Do you have that burning, itching, inflamed, oozey feeling south of the border? Maybe you don’t see or feel anything obvious but you just have that nagging suspicion that last week’s man-whore frat-guy gave you more than his number. Either way, it’s time you got checked out.

Even if you don’t suspect any foul play but just want to be on the safe side, you should set up an appointment. Not sure where to start? Here’s everything you need to know before you put on the paper gown.

Where to Go: Taking that first step can be a little scary. Even just trying to find a testing sight can seem overwhelming, not to mention difficult. Sometimes religious activists set up websites mimicking health facilities in order to preach their message. But lucky for you, the Center for Disease Control and Planned Parenthood are the only websites you’ll need on your quest for sexual health. Plug in your zip code or state and watch as your screen gets flooded with every test site in a ten mile radius. The CDC also has a great feature that tells you who offers free testing.

What you should know before you go: Know the difference between “anonymous” and “confidential” HIV testing. Anonymous tests won’t link your name to your results, whereas confidential information could be made available to medical personnel. Be sure to ask about financial costs, how you’ll receive your test results and how long those results will take. It’s always good to know what to expect that way there will be no surprises later.

Testing: I am terrified of doctors, I don’t like the smells, the instruments, their crisp white coats, even the terminology creeps me out (I’m going to apologize for using said terminology below, but hooha and peen just didn’t seem appropiate). The whole experience gives me that pre-diarrhea feeling but I learned the best way to cope is to know what to expect before going in. Here are all the different tests that are out there. It seems like a lot, but different tests are specific to different infections so chances are you’ll be finished after a quick swab and a blood test.

• Blood test: This can test for hepatitis A, B and C; herpes (Although most blood tests for herpes cannot distinguish between type 1 and type 2), syphilis, and HIV.
• Urine test: This can be used to test for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and HIV.
• Swab cell culture or discharge sample from the throat, anus, cervix, or urethral opening of the penis: This is used to test for bacterial vaginosis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis.
• Swab DNA test from the cervix or urethral opening of the penis: This is used to test for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and HPV. The HPV DNA test is used for women as follow up to an abnormal Pap smear that indicates HPV infection. It is not reliable for testing HPV in men.
• Swab sample from a sore or lesion: This can be used to test for herpes and syphilis.
• Swab sample from oral fluids: This can be used to test for HIV.
• Visual Exam: This can detect crabs, herpes, and HPV.

The Results: So let’s say you did the right thing, got tested, and the results were less than perfect. Don’t freak out. Your doctor will set you up with a treatment plan. There are magic little pills that can clear that mess right up, or at least treat any uncomfortable symptoms and help prevent further infection.

If you still have questions be sure to Ask the Experts and have a Happy STD Awareness Day!

We took the embarrassment (and speculum!) factor out of the equation and asked you, the CollegeCandy readers, to submit the questions you had regarding STDs and sexual health to our new pal, OB/GYN Dr. Lissa Rankin. She shares her experience and knowledge below. There were so many questions that we had to break it into two parts, so come back later to read the rest!

1. How does someone get tested for STDs?
If you wish to be screened for STD’s, screening is simple.  Readily available blood tests exist for HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, and herpes.  Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomonas can all be tested from swabbing the vagina or cervix, as well as from a urine test, and it’s important to get tested, since the presence of these infections may make you more susceptible to contracting HIV.  HPV testing can be performed at the time of a pap smear, although this test is usually only done if your pap smear is abnormal.  Genital warts, pubic lice and molluscum contagiosum are usually diagnosed by a doctor’s visual inspection or, sometimes, a biopsy.  Most STD tests are readily available at any OB/GYN or primary care medical office.

2. How often should I get tested?
I recommend being tested any time you change sexual partners (or any time your partner does). So if you break up with your boyfriend and he hooks up with someone else, then wants to get back together, it’s time to get tested again.  If you’ve been tested once and everything was negative, it’s a good idea to get retested in 6 months, just to make sure.  After that, as long as you’re with the same partner and you know for sure your partner is faithful, you’re probably safe to just get your annual pap smear.

If you’re changing partners, you need to be tested before every new partner.  If you’re changing partners daily- or even weekly, you’re putting yourself at high risk, even with frequent testing. Always use condoms in this situation, but understand that even condoms can’t protect you from all the cooties that are out there.  Be safe!

3. How do you broach the subject with your partner?
You DON’T wait until things are hot and heavy before you bring it up.  I recommend that women initiate the discussion by getting tested themselves.  When you show your partner that you care about the health of both of you by getting tested, it will motivate him to do the same.  So go ahead and draw the line in the sand.  Tell him you don’t feel comfortable being sexual with him until you know you’re safe.  Then use condoms anyway, just to be safe.  But keep in mind that some STDs like herpes and HPV can still be transmitted, even if you use condoms, since the virus can still be shed from genital skin that isn’t covered by the condom.

If you already have an STD and need to tell your partner, bring him with you to the gynecologist. Having a doctor present to alleviate concerns and answer questions is a good way to break the news.  Or write a letter if that’s easier for you, and include website links that can help answer his questions.

4. What are the odds of catching an STD through oral sex with ejaculation? And does the likelihood increase if you spit (it’s already in your mouth) or swallow?

Many young people enjoy oral sex over intercourse specifically because you can’t get pregnant and you’re less likely to get sexually transmitted diseases, but that doesn’t make it risk-free.  As you can imagine, this is a hard thing to study. Few couples engage only in oral sex, so it’s hard to get a clean study.  It’s not like you can take two groups of people and say, “You guys have intercourse and you guys have oral sex and we’ll study the risk of STD transmission!”  No, that doesn’t work.  So all we have is theoretical data, really.

So what do we know? You can get STDs from oral sex with ejaculation, but it’s pretty rare. Several factors increase your risk of contracting a STD from oral sex.  If you have poor oral hygiene, such as oral ulcers, gum disease, or oral thrush, this makes you more susceptible to someone’s body fluids.  If you hold semen in your mouth, this also increases the risk of transmission. It’s better to spit or swallow immediately, since stomach acids inactivate most infections.

If you give a man with herpes oral sex, and he is shedding the virus from his genitals, you can get oral herpes or herpes pharyngitis, leading to ulcers in the mouth and throat. While genital herpes (HSV-2) tends to prefer infecting the genitals, there can be some crossover, so HSV-2 can still cause problems in the mouth, although this is much less common.  Transmission in the absence of genital ulcers in uncommon, although not impossible.  Similarly, oral infection with syphilis can cause syphilitic mouth ulcers, or chancres.

Certain strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause warts in the throat, although this is extremely uncommon.  Some data suggests that HPV infection of the throat may also increase the risk of throat cancer, but again, this is an uncommon outcome.  Having oral sex with a man with gonorrhea can cause a gonococcal throat infection, although this is usually asymptomatic.  Chlamydia has also been isolated from the throats of men and women, although it doesn’t appear to cause symptoms.

Blood-borne STD’s or those carried in body fluids, such as HIV and hepatitis B and C, have a theoretical risk of transmission from oral sex.  Poor oral hygiene or blood in the semen may increase this risk.  Overall, a few reports of transmission from oral sex exist, but this appears to happen very rarely.

All in all, oral sex is much safer than either vaginal intercourse or anal intercourse, and transmission of STD’s is a rare but theoretical risk.  If you decide to take your chances with oral sex, the likelihood is that you’ll be just fine.  But if you wish to protect yourself, your partner can wear a condom. Flavored condoms exist specifically for the enjoyment of safe oral sex.

Today is Facebook’s 5th birthday. Can you believe it? Five years? We’ve been stalking our friends (and friends of friends of friends) for 5 whole years?!

I’m always astonished by how quickly novelty becomes routine, and how easily routine slides dismally into annoyance. When I first logged on to Facebook, you know, senior year of high school – damn! – there they were, Joe and Chelsea and Ian and Howie and, oh boy! When did I get so many friends? And when did everyone start looking so good in pictures? My excitement was boundless. I was so pumped, I posted on my own wall.

Since then, the spell has worn off a bit. Facebook has become at best a boring tool (the seventh simple machine?) and at worst a recipe for failing your finals. We’ve all spent those wee-morning hours clicking through photos of proms and parties past. We’ve lost (real-life) friends over comment arguments about “just how drunk Mandy was” in that one album. And now our mothers are on Facebook, and they’ve Bitten us. “Start Biting people, and raise your own Vampire Horde!” Thanks, Mom!

But c’mon, Facebook’s great, right? We really do love it. It’s like a drug. And if you took that drug away, the withdrawal symptoms would be severe. In a world where all our Facebook connections were replaced by tin-can telephones, what couldn’t we do? More importantly, would we be able to park our culture in the handicapped spot?

Fight the good fight

Whether you’re into ending the Iraq war or whether you think bears should run the country, you can quickly, efficiently coordinate your frothing teen acolytes through Facebook. Just today, I was invited to a group devoted to publicizing a coal waste accident that polluted the Tennessee River. See, without Facebook, I wouldn’t have heard about this terrible accident at all, and I’d probably just spend the rest of tonight eating chocolate and listening to Bing Crosby records. Instead, I’ll be thinking about Appalachia while I eat chocolate and listen to Bing Crosby records. Hey, wait a minute! How often do you think about whatever groups you joined on Facebook? It’s regular, offhand, unnoticed. I mean, it’s great to connect with passionate youth from across the globe about every issue imaginable, but in a way, when you’ve got seven hundred different Causes, it’s hard to care that much about any one of them. Now, if some ragged protester with a gaze of steel and a booming voice came to my door and screamed at me, I’d probably be a lot more inspired.

Hail some hook-ups

Without Facebook, random hook-ups would be a lot more… random.

Real Science Fact: 95% of Facebook users really just use the system to find people to have sex with. You log on, you take a look at your feed, and you then you spot them: that guy/girl who was a total schlub in high school but now has just come back from digging Korean water mains or building the pyramids or whatever and is totally smokin’. And if you were to call them up, actually pick up the phone and dial their number, it’d be awkward – because when someone you haven’t talked to in three years calls you up on a Friday night, it’s weird. But Facebooking someone asking to catch up – nah, that’s normal, that’s easy. Standard operating procedure. “hey happy bday, hows your semestr, haven’t talked in a while lol… lets get starbux sometime.” Try that line face-to-face, and you just get funny looks. But with the convenience of Facebook, you’re a master flirt – because you know what? They see your message, and they’re probably secretly thinking the same thing. Hopefully they don’t have syphilis.

Invade other people’s personal lives

Thanks to Facebook, we can all be armchair control freaks. Wondering who the boyfriend’s been talking to lately? Check his Wall. Where’s he been without you? Check the photos. Who’s he been playing Jetman with? You can look that up, too – no hidden cameras or hairs on the closet door needed. And stalking becomes effortless – without Facebook, you’d have to resort to the ladder by the bedroom window, the slow, repeated drive-by, the overcoat and wide-brimmed hat on the street corner. Far less dangerous, and completely anonymous; I’ve allowed names I didn’t recognize friend me before, and I’ve yet to figure out exactly who they are. In my imagination, I have many stalkers, and they’re all tall, beautiful women who pine desperately for a strapping young man like me to accept their love and joint ownership of their enormous bank accounts.

So, let’s see what we’ve got here: without Facebook, we’d probably hear about fewer causes, but we’d also care more about the ones we did hear about; we’d generally have fewer awkward hook-ups with people we only barely know; and we’d actually have to talk to each other if our relationships had serious trust issues. Sounds like stopping the Facebook insanity before it reaches its 6th birthday is a good idea.

Right after you get with your lab partner from high school physics, of course.

Excited, rushing conversation, behind a closed door:

“And then this guy… he just, like, whipped out a trombone! And then some other guy just pulled out a harmonica! And then… and then someone had to do his laundry!”

A girl, holding up a bottle of vodka: “It’s my dildo! The best kind – the kind that has alcohol in it.”

Two girls arguing at a party:

“I’m gonna punch your cock off!”

“I don’t have a cock!”

“I wish you did – so I could punch it off!”

A dude walks into an apartment, carrying a keg.

“Wait,” asks another guy. “Is that, like, for drinking?”

“Nah, I think I’m gonna bathe in it, first. Hey, is that pizza? Maybe I’ll rub that all over my body while I’m at it.”

A girl at the library, in the stacks, as loudly as possible: “Listen. So then I talked to my doctor, and then my gynecologist, and he put me on birth control – but he says I still need to use condoms when I’m f***ing my boyfriend, because I might get syphilis! I know, right?”

Guy in the hallway, banging on a door: “Hey! You! You think you can just live in my building? Fuck you! Here’s my nipple!

“The Rescuers Down Under? Oh, that movie was so cool!”

“I know, right? It was crazy. I think I definitely developed some kind of weird medical bondage thing, though.”

“Yeah, who even thinks of that? Like, were the writers sitting around, like, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty good, but I really think it needs a rectal torture scene.’”

The patient du jour was a dude who collapsed during a protest and who appeared to have no major symptoms other than occasional fainting spells. House, however, usurped the patient with the theory that his niceness (yes, NICENESS) was a symptom of a more serious illness.

After a bunch of tests, the team found out that the guy had neurosyphilis and that the condition was supposedly affecting his brain. Kutner also tested a vial of “House’s” blood that he found lying around and discovered that House had syphilis. Long story short: House planted the blood so he could pretend to get nicer with treatment and make the team believe that his initial opinion of niceness being a defect was correct.

Whew! If that’s all a little confusing, let’s get simple: the dirt in this episode was that Cameron once slept with House (at least, it was strongly implied). Chase is pissed with Cameron (rightly) because she’s now putting him at risk of catching an STD, so there’s some major drama going on there.

In other news, House was sick of never seeing Wilson, so he worked out a visitation schedule with Amber. If you’ve seen the show, you can imagine how well that worked. Wilson was too passive-aggressive to choose sides, so House and Amber ended in a deadlock that probably won’t ever be broken.

All in all, I’d say the episode was valuable just for the tantalizing idea that Cameron and House slept together and the marginally entertaining thread of sarcastic performance reviews, so catch the full episode on Fox’s Web site if you missed it.  If not…eh.

Maybe the writers will have really warmed up by next week.

Like nails scratching a chalkboard, I cannot stand PDA. Some call me cold. Some call me heartless. I call myself considerate of humankind.A peck on the cheek here and there, fine. You like each other. You’re having a lot of sex. I get it. But Lapdog Syndrome seems to be the STD plaguing my peers even more so than syphilis.

You know the symptoms: the girlfriend becomes a lifeless, glassy – eyed rag doll on the overprotective boyfriend’s lap. It’s more precious than erotic, but equally gag – inducing. It’s almost as bad as the patented crotch – grab.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Couples are barreling through boundaries left and right. Nick and Vanessa are having sex in a hot tub (the worst!). Nicole Richie can’t even stand without the support of fugly – whatshisname (is she really pregnant??? Someone please tell me the truth! Leave a comment here!). Even Kate Beckinsale is guilty. And I thought the English were supposed to be prim.

I’m grossed out.

Is it too much to ask for some common decency? Get a room. PDA is not okay.

Summertime’s for lovin’, which ostensibly means that summertime’s for STDs. And this summer, a whopper of an STD is back with a vengeance: syphilis.

The only thing they ever told us about syphilis in health class is that Al Capone died from it. So, I figured if I stayed away from the mafia I’d be okay. But as the New York Post reports, there have been 260 cases in New York City alone this year.

Syphilis is no longer a thing of the past, a disease that claimed the young lives of powerful visionaries like King Edward VI and Ivan the Terrible. Nope, Syphilis has finally caught up with the times. It’s a vintage STD, back for more. But not vintage in a good way. Vintage like… leg warmers.

Just a brief lowdown on why you DON’T want the clap: nasty, nasty lesions (seriously, don’t google syphilis lesions unless your stomach is made of steel), fever, rash, hepatitis, heart failure, insanity! — just to name a few symptoms. So, um, not to sound like mom and all, but be careful! Because I really don’t want to look at your lesions. Because… you’re worth it.