I know I asked a question yesterday, but I promise this will be the last one! 

To summarize, I had an unprotected sexual encounter with a guy on January 28. I received a negative STD panel twice (including at 42 and 53 days) 

A few weeks after the encounter, I had some sort of sore on the left side of my testicles where the skin rises up and touches my thigh. I figured it was an infected ingrown hair as it was fairly painful and swollen. I eventually popped up and lots of blood came out. It healed. The other day, I had an almost identical one on the other side. I also popped that one and pus and blood came out. My questions are 

1. Could these be two separate chanclres that formed on both sides. From what I’ve read it’s not typical for blood and pus to be part of them, but who knows, nor is it common for them to be painful. 

2. Would my two RPR tests prove that it wasn’t syphilis? I’m assuming they are considering they were done we’re done both while these were active. I’m assuming if you have an active sore, or one that healed a few weeks ago, your RPR would be positive? 

Thanks!

The lesions you describe are in a location which would be most unusual for syphilis (i.e. I have never seen or heard of syphilis lesions in these locations in my over 40 years of STI-focused practice) and syphilis lesions would not bleed in the manner you describe.  What you describe in terms of location, bleeding, etc. is typical of folliculitis- a non-STI infection of hair follicles.

EWH

I’ve read both of you good doctors say that in the case of HIV, symptoms = a positive 4th Gen Test. Assuming someone (I am not saying I do or am convinced I do) has an active syphilis infection, with symptoms like a chancre, is the same case with a RPR test - that an active infection = a positive RPR test? I’ve read online (I know you told me not to, this was before I read your response) that RPR tests can miss people with infections, so that is the basis for the question. 

The other is the presence of a lesion at the appropriate time. In the case of Syphilis as long as a lesion has been present for two or three days an RPR test will always be positive. I should point out however that Lesions recently acquired syphilis appear 2 to 4 weeks after contact and not this long after a contact. 

This completes this thread.  I hope you’ll be able to leave your concerns behind and move forward.  EWH