So my senior year came and I actually found someone that I deeply cared about.  After some time being with my current boyfriend, we had a long talk about sex and we decided we should give it a try.  I went to my mom and asked for Birth control.  She said she would take me to the clinic because I would have to have a pap smear first.

When I went back to the doctor, she told me I had HPV.  I'm sitting there the salutatorian of my class with a 4.0 GPA, and I did not know what HPV was.  What I couldn't (and still can't) understand was why I had contracted the virus when we used a condom.....................

Turns out HPV, or Human Pamplona Virus, is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women.  It has no symptoms in males and virtually no symptoms in females.  Sometimes you can go symptom free for years, or in my case a year.  The only reason I became aware of my situation was because I had a pap smear.  There are several strands of HPV but only a very small amount of them actually cause Cervical Cancer.  I was one of the lucky ones.