A testing time

As we are non monogamous and therefore play with other people, we always make sure we follow a strict STI testing regime. It’s important we look after our sexual health and the sexual health of those we play with. It’s something that should be simple but it really isn’t that easy at all!.

You’ve guessed it, this is going to be a rant at the availability of STI testing in the U.K.!

Before we moved to the area we live now, we used to book an appointment at our local testing centre and we’d get a text with results a few days later. Then we moved, our new local centre had a take a ticket and wait system so there was never a guarantee that we would get tested that day.

Then covid happened and testing centres closed. Whilst we couldn’t see our friends during the full lockdowns, the centres remained shut as the world started to emerge…and fuck again!

So, plan B, order test kits online. However, this is where we run into the first challenge. Our local health authority, at this point, didn’t offer online testing. National schemes covered our area but not for free. This means it costs us £1000 a year for testing, fucking friends isn’t cheap!

The slightly cheaper option is getting a train into London and picking up free tests there. Even booking train tickets in advance means that costs us £500 a year and that’s without the distractions such as dinners etc. whilst we’re there!

However, we recently discovered our local testing centre is open again, albeit working slightly differently. They now offer an online option but we’re over 25 so that’s not available to us. Instead we have to call and pick up tests. Easy! Except it really wasn’t that easy at all *sigh.

My partner rang to book us appointments but was told we needed to call individually as we each need to do a consultation. Not a problem, just a shame we’d have to go separately rather than saving petrol by going together. I call up the following morning and was told a consultation wasn’t required as I had no symptoms, I just need to pop in and pick up the test. Just for clarity, he didn’t have symptoms, just spoke to a different person.

Two weeks later he had his consultation but we then had to wait until the following week to collect our kits because they’re only open one evening a week and we need to do this outside of working hours. To save picking them up, driving home to use them and the drive back to drop them off again because you can’t post them, you have to drop them off in the hospital and it’s an hours round trip, we found the toilets.

My first eye roll moment was, despite all the LGBTQ+ signage all over the department, the toilets were binary. So off we went individually. I opened my kit and only found a vaginal swab, so a huge assumption was made about me, nobody checked to see if I was AFAB. Likewise my partner had to piss into a pot, I guess he was asked if he was AMAB during his consultation but I can’t confirm that.

I was hugely disappointed there was no oral swab, no anal swab and no blood test either. This made me so mad. People who aren’t as fully informed may assume they have been fully tested, when in fact they have only been partially tested and continue infecting people they play with. I know it comes down to NHS budgets but it’s false economy as finding out later that infections have caused further problems the treatments are far more costly than testing and early treatments.

It makes me so sad that testing in the U.K. is so dependant in which post code you live in. Some areas get free online testing, others don’t. Some areas get good local authority testing, others don’t. Whilst I’m in a very privileged position that I can pay for testing, it’s frustrating that many people are unable to and therefore thorough STI testing isn’t available to them. It all feeds into the stigma around sexual health, it isn’t something widely discussed and still seems to be a taboo than needs to be broken. Instead it’s the system that’s broken.