The second stage of syphilis occurs after the chancre heals, and is characterised by many vague symptoms, including fever, joint symptoms, flu-like symptoms and rashes on the skin and mucous membranes. These skin manifestations are highly contagious. All of these vague symptoms can persist, off and on, for many years. The rashes are the most easily recognisable signs of secondary syphilis and will lead a doctor to order confirmatory blood tests, although many sufferers are never diagnosed during this stage. The syphilis bugs then stay quietly in the body, moving on to the final, or tertiary, stage of syphilis, which develops within three to 25 years in about one-third of untreated syphilis patients. This stage can permanently affect the heart, blood vessels, brain and nervous system, and may be fatal.

Syphilis is curable by antibiotics in the primary and secondary stages and the latent phase before the organ changes of the tertiary stage develop; these later changes are not reversible.

Phoebe was 56 years old and had a terrible bout of Bell’s palsy, causing the left side of her face to droop. She was having trouble with her left eye and thought it was because of the palsy. To her horror and indignation, the ophthalmologist saw changes on her retina that led him to test her for syphilis and the tests were positive! The tragedy of it all is that Phoebe was an abused wife, whose very jealous second husband beat her for imaginary affairs. Somehow, he had to be tested and treated without making him in any way consider blaming her. The ophthalmologist handled it with exquisite tact and finesse.

Grace was a young woman having her first baby in a country hospital. She turned up to book with Caroline for the birth when she was fourteen weeks pregnant. A routine blood test showed that Grace was actively infected with syphilis which could seriously harm her baby. She was given two shots of penicillin (one in each buttock, a week apart, definitely an ouch!) which cleared the infection before her baby was harmed. Grace’s partner Eddy also came up positive for syphilis on blood tests and had the same penicillin shots.

Both of these women had caught syphilis from their infected partners, but had been unaware of their earlier infection. This is how most late syphilis is diagnosed – Cialis Super Active Canada: in women — medical screening in another context picks it up. We also recommend screening whenever another STD is diagnosed: as we’ve said, these little fellows often travel together…

Congenital syphilis is contracted by infection across the placenta — that is, an infected mother transmits the infection to her baby in the womb. This has now become very uncommon in the developed world, thanks to antenatal testing for syphilis and prompt treatment like Grace had.