What HPV Does to a Life
so today i stand before you as a sexual
health specialist
now i didn’t exactly take the
traditional path to get me
to where i am today in fact i have a
story to tell you how i got to where i
am today
and it starts with this picture taken of
my best friend and i
in december of 2000 when she gave me a
great christmas present
it was called the girlfriend’s keepsake
book she took several months
and she wrote all kinds of different
memories
and took a little memorabilia of all the
things that we had lived throughout all
of our teenage years
that started with us meeting actually
when we were 14 at high school
we had a friend she caught the story in
the book
about how a girl at school thought that
we look similar and we bumped into each
other and met in the school bathroom
and i asked her to go to this guy
charlie’s party
and there was an exclamation mark there
because at the time it was such a big
to-do
because this guy was in the top five
hotties of our school
and so if you were selected by him to go
to a party you felt like a chosen one
so when i bumped into her in the
bathroom it clicked
and that very evening we went to this
party and i was lucky not only did i
meet my one best friend that night but i
also met my other best friend
and from that moment on we really were
the three musketeers
where there was two the third one was
never far behind
and we were careless i say it like that
because we weren’t worried about the
bigger things in life like our health we
were just living our life doing our
thing and for the most part
like a lot of teenagers and we left our
rights of passage together
you know those things that we live in
our childhood years our teen years our
adult years and when we look back
there’s things that stand out well for
us
it was really probably thousands of
hours of talking on the phone
lots of great partying shopping getting
our first tattoos on our ankles together
starting school every year we lived
through love we lived through life
we lived through having four children
between the two of us and i
actually had the honor of being in her
wedding
and i never forget that day having that
time during the ceremony sitting in the
front view of the church and having that
time to think about
all the things that we had lived over
all the years of our friendship and
growing up
and to see that we had come out on the
other end and our friendship had lasted
the test of time and then i was getting
to see her cross over into her adult
life and meet her partner
and to this day it’s definitely one of
my fondest memories
with my best friend
and i say this evening was the night the
story starts is because you know that’s
night she gave me this girlfriend’s
keepsake book but it was also
the type of picture where i say if i
knew then
what i knew now uh this is where
things really took a turn and we got
smacked in the face
with something called hpv actually uh
right after that picture was taken
in fact you know this very evening
and caught it on camera we were hanging
out like we did monday night
and the kids got tired so we put them to
bed
and we were just watching tv together
and she went to the washroom and the
next thing you know she’s yelling for me
to go to the washroom and she’s standing
there in a puddle
of blood obviously this was really
concerning
so she heads to the hospital and the
doctor comes in to
see her and they end up doing a biopsy
the results come back
and he explains her that she has hpv
which is something
none of us back in 2000
had ever heard of so he then explained
to her that he needed to do a procedure
to take care of it
so a week later he went in he cleaned
out all this hpv
this pre-cancer and stapled her up and
then she did radiation
and came out six months later stronger
and happy that they got it all and she
was feeling
better and
then all of a sudden she started being
really tired and
having a slower back and not feeling
great so she decided to go get a checkup
with her oncologist
and then at that appointment actually he
explained to her that that hpv that they
went in and took care of
unfortunately it had turned into
cervical cancer actually
and that not only had it turned into
cervical cancer it had spread throughout
all of her lymph nodes
and then at the age of 23 sitting in
that appointment
she was told that she had approximately
69 months to live
well unfortunately that’s not exactly
how things went
in fact she did an incredibly quick
downworld swirl
and from the day that she got this news
to the day that she passed away
it was an incredibly short seven weeks
in fact she passed away on my son’s
first birthday
may 2001 and now i’m left with this book
this very precious book that i look at
from time to time
but there’s actually a catch to my story
back when she was told about this hpv
for the first time
she had time to get ready for this
procedure she went home and googled hpv
and
when she found out all this information
online
she called me up and she was so pissed
to find out that she had something that
no one had ever told her about
she had a family doctor a full education
a couple of kids but yet
i’d never heard of this well so she was
so angry
she pulled out a pen and paper and wrote
to oprah dear oprah
i want to get on your show and i want to
be teaching people everywhere about this
so
nobody else goes down this same path
that i’ve gone down
well unfortunately she only got a couple
of paragraphs into that letter
and she got quick so fast she never even
had the time
to finish so no this letter never got
sent she just got
stashed away
but it definitely made it that you know
uh
it’s interesting how things will have
turned now because of that story about
how we need to be spreading awareness i
mean
there’s me and my other best friend
leaning on each other after she passed
and that grieving process really led us
to feel overwhelmed and needing to do
something about hpv
so we started off the year after by
doing a run
to raise awareness about hpv and then
that led into a second run the following
year
and then about five years down the road
i was driving actually and it dawned on
me in that moment and i pulled out a
bill
and flipped it over and took out a
lipstick crayon and i wrote this message
on
on the back of the bill that i needed to
use my voice
because people need to know about what
hpv does to life and it was my calling
to do something and this stumbled into a
year later the creation of hpv global
action
which is canada’s trusted source for
information
about everything and anything to do with
hpv we’re the registered
charity for canada and
it’s led us to have education and
communication methods that we are
spreading
throughout the globe helping all
countries
with this preventable and important
virus that we need to be talking much
more about
and i like to do a disclaimer when i
talk about hpv because it really is
information for everybody
it doesn’t matter what your religion is
your gender or your sexual orientation
or your age even
you might be saying to yourself hmm i
don’t really think that this has
anything to do with me
but you definitely have people in your
life for whom this does apply and that’s
why everybody needs to know more about
hpd
so what is hpv well
it’s the human papillomavirus and it
actually has 180
different strains and their number each
could be 1 2 3 and so on and some of
them
can lead to problems now unfortunately
there’s no signs and symptoms typically
for this virus
and it’s spread via sexual activity
well that word sexual activity is a
really interesting word i think we need
to break that down
so let’s be clear what is being sexually
active well it’s actually
the minute that you go below the belt
and i bring
my friends sally and joe everywhere i go
with their red belts
to be really clear about what this
really means
so everything that we do below this
waistline and above our knees front to
back
everything we do with our hands
everything we do with our mouths
everything and anything we do below that
waistline is when we’re sexually active
and if we take a real look at what this
definition is
this actually includes using our mouth
and our hands and our fingers to
pleasure someone below the belt
it also includes
putting a penis or an object into a
vagina or a bite
and surprisingly for some to learn
rubbing up against each other with skin
to skin contact
below the belt is also being sexually
active
so a little fact is that over 75
of the population will come into contact
with one form or another
of hpv in their lifetime and what that
means in a room full of people
is that three out of four will have had
in hpv
at some point in their life that’s
shocking how is this possible why
well that’s because it only takes one
infected partner
one time you do not need to have a long
list of sexual partners to be
considering whether this could be
something that’s happened to you in fact
unfortunately as much as condoms are a
really important protection against
unwanted pregnancies
and a long list of sexually transmitted
infections
even condoms don’t completely protect us
against hpv
because a condom only shields the
genital area and there’s other parts
that have a skin skin contact so
no we are not completely protected from
hpv even with a condom
so there’s sally and joe from behind and
they’re wearing
socks and i use this analogy because
these represent our sexuality actually
their sexuality is actually something
that like we carry around with us
and it just follows us through there but
it’s not something that we see
but in this you know let’s think you
know these two people
they get together they get jiggy with it
pick your activity of choice they do
something sexual below the waistline and
what’s going to happen to sally and joe
well actually they’re going to be
getting whatever the other one has in
their knapsacks and we could look at
these knapsacks actually all day long i
don’t know what’s in them
there may be things in there that are
going to go away on their own there may
be things in there that need treatment
there may be things in there that could
actually lead to something worse like a
disease or
a cancer but like i said earlier there’s
no signs and symptoms typically to hpv
so it’s really difficult to know but not
only that
we’re not only collecting what the
person that we’ve just been with has
we’re collecting what they’ve got from
the person that they have
for them and the person that they’ve had
before them so by being with one person
it’s limitless how many things we could
have come into contact with
so what happens after we get in hpv well
any of these things can happen you could
get an hpv that goes away on its own
you could give genital warts or if it’s
left untreated
hpv can also lead to a cancer clearly
there’s no point in talking about hpv’s
that go away on their own
so talking about genital warts they come
from hpv and you get them by any skin
sexual contact
even without penetration let’s be clear
this means you don’t need to stick your
equipment into any hole
just by skin-to-skin contact below the
waistline and above the knees
front to back we’re coming into contact
with the possibility of this
and also if you have this type it could
take many months or even
years before these words will appear so
you could be with somebody now
and it not present symptoms for many
many years to come
and also you can still give hpv without
actually having this physical symptom
and signs of genital warts so what that
would look like is that you have that
hpv
you give it to every single person that
you go below the waistline with
but you don’t actually get that physical
symptom yourself
so shocking yes
these are the cancers that are caused by
hpv we have tonsil and vocal cord cancer
tongue
cancer throat cancer anal cancer
cervical cancer vulvar cancer vaginal
cancer penile cancer
i’d be asking yourself how are we seeing
or pharyngeal cancers above the
shoulders
how is this possible well ask ourselves
the question how many of us are actually
protecting our mouths when we’re
performing oral sex on a partner not
very many of us
so we’re actually contracting the hpv
through our mouths
and unfortunately the most devastating
part of this information is that any of
these cancers could stay asleep in a
person’s body for up to 40 years
before they will present symptoms that
they have a problem
so specifically we can screen for
cervical cancer so if we have a cervix
it’s really important to be getting our
regular screening
because half of the diagnosis of people
with the cervix that are diagnosed with
cervical cancer are under the age of 50.
and i think the most powerful and
important statement we can say about
cervical cancer today
is that it’s one of the most preventable
cancers that exist right now in the 21st
century which means we don’t need to
have women
and people with cervixes continue to die
from cervical cancer it should be
something from the past
now getting vaccinated against hpv is
probably the most important takeaway for
me to send to
everyone here listening today hpv
vaccination is safe and effective and
it’s the best proven protection from
this virus
that’s just the bottom line there’s been
over 300 million doses
of hpv vaccine given around the globe
and everyone from the ages of nine and
up benefit from getting vaccinated
regardless of your age gender
sexuality or your relationship status
and my last important point about
getting vaccinated is that because
there’s no screening for people with a
penis
getting vaccinated against hpv is the
only protection
my takeaways for today are really
looking into getting vaccinated no
matter your age gender and relationship
status
if you have a cervix get screened and
talk to your loved ones about getting
the hpv vaccine and getting screened
you know i hope for future
generations that you will be guided
um by the impulse of love to take action
and prevent this tragedy from happening
to your loved ones
i so wish that my friend had been the
last person taken from hpv
and in turn i think i’m grateful that
i’ve turned into a visible force
to fight this invisible force of hpv