greensleeves:

OK, so Grunge, you are now the official DP Discussion Forum doctor (anybody out there have any better candidates?). So, bottom line (so to speak), could this wife have gotten the trich thing from a source other than her husband? More than once? Or would it be so uncommon to get it outside of sex that it would be eye-rollingly improbable to claim you got it twice (or more) from bath water?

And why the heck wouldn't this woman - if she's computer savvy enough to write Prudence - have googled her condition and found out more about it?

As I said before, something is not quite right here.

Oo wee--good thing these things are pretty much anonymous--I don't want to say anything that'll get me in trouble! Especially since I do most of my posting on the fly without doing a really extensive PubMed search. Anyway, here goes...

Could the wife have gotten the trich from a source other than her husband?--yes, if it was another man; getting it from a towel that someone else used (does she share towels at the gym?) isn't outside the realm of possibility, either. Bath water, on the other hand, seems pretty unlikely. I did find this article (Exp Parasitol. 2008 Mar;118(3):438-41) that showed that it can survive in pool water, under experimental conditions, but I have no idea how big of a parasitic burden would have to been in the water for one to get infected, especially twice.

More than once?--Yes, in the sense that she could be getting reinfected with the same "bug"--it can hide out on her own towels or underwear and she can reinfect herself that way; or her husband picks it up from her and passes it back.

Possible scenerios I thought of were:

1) Husband got it from someone else before they were married, carried it asymptomatically and passed it to wife.

2) Wife got it from someone else before marriage, gave it to husband, who passed it back to her.

3) Husband cheated (but not necessarily repeatedly.)

4) Wife (or husband) got it from a strange towel or wearing someone else's underwear, but that was at the bottom of my list.

The multiple infections could be explained by reinfection or under-treatment.

What I don't get is this--

--Why did her doctor tell her initially that she got it from the bath water? It just strikes me as so unlikely that I didn't even think that the guy who slept through 80% of med school would say something like that--that's what made me suspect that she's maybe remembering that conversation incorrectly.

--Why did it only crop up when she was traveling overseas?

--Was it really even trichmonas? Bacterial vaginosis (which isn't an STD) is treated in a similar fashion, often with the same antibiotic. It's usually recommended that the partner get treated as well.

Hey--that just made me think--maybe she didn't even have trich back then? It's possible that she could've been diagnosed with BV initially--similar symptoms, similar treatment, taking bubble baths can predispose you to it (hence saying that she "got it from bath water"). The gynecologist could've just heard that the woman had some vaginal complaint in the past that was similar to a yeast infection that her husband was also treated for and assumed trichomonas, when all the time it could've been BV!

I'm even more convinced that this lady needs to get her whole story straight somehow, before accusing her husband of anything.