This message is especially with young people in mind. I hope you'll think about it. When I got to be a certain age as a teen, I started doing things I would not have done before. I made mistakes. I rebelled. And I did some pretty stupid things. Some of those actions had serious consequences for me and others, and I'm still affected by some of them 40 years later. It wasn't all my fault - the power of the hormones surging through my body during those years was very powerful, and sometimes overruled what I'd learned and known was right. That doesn't undo the damage to myself and others, however, nor does it mean I'm innocent of responsibility. I don't write this as your father, and I may not know you, but please understand that I write this in the hopes that it will help you make fewer mistakes than I have.
Puberty starts around 10 (but some start as early as 5) until around 25 years of age. You can say that after you get your wisdom teeth, you're almost done. Puberty starts before the major changes like body hair, increased growth, etc. The teen years are the years when you're most likely to do things that are risky, and those behaviors will set patterns and habits that can last a long time. Your brain on puberty is a mess of confusing emotions, unexpected or even undesirable thoughts, and you'll make decisions that you'll later both regret and not understand. Tools like mindfulness can help you avoid the pitfalls.
Many people, when they are old enough (or younger but can successfully get away with it) start engaging in behavior that is contrary to what they were taught is ethically/morally acceptable, and many start engaging in activities that may have been presented as cool or interesting, but are really dangerous and destructive, along with other activities that are more physical in nature but just as bad for you. Let's call these high-risk, addictive, immoral and/or criminal behaviors what they are - they are trouble for you. Some of them you can eventually escape from, but others, especially the addictive and criminal activities, will haunt you for life...even if you ever manage to realize you need to get right.
[Note: what is immoral is not universal, or consistent from one culture/religion to another and if you weren't taught right from wrong, you may not realize that what you're doing is immoral or unethical...or you may not care. That doesn't matter because you're still hurting people and you're still destroying the fabric of society. Being a pimp, for example, is NOT cool and it is a horrible thing to do to people. It has ripple effects on everyone around you and those who know them and is extremely destructive.]
Immortalizing as a good thing the "thug life," the use of addictive substances, and other destructive activities in music, books and films is destructive, especially because it influences people in other countries, especially those who look up to America as a great place.
One thing I learned is that when I engaged in activities that I knew I shouldn't, I felt guilt. If I continued, that led to self-loathing and then self-hatred, which made me more self-destructive. I couldn't accept that I was engaging in things I knew were wrong, so I punished myself. This had no positive consequences - it made me more neurotic, less pleasant to be around, and an all-around unhappy person. It didn't matter that I engaged in relatively few negative behaviors compared to others - I was hurting myself and others.
But I consider myself lucky. Despite all the bad things I've done, and had done to me, there are worse stories than mine. I have a friend who lost both of her daughters to drug overdoses, another who lost her entire family, except one sister, to a car accident (caused by the other driver) while still in elementary school, a lady who fought free of the hold of drug addiction but suffers from terrible health maladies caused by those drug-filled years, and I know a couple who lost their young son to suicide but they don't know why. I know many, many people who were sexually, emotionally and/or physically abused as children, and many women who have been raped. These are far more common occurrences than you'd think.
I never really got into gambling, alcohol or tobacco, and I've never tried drugs, but I've seen people literally destroy themselves and their lives because of addiction. I've talked to some of them and heard about their struggles that don't cease even decades later.
Every negative action you commit has major consequences for not only yourself but the world around you. People suffer whenever we do the wrong thing. We create heaven or hell on Earth, dependent on our behavior.
Young people: never, never, NEVER engage in destructive activities, especially the ones you believe are wrong. You will regret it. It may even result in your death, or the death of loved ones.
Let me share with you a destructive ripple from my own life. There are others, but I'm not ready to openly discuss them, and that's partially because I don't want to embarrass certain people.
My addictions used to include chocolate and screen time (video games, TV, movies). Chocolate did damage to my digestive system and caused heart palpitations, so I consume far less now. Screen time, primarily video games and videos, is still a problem for me, so I have to avoid getting into them, especially the games, because I'll go for months ignoring my family.
I was also somewhat addicted to sex. Or, rather, I engaged in sex to try and fill the hole of loneliness caused by depression that was inside me even though I knew it wouldn't help. And it didn't. Meaningless sex provided no real relief from the emptiness I felt, and it made me feel guilty because I did it - which is because of my upbringing, I suppose. So I'd hate myself for it.
tl;dr: My sexual activities most probably led to my wife contracting HPV, which caused cervical cancer and her death.
As a young teen (before the discovery of HIV and well before the discovery of the role of human papilloma virus [HPV] in cancer), my parents gave me a book about the human body that listed STDs. Back in those days, the only incurable ones listed were herpes simplex (HSV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV). HPV was discovered in 1956 and only mentioned as venereal warts - easy to see and treat, or so they thought then. I got herpes - but not from sex - just on my lip from an innocent kiss by an infected person who didn't realize. Those cold sores used to pop open yearly but now I only get them maybe every 7 years or if I'm extremely stressed. I accidentally passed herpes on to one person (that I know of) during sex - on her nipple. Yes, that can happen! 😱 😭
Viruses like herpes (cold sores when on the lips, but can be on the fingers, eyes, genitals and other body parts) and HPV (which accounts for all warts and certain other growths), can infect almost any part of your body and, as with many diseases, not everyone who is infected has symptoms. There are other skin-resident viruses, such as molluscum contagiosum (which looks similar to chickenpox but the nodules are firm), but this will usually be defeated if left alone in about 6 months to 4 years (acyclovir can help).
I had a girlfriend who came home from a doctor's appointment in the 90s and told me that she had cervical dysplasia - warts on her cervix. She said they'd be frozen off at the next visit, and that we couldn't have sex until she'd healed. I developed no warts - and never have had them. She never mentioned to me any risk of cancer. I've seen some pretty disgusting images of warts on genitalia, though. 😨 😱
Despite the fact that HPV 16 & 18 had been first been attributed to cervical cancer by Harald zur Hausen in 1984, it seemed that the news must've been overshadowed by the HIV 'epidemic', because I didn't hear about it from anyone, including the media.
I didn't know about the connection between HPV and cancer, either. But then...my wife was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and I was told that HPV causes it. 😫
There are over 100 types of HPV and, of those, over 60 cause non-genital warts while another 40 cause either low- or high-risk genital warts. Low-risk warts aren't considered to cause cancer very often. Of the high-risk kinds, which need squamous epithelial cells to grow, there are only several strains, such as types 16 and 18, which cause about 70% of cervical cancer, 31, 33, 45, 52, 58, and a few others. The HPV by itself doesn't cause cancer - HPV causes genetic damage that leads to cancer. These high-risk strains don't just lead to cancer of the cervix, however. They also cause cancer of the vulva, penis, anus, mouth, tongue and oropharynx (from the tonsil to the top of the voice box). The oral cancers have been increasing in recent years due to an increase in oral sex. Condoms can prevent transmission of HPV, but only if the infected area is covered!
All those "amateur" porn videos without the use of condoms - that's a population of people who probably all have HPV and other diseases and are taking very foolish risks with their body for money that will mean nothing when the suffering starts.
One very famous comedienne/actress in Indonesia, Julia Perez (whom we met on the stage of a very popular show we were invited to called "Panggung Impian" - "Dream Stage"), got HPV from her European husband, a famous soccer player who'd engaged in sex with other women, some of whom were infected. Julia died in 2017 of cervical cancer while trying to keep working as an actress in order to pay off the debts she incurred in Singapore for the treatment of her cancer.
Not everyone who has HPV develops warts or any other symptom of being infected with HPV.
According to experts I've spoken to in the US and Indonesia, if you don't have symptoms, it's almost impossible to find out if you have HPV, and your body cannot defeat it. The tests require scraping the infected area to get cell samples, and it isn't 100% accurate - if you scrub the wrong area, or you don't scrub hard enough, you may miss the infected cells, resulting in a false negative. If there are no symptoms, you also do not know WHERE you should have cells scraped from. You can't just say: "This general area is probably where it is." You MUST know. I have no symptoms but, after having been with my wife for 14 years, it's a pretty sure thing that I'm infected now if I wasn't already by that girlfriend in the 90s, or someone else. I had had more than a couple of lovers before meeting and marrying Ita.
Not all cervical cancer is caused by HPV, but HPV causes about 70%. The biggest problem is that a HUGE swath of the world's population is infected with HPV. In the US, over 79 MILLION have it, with an infection rate of 14 million/year. The highest estimated incidence rates are in sub-Saharan Africa, Melanesia, Latin America and the Caribbean, south-central Asia and south-east Asia.
Between prostitution, extra-marital sex (with or without consent) and multiple partners, HPV has an easy time spreading worldwide and affects almost every population around the world. Our hedonistic love of sex is fueling the #4 cause of cancer in women (cervical), and thousands pay the ultimate price each year - death - even in the US. Check out the CDC article below for US statistics. ######
My wife in 2014, after she was diagnosed with stage 2b cervical cancer
My wife paid that price in 2017. People didn't believe she was sick because she had such a strong body and immune system that she looked perfectly normal! The symptoms of cervical cancer are often absent in women, and many women think the symptoms are just another "woman thing" and, thus, the cervical dysplasia (pre-cancerous growth) and cancer often go undetected until it's too late. She only had stage 2b when she was diagnosed but she was suffering from lower back pain, uncontrollable vaginal bleeding (the skin in her vagina became so fragile that sex would rip it open without pain), and other problems. As things progressed, she started having lumps of blood come out of her vagina along with a great deal of pain. It freaked me out when she showed me one lump! She didn't show me the largest one - as big as a baby's head. She went from a strong, vibrant woman to a shell of herself by the autumn of 2016.
"Globally, three types of HPV vaccines are currently available – bivalent vaccine (Cervarix™; GSK Biologicals, Belgium) targeting HPV types 16 and 18; quadrivalent vaccine (Gardasil™, Merck, USA) targeting HPV 16, 18, 6 and 11; and 9-valent vaccine (Gardasil 9™; Merck, USA) targeting HPV 31, 33, 45, 52 and 58 in addition to HPV 16, 18, 6 and 11."
It is highly recommended that a person be vaccinated between the ages of 9-13 although I believe that older people who have avoided sexual activity may also get it. Gardasil 9 is used in the US, while Cervarix is predominant in Europe. I've had both of my kids vaccinated. They both described the shots as more painful than most other vaccinations and immunizations. HPV vaccines don't help destroy an HPV infection, and how long their effects last are uncertain. Experts recommend that women continue to have pap smears. Some vaccines also help protect against certain low-risk strains, and all protect against 16 and 18, but none protect against every high-risk strains. Cervarix is known to last longer than Gardasil.
Anti-vaxers: from 2017 to early 2019, my kids had a long list of vaccinations and immunizations because of the loss of medical records of those shots in Indonesia. They have suffered NO adverse effects whatsoever and to refuse to use this method to prevent virulent and deadly diseases because a tiny minority has adverse reactions is foolhardy, even ignorant.
2016 - after her kidneys were impacted
Mid-2016, her kidneys were impacted when the cancerous growth that had gone undetected by doctors after the last treatment pushed against the bladder and prevented urine from draining out of the kidneys. Her body bloated up and the incompetent doctor handling her case dilly-dallied and refused to answer questions for 2 weeks. As far as I know, he (an internist specializing in the stomach) never consulted the onsite urologist, nor did the hospital have the urologist visit my wife. Her kidneys went from bad to worse as her body filled up with the fluids her kidneys couldn't get rid of. It went up into her lungs and everywhere her body was swollen with liquid. She was transferred to a better facility, but they didn't figure out what to do for another 2 weeks - nephrostomies - by which time her kidneys had degraded even further and she suffered tremendously because they gave her too much liquids in her diet. Dialysis helped during this time, but the diet just dragged her down again because they kept giving her liquids.
The nephrostomies - a tube was surgically implanted directly into her kidneys, attached to a bag outside of her body, helped a lot and she no longer needed dialysis. Instead, she started developing MRSA (bacteria resistant to multiple types of antibiotics - a very common problem worldwide in hospitals due to the misuse of antibiotics by patients, animal ranching and other industries) infections that were difficult to get rid of. Changing the bags and tubes every 3 months meant a long trip to that hospital (because the local urologist didn't have the right tools and hurt her to the point that she had to be held down by a team of nurses while she screamed so loudly I could hear her in the lobby), and more infections. Towards the end, we couldn't find antibiotics for her.
My wife turned into skin and bones. And then she died.
late 2016 after a double nephrostomy to keep her kidneys drained
Was this ripple caused by my actions? Probably, but I'll never know for sure. Whatever the cause, the ripples of our actions took my wife's life after a great deal of suffering, caused her family to go crazy and persecute me to the point that I had to flee back to the US for my kids' sake, and left us all traumatized. Ita was loved by many - she was a warm, social, giving person and I was lucky to have been her man. My kids and I still miss her. I prayed that I'd be taken in her place but that didn't happen.
I don't know which was worse - the chemotherapy or what cancer did to her each time they declared her cured and didn't notice its increasingly aggressive resurgence. I only know that it doesn't matter WHEN I got HPV, or from whom - I have committed myself to a life of chastity and celibacy because I never want to be the cause of that again.
It doesn't bother me. I've had some younger and very attractive women come onto me since then. The serious ones got scared off by my HPV story. The rest didn't get that far except this stubborn woman in Indonesia who doesn't seem to understand the risks to herself. Being alone for life is a small price to pay to prevent more suffering and death.
Please consider carefully both the larger message of the risks of engaging in risky behavior, especially addictive ones and sex with multiple partners, and the personal consequences for yourself, as well as those around you. I hope you never have to experience what I have due to your actions.
References:
Human Papillomavirus by Sheryl Roxas
What Is HPV?
HPV and Cancer
Human papillomavirus and HPV vaccines: a review
How Many Cancers Are Linked with HPV Each Year?
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Facts
Current global status & impact of human papillomavirus vaccination: Implications for India
HPV vaccine
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