Hello Doctors,

I am 32 now. When I was approximately 24-25 I contracted genital warts while living in Taiwan. There was a cluster of approximately 5-8 warts around the shaft of my penis. I had them frozen. A couple came back and the treatment was repeated. None came back.

A couple months later another bump appeared on my shaft where the original wart appeared. However, it appeared different and my doctor at the time said it probably wasn't a wart so we didn't treat it at all. Throughout the following years I never had it treated but I periodically would tear and rip it off. Almost always it would reappear in a matter of weeks or months.

Fast forward to the present. I showed my doctor this bump when I returned to Canada. She said she doubted it was a wart due to the fact that none of the other warts had ever reappeared and it was just that single bump but she referred me to a dermatologist.

The dermatologist said he was 99% sure it was just a mole. We elected to surgically remove it for cosmetic reasons and he sent it for a biopsy. Much to my surprise I received a call from his office stating that it tested positive for being a genital wart.

I have read a lot of literature stating that the virus is usually cleared within a year or two.  My immune system is normal by all accounts. Did this wart just last this long because it was never treated correctly until now? All of the other warts that were frozen have never returned. Can I be confident that now that I have treated this one it will respond like the others and not come back? Does the normal prognosis still apply to me, that I can be fairly confident that if this wart does not return within 6-12 months that I am not contagious and that if it doesn't reappear within the next year or two that my body has cleared the virus?

Thank you so much!

I should also mention that during my initial diagnosis I was found to have a wart in my throat that was removed and has never came back (I was just at the ENT doctor a couple months ago for an unrelated problem and all was clear).

Also, although this wart would seemingly increase and decrease in size if I left it long enough without tearing it or ripping it off, it never multiplied or massively changed.

I have also had 3 long term girlfriends during the 6-7 years that I had this wart and none were ever infected despite having unprotected sex (I was under the impression that it wasn't a wart from the doctor so I didn't wear protection in monogamous long term relationships).

My apologies but the second post, second paragraph talking about the wart not changing in size significantly or multiplying is referring to the one on my penis and not my throat. The one on my throat was removed when I was 25 and never came back.

That wasn't clear, I am sorry.