Question: When I was 30 I contracted syphilis. I was treated twice by oral antibiotics because I'm allergic to penicillin. I understood I was "cured." However, last week, I was hospitalized and a VDRL test was run, which showed up positive for syphilis. How concerned do I need to be? Could this just be showing that I once had syphilis but it's still "cured"? Or better put, what are the odds it's a false positive after almost 20 years on a VDRL test? The hospital confirmed with me that is the test that would have been used.

1. No, I was treated after any high risk sex 2. I do have a small abrasion on the right side of my penis that occasionally "opens" and hurts, but it is nothing like the chancre as in my bout with syphillis. It didn't develop until a few years ago and is almost certainly the result of extremely excessive masturbation and often near impossibility of ejaculation due to SSRI's I've been on at high doses. That's embarassing but I mean at times hour or more long sessions, alone or with a partner, in which I never finished. This I believe is the cause of that. When I do not engage in any activity for a while, it disappears. The skin is simply very thin there. I do not think it's related to syphilis and it bears no relation to any other photos of those types of sours I've seen. It's hardly visible usually. I don't see myself as excessively fatigued -- in fact, quite the opposite....I never get nearly enough sleep and work constantly. I do not have a fever or any other feelings of illness, except I do have back pain occasionally and, like I said, some foot numbness, which I believe and was told was the result of the surgery I had in my late thirties for a severely herniated disk, which I was told left residual sciatica. The back pain improved after surgery and so did the sciatica, but the foot numbness followed. 3. I was on the psych ward and was told by the nurse today that the VDRL and other tests are run there on a standard basis under the assumption that patients there are at higher risk of STD's. Oddly, I believe I have had negative results on at least one other VDRL, which was a screening at a mental health facility a couple of years after that first infection. I'm almost sure the same thing happened on another VDRL.

Just one last question. I know you can't give me a number, but just so I keep my fears realistic, for better or worse, what are the chance of a VDRL showing up "false positive" with low tiers so many years -- 19 years -- after treatment? I mean, are we talking a near impossible scenario? Or does that happen sometimes? And is it possible -- as I believe happened -- that I could get a negative on a VDRL and then a positive later without having been reinfected? Because if I am infected, I'm almost positive it's from the original infection 19 years ago. That was the end of my high risk sex activity. As you can imagine, it was a bit of an incentive to settle down! I will get the other test but probably can't get in until Monday and obviously I'm a bit freaked out. I thought I read the VDRL over times drops down to practically zero levels, much less after 19 years, if you;'re successfully treated. I suppose I'm mainly asking this: Should I just pretty much face the fact that I'm going to turn up positive? Or do I have a decent cause for hope that it's a false positive: And what am I facing medication wise if it's positive? Is it going to be some massively painful and extended cure after all this time? I know you can't give me specifics or any kind of promises, but hit me as straight as you can. I'd rather be prepared. Thank you. No more follow-ups after thus one.