- Remember, kids — no glove, no love.
Remember what your parents taught you — if you’re about to get down and dirty, wrap it up. And if they didn’t give you that talk, let this story serve as an important lesson.
Earlier this year, an Austrian man in his 50s went on a trip to Cambodia. When he returned home, he brought with him a souvenir that nobody wants.
It turned out that the man had gotten his freak on with a local prostitute during his trip. And in the heat of the moment, he forgot to wear a condom.
The man in his Frisky Fifties started experiencing some uncomfortable symptoms and consulted a doctor. The results of his examination were a nightmare.
He had caught gonorrhea, but this wasn’t just any regular STD. The man was infected with an extremely drug-resistant, rare strain of super gonorrhea.
As unfortunate as the man’s case is, the scarier part is that it’s getting less and less rare. Cases of super gonorrhea are popping up with increasing frequency, much to the concern of medical professionals.
A Hot Vacation
The Austrian case of super gonorrhea was documented in a recent study published in the journal Eurosurveillance. According to the article, the man visited Cambodia in April 2022.
While there, he met an unidentified lady of the night. One thing led to another, and the two ended up dancing the horizontal tango.
Shortly afterward, the man returned home to Austria. But trouble — and his genitals — flared up soon after.
Five days after his encounter with the Cambodian prostitute, the man started experiencing increasing pain while peeing. He also noticed what the authors of the study call mercifully clinically “urethral discharge.”
We’re not so merciful. He was leaking pus from his dong.
At this point, the man decided it was time for some medical attention. He consulted a urologist and told the doctor about his Cambodian escapades.
Without further ado, the doctor performed a urethral swab. Lab tests confirmed what the doctor had probably already guessed — the man had gonorrhea.
Gonorrhea is typically treated with antibiotics. So, the doctor gave the man his medication and sent him on his way.
Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? No, It’s…
Fast-forward two weeks and the man’s symptoms had eased. His swab cultures also showed that he was clean.
But there was something strange going on. A PCR test on his urethral sample still showed active gonorrhea.
Puzzled, doctors ran some further tests. The results of these tests were not good — they found out that the gonorrhea strain infecting the man was drug-resistant.
The list of antibiotics that the bacteria resisted include ceftriaxone, azithromycin, cefixime, cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin, and tetracycline. If those names mean nothing to you, let’s put it this way — none of the most common drugs used to treat gonorrhea work on the super strain.
There was another medication that could work, namely amoxicillin-clavulanic acid. And sure enough, after seven days the man was finally free of gonorrhea.
However, the doctors did not perform another PCR test for some reason. So is he actually clean?
A Growing Problem
That’s a very important question to ask for a very good reason. The super gonorrhea that the man had (or has) is becoming increasingly common. Just as an example, three cases of the super gonorrhea popped up in the U.K. in February.
According to the authors of the study, N. gonorrhoeae — the bacterium that causes gonorrhea — has been building antibiotic resistance since the 1930s. That’s bad news because the disease could in short order become completely untreatable.
And gonorrhea really isn’t a disease you want reaching that state. In case you aren’t aware, gonorrhea is an all-around unpleasant disease.
In addition to painful urination and pus dripping out of your genitals, it causes a whole slew of other symptoms. It can lead to pain and/or swelling in one testicle and vaginal bleeding between periods.
If the disease is not treated promptly, it can render people infertile and significantly increase the risk to catch other STDs — like HIV. It could also spread to other parts of the body.
And, of course, anyone with gonorrhea can spread it further.
So, when it’s time to engage in the sweet act of physical love, use protection. Or the super gonorrhea might get you next.