Alyssa sat nervously with her boyfriend in the waiting room. She had waited six months to get tested, and she was finally in the Lawrence Memorial Hospital’s gynecology department. A nurse called her name and she — and her boyfriend — proceeded into the small office.

Nearly half a year before, Alyssa, a junior from Lawrence, found out that her boyfriend of two years had cheated on her — with a girl infected with herpes.

“They used a condom, but I didn’t want to take the chance that he had gotten it and then I would get it,” she said.

Alyssa, who didn’t want her last name used, isn’t alone in her concerns about her sexual health. In 2009, more than 3,000 students received sexually transmitted infection testing at the University’s Student Health Services for a variety of reasons, including routine testing, said Mai Hester, marketing coordinator for SHS.

Because of the increasing number of sexually transmitted infections in Kansas, sexual health continues to be an issue not just for students but for Kansas residents as well.

“This is the first year we’re above 10,000 cases in the state,” said Derek Coppedge, director of the STD Section at the Kansas Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention. “We are really pushing for all women 25 and under to be screened for chlamydia.”

Coppedge said chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are the only “reportable” STIs in Kansas. An STD has visible physical symptoms, but an STI is an existing infection, however there may or may not be any symptoms. Even without the visible symptoms, Coppedge said many complications still arise and can cost a lot of time and money. According to a report by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, 4,710 cases of chlamydia, 1,244 cases of gonorrhea and 37 cases of syphilis were reported from January to June 2009. Most of the cases of all three STIs occurred in 20- to 24-year olds.

Douglas county generally has one of the highest STI rates in Kansas, next only to Wyandotte and Sedgwick counties.

Coppedge said the rate of chlamydia has gone up every year since the 1990s. The department is still compiling numbers from last year, but he said the state is expecting a 14 percent increase in the number of people who tested positive for chlamydia in 2009.

He said the department didn’t assume one gender is diagnosed more often than the other, but that the physiology of women causes them to have more complications from the diseases.

Elise Bolton, a senior from Lawrence, gets standard STI testing every time she visits her gynecologist.

“My boyfriend Aaron and I went to a free health day at the Health Care Access Clinic to get free HIV testing because it was something I’d never done before,” Bolton said.

Patty Quinlan, director of nursing at Watkins Memorial Health Center, said one in four individuals who are tested for STIs test positively and that testing for chlamydia and gonorrhea are now routine in gynecologist visits because they are the most common STIs. She also said chlamydia and HPV are the two most common STIs on campus.

“It’s so easy to spread,” she said, adding that different viruses and illnesses, such as chlamydia and HPV ,can spread “like a grass fire.”

Quinlan said it was important for anyone who has been sexually active to get STI testing, especially when someone’s partner changes or if they have more than one partner.

Alyssa said this was the first time she had been tested for all STIs and STDs.

“I had thought about how if I had herpes, my entire life would change and my relationships with other people would be completely different,” Alyssa said. “I try really hard to keep myself healthy and be conscious of my body. To think that all the hard work I had put into being a healthy person could be taken away from me – because of what someone else did – made me feel completely helpless.”

Alyssa said she wasn’t going to get the testing done at first, but the possibility that she might have herpes lingered in the back of her mind even though she didn’t have any symptoms.

Quinlan said one reason Douglas county had a higher number of positive STI cases was because college towns have large populations, making them the highest populated counties in Kansas. She said it was also due, in part, to the universities having health services that are reaching out to discover positive cases so people can get treatment and prevent spreading.

She said the higher numbers may not reflect the sexual habit of college students.

Not long after Alyssa had been tested, she got a call back with her test results.

“They called me while I was in class and I had a message from the nurse saying ‘Alyssa, this is so and so at the hospital and we have your labs back and could you please give us a call at this number,’” she said. “It was so ominous.”

It wasn’t until she called the nurse back and listened to the nurse “cheerily” assure her over and over again that her test results came back completely clean, that Alyssa was satisfied.

“I did cry because I had done everything right and now I have proof of it,” she said. “You trust someone and then they can put you in danger with what they do.”

Bolton agreed that putting your trust in someone can be tricky in such instances.

“It’s an instance of never being too careful,” Bolton said. “I know Aaron and I aren’t fucking around on each other, but I think it’s still a smart idea to always have current, accurate information regarding one’s body.”

Watkins, along with other clinics such as LMH and the Lawrence Health Care Access Clinic, 1920 Moodie Road, offer STI and STD testing.

“We strongly encourage students to know that sexual health is as important as all other aspects of healthy living like diet and exercise,” Quinlan said. “Prices should not prevent someone from seeking medical care.”

— Edited by Kristen Liszewski