AN INTRODUCTION TO GONORRHOEA

Cause

A bacterium called Neisseria gonorrheae. Also known as `the clap'.

Incubation period

It takes from one day to two weeks for anything to appear.

Transmission

You can get gonorrhea pretty easily from receptive or insertive anal, vaginal, and oral sex. Gonorrhea can be found on the tip of the penis, in the anus, in the vagina, in the throat, and even in the eye! That means you can get gonorrhea through contact with someone who is infected in these areas. If your anus, penis, vagina, or mouth touches any infected parts of their body, you should have yourself checked in these areas by your health provider.

You can also get gonorrhea by secondary contact. For example, say you have gonorrhea on your genitals. Then you touch your genitals with your hand. Now, the bacteria is on your hand. If you then put your hand in your mouth, you can get an infection in your throat. And so you can spread it to your anus, eyes, vagina, penis, or throat.

What to look for

Gonorrhea affects men and women differently, depending on what part of the body you have it on. Most of the time, you can have it without even seeing anything or knowing it!

In men who have gonorrhea on their penis, there is a pus-like yellow discharge from the urethra (the piss-hole--see the photo above). When you pee, it stings like hell. You have to pee often, and there may be blood in the piss. You might have swollen glands in your groin and the head of your penis may turn red.

In women, there's usually not much that shows up. This is bad because a woman can be infected and not even know it--she wouldn't even think to get tested. When there are symptoms, there may be redness on the cervix, discharge from the vagina, pain in the pelvic area, and you have to pee all the time.

If you have it in your throat or anus, there may be pain, itching, soreness, redness and discharge in these areas. With the anus, it may be hard to pass stool (shit). With the throat, it may hard to swallow food. Most of the time, though, you don't even know it is in these areas.

Treatment

Gonorrhea is completely curable if you take antibiotic medication. But first, you have to know that you have it, so you should get tested and see your doctor.

Contact your health provider as soon as you think you may have gotten an STD; the sooner you are treated, the better your chances of recovery, and it is less likely you will get complications. Also, have your partners checked out, and stop having sex until you get better. Otherwise, you and your partners could keep passing the disease back and forth to each other.

Complications

For men and women who have it and don't get treated, it's possible that after a long time, they won't be able to have babies--they'll become infertile. If you do have babies, you can pass it on to your kids.

Women can get something called pelvic inflammatory disease when the disease spreads inside her body. This is a major cause of infertility. In the eye, gonorrhea can cause blindness. Finally, it can get into your blood and infect your entire body. This is called "disseminated gonorrhea". You get a skin rash, fever, and pain in your joints.

Having a gonorrhea infection makes it easier for secondary or opportunistic infections to happen. This is especially true for HIV, which can easily get into your body if your urethra is irritated. Also, if you have HIV and gonorrhea, then you are more likely to transmit HIV to another person.