the third cousin

in another of those memorable dinnertime conversations with my mother and sisters, somehow it came up that there is a vaccine now available for HPV - which causes most cervical cancers (or so i understand). it all started when my mom asked us how we would feel if she had a boyfriend. and i'm not sure why i brought the HPV vaccine up.

if i haven't yet mentioned it here, my mom is a twin. my aunt cathy died when i was like 12, of cancer. since then, i had asked very little about her cancer. my mom told me that her doctors thought it was ovarian cancer.

but as i got older and learned what "bastard child" meant in legalese, i got this impression of my harley-riding aunt as somewhat of a "wild child" and perhaps may have been a bit promiscuous (sp?). (hence what we affectionately call our "white trash" side of the family - my two cousins from her have different fathers and cathy was never married). that didn't mean anything; bad things happen to people who behave as well as those who don't behave according to the standards of society. cancer can happen to anyone regardless of their behavior. sure there are things you can do that might make you more or less likely to get it or not get it, but sometimes it just happens.

of course, i didn't really know what HPV was until this fall a pap smear came back irregular. my doctor explained what a "cervical lesion" was and what it meant and that "the most common cause of an irregular pap smear is the HPV virus." i thought about it. after i broke up with my last boyfriend and had gone through the agony of getting tested for aids and all that other stuff (i had been nervous about it for a year before i worked up the courage to just go ahead and give them my blood so they could test it - negative btw) the first pap smear came back negative (eg, OK). that was fall of '04. the one i had taken in fall of '05 had come back abnormal. i don't know how long it takes to infect you (wait, lemme look that up... ok seeing that i can't find a definite answer (like with HIV i was told that you'd need to wait six months before you can get an accurate test) and since there's about 100 different strains, i guess there is no definitive answer. nevermind.) well, anyway. i still blame it on the lawyer, because he was the one person who put me at risk (i insisted on using a forro but he got frustrated and took it off and continued on his merry way).

that aside. back to tonight's conversation.

so with seeing on the news multiple times the interviews with doctors and information about the HPV vaccine, i'd been turning the issue over in my head. i wondered if there was some link between my aunt's cancer and HPV. so fast forward to the point in time where i bring up the vaccine.
that's what i think caused aunt cathy's cancer.
but didn't she get pap tests?
she just ignored them. she kept getting irregular pap smears but she didn't take them seriously. then one night she showed me a lump on her groin (my mom makes a circle with her thumb and forefinger about the size of a tennis ball) and asks, "dianna, do you think i should get this checked out?" she even told me that greg had warts on his penis!

a collective EWWWWWWWWW from all three of us.

but when they found the cancer, was it already too late? how long did she live after that?
it was pretty much too late because it was already in her lymph nodes. then she started chemo and she would have her good days and then be sick and then get better (she makes a wavey motion with her hand). so overall this lasted about three years. i don't know what she was thinking - she was pregnant too at the time. with michael? (my younger cousin) no. with jeff? no.
she was pregnant with greg's child - the guy she was about to marry too - which she had to abort.

i'm not really sure which direction the conversation took after that. all this happened when i was... i don't know, ten or eleven? i've just discovered so much in so little time. it took me a while to process all of this.

but just think how preventable all of this might have been. what sucks is the infected men who may or may not have symptoms continue to infect women, who could possibly experience things far worse. now i will grant that your partner having warts is a clear sign that you should protect yourself. but still i hate that the consequences for women can be so much worse than they are for men.

i think universal HPV vaccination is a good idea. but of course throw the church in who still says abstinence is best, so you get tons of boys and girls that are not infected nor vaccinated who grow up thinking they will be virgins on their wedding nights but then life happens and curiosity might take over, and since they didn't pay attention in sex ed thinking none of this would apply to them, they experiment and through the sexual grapevine they get infected. and in denial about their sexually active-ness they won't go to the gynecologist unless there is a serious problem, which will be when they have a golf-ball sized lymph node in their groin and it will already be too late for them. oh, but the boys get to continue to infect innocent virgins, and since their sexual encounters are generally few and far-between any outward signs of HPV will be cleared up before the next virgin gets infected.

sorry for that diatribe, i just thought one long run-on sentence would be the best way to get my point across - that sticking your head up your ass to hide from reality is stupid!