Hope you can help quickly. 

I am married but do occcasionaly partake in contacts with other males outside of marrage. I limit myself to safe sex practice to keep everyone safe. 

I recently 2 days ago met with a guy on Grindr who we partaked in mutual masterbation we did touch each other with hands but no genital contact. Or kissing or oral. 

I got a message today in my inbox saying I’m letting everyone know I have been with I have tested pos for syphilis. The acc is deleted now and I can follow up.

So I have booked an app at the gum but they already told me I need to wait 12 week to test.

So panicked now, am I likely to catch this I can’t wait 12 week without sex with wide, should I push for treatment anyway?

You describe what almost certainly was a zero risk exposure for syphilis, and the GUM clinic apparently agrees. In that sense, their advice actually is good news:  If they believed this was a risky exposure, they would have advised immediate treatment with a penicillin shot. Testing only (i.e. no treatment) also is what I would have recommended if you were being managed in my STD clinic. And from a personal perspective, if somehow I were in your situation, I would not be worried about having acquired syphilis and would continue unprotected sex with my wife without worry of infecting her.

Even testing for syphilis is optional, in my opinion. But having had that advice from the GUM clinic, it makes sense to be tested. However, you don't need to wait a full 12 weeks, and I would suggest testing at about 4, 6, and either 8 or 12 weeks. The syphilis blood tests rarely require 12 weeks to become positive -- that's a pretty conservative stance. Negative results at 4 and 6 weeks may not be quite 100% conclusive, but they are close and negative results at those times will be very reassuring.

For those reasons, in this situation, I would not "push for treatment". However, your local GUM clinic may have different thoughts about this. You could consider asking for an immediate appointment (or dropping in for a walk-in visit) for an in-person evaluation. If they judge your anxiety level to be sufficiently high, perhaps they would treat you. But truly, I do not believe it is necessary:  my advice to a patient in my clinic would be the same as the GUM advice for testing only, except that I would test sooner and more than once, as suggested above.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD

Of course I cannot judge your GUM clinic's willingness to proceed. NHS funding for UK's GUM clinics has been radically reduced in the last few years, and financial issues might preclude treatment for such low risk exposures. But you won't know until you ask directly, so try to get an early appointment, or try the walk-in approach suggested above. If that doesn't work, perhaps your GP would go along with it. As a last resort, there are a few private STI/sexual health clinics in UK. If you're in or near London, search online for Freedom Health, which (last I heard) offered high quality services by well-known GUM experts. Wherever you end up, consider printing out this thread as a framework for discussion that may help.

Finally, don't panic or overly worry if treatment cannot be arranged. You really are at exceedingly low risk of syphilis, if any risk at all.

Thank you for caring enough to give this serious thought in order to warrant two perspectives. 

Unfortunately the GUM are not doing walk ins, and they only doing emergency appointments for people with symptoms. So I will have to wait. 

The good news is I’m quite a reasoned person. So I have found comfort in your words. 

- You describe what almost certainly was a zero risk

How good is the CDC is it a good site to get information 

I ask because on it’s fact sheet for syphilis 

It says 

CDC's information is accurate. It doesn't necessarily mean that other kinds of contact cannot transmit syphilis -- kissing is possible but rare, congenital infection (transmission to the fetus in utero or during vaginal delivery), lab accidents have happened, and so on. Hand-genital contact conceivably could do it, but in my 40+ years in the STI business, I've never seen or heard of a case. So yes, you are correctly interpreting CDC's information.

My main additional thought may be relevant if you are able to contact your transient partner to learn the stage of his syphilis; and whether he had an overt syphilitic lesion (chancre) of his penis. If so, and if he was also masturbating himself and that hand was going back and forth from your penis to his own, then that might be considered a significant transmission risk. But if either your own observations during the event, or his statement is that this didn't happen, you can safely plan to just keep an eye out for symptoms; get care immediately if a penile sore develops; and otherwise have the blood tests as discussed above. (But don't be overly compulsive checking yourself for symptoms. Just keep a casual eye and don't overreact to trivial changes you might observe in the appearance of your penis.

I have good news and bad news to share, bad news is that spot on the base of my penis popped and leaked a bit of white puss that was thick and is now an open sore about 3-4 mm wide but raised. So obviously this got me thinking about syphilis of course it’s early 4-5 days but still. It’s in a location it could easy be a ingrowing hair but I have put two and two together. 

Good news is that now I have symptoms. I have an app for it swabbed tomorrow so here’s hoping it’s negative. (I decided to resume sex with my wife)

We did touch each other but the contact was minimal. Maybe swapped hands once or twice mainly kept my self to my self. Didn’t notice any sores it was light so here’s hoping I’m golden. 

Thanks for your help. I’ll hand myself over to the experts in the GUM. 

That completes the two follow-up exchanges included with each question and so ends this thread. I hope the discussion has been helpful. Take care and stay safe.