancer.gov most high-risk
HPV infections of the mouth result in no symptoms, and only a very small percentage results in cancer.
Ok so I am clearly in panic mode with all those factoids, but until I found this site I was going 100mph trying to access my risk.
I know I am fortunate to just be worrying about getting cancer, vice battling cancer, but I am wits end. I am hoping to get advice on how to live my life to lessen the chances of getting OC, what to look out for, how to address my PCM with my concerns (I have a long history of throat problems, predating my exposure to
HPV).
Oh yeah, about me. 26 y/o male, married, white, middle class, germ phobic, never smoked, light drinker (that�s stopping now), not a super healthy eater (changing that, anti-oxidants here I come), not a workout fiend (moving to 30 min a day every day), slightly overweight at 175lbs and 5�10�
Additonally, my mother had cervical cancer at a late age due to an infection from her second husband,but no other family history of cancer, figured it might be relevant. Also I have never done drugs, noticed pot was a risk factor.
Thanks for reading
