I never asked him for his name. He sat across from my grandfather and me in the waiting room of the PET Scan department, on the second floor of Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri on November 2, 2017. My grandmother has had Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia for around a decade now, and was scheduled for a series of tests that day to see how things were progressing.

A PET Scan is long. The patient is given medicine, which takes an hour to fully absorb into the body. After that hour, the body is scanned for a period of 20-45 minutes and any areas of abnormal cancerous activity show up in the scan to give the doctors an idea of where cancer exists inside the body. My grandmother was wheeled back to the PET Scan machine, my grandfather went to use the restroom, and I took my seat in the frigid waiting room where two other people were already sitting.

The man across from me, estimated to be in his late thirties, was sitting with his laptop in his lap and a red cord dangling from his left ear. An older woman was sitting to my left, and she commented that people do not talk to each other anymore. At this, the man looked up from his computer, and ironically, a conversation began. It was fleeting at first, meaningless chit-chat among strangers. Then the woman left with her husband, his PET Scan complete, and myself, my grandfather and the man across from us continued the conversation.

My grandfather, curious about the PET Scan, began wondering aloud about how it worked. That was when the man's story unfolded. This was far from his first time in this waiting room. His wife has been coming for a PET Scan every three months for some time now. He told us the process, how long it takes, and what the scan shows us. His wife's cancer had disappeared and seemed to be headed for remission. Then, nine months after being declared cancer free, a PET Scan showed a glow of activity. The cancer was back.

My grandfather, in his true curious fashion, asked him what kind of cancer she has, a question I wondered but was too concerned with his privacy to ask. His response elicited a chill down my arms and a jolt to the pit of my stomach. Cervical cancer. My immediate reaction - what about a hysterectomy? Surely she had one done? Shouldn't removing the cervix remove the possibility of cervical cancer? After all, HPV, which is almost exclusively the cause of cervical cancer, lives on the cervix. If the cervix is gone, shouldn't the HPV also be gone, and therefore the cancerous cells that it causes?

He confirmed that she did have a total hysterectomy, and that they even took an inch of her vagina as well, before she started chemotherapy. "You mean she has no cervix or uterus or anything, and her cancer came back?" My heart sank. In conversations with my gynecologist, I was told that cervical cancer is slow growing, easy to treat, and rarely metastasizes. I expressed this doctor-provided information to the man across from me, and he said that she only missed one yearly pap exam. Just one. She had a normal pap smear, somehow missed her appointment the following year, and when she went in the year after that she had full-blown cervical cancer.

How did this happen? HPV is responsible for nearly all cases of cervical cancer. HPV is so common that anyone who has ever had sex has probably been exposed to it, especially if they have had multiple partners. Although several types of HPV are linked to cancer, types 16 and 18 alone are responsible for 70% of all cervical cancers. Even condoms, while they may reduce the spreading of HPV, are not enough to prevent it because HPV spreads via skin-on-skin contact. It can spread even if intercourse does not happen, and it can even spread to the mouth through oral sex. Oral cancers linked to HPV are less common, but they do happen.

The scariest part is that HPV may lie dormant in the body, undetectable on a pap smear, then suddenly become active years down the road. Most people who contract HPV will never know because their body usually clears the infection within a few months, but it has recently been discovered, as told to me by my gynecologist, that even this "cleared" infection is not really cleared, but is likely lying dormant and may come back at any time, even years or decades later.

My doctor has always assured me that there is little to worry about. Even if someone tests positive for HPV it is highly unlikely that it will ever turn into cancer. All I can think now is, tell that to the man in the waiting room. Tell that to their four daughters, ranging in age from six to 15. Tell that to his wife's parents, who they've had to move in with to make it through this. Tell that to this woman, as the cancer defies treatment and slowly strangles life from her body.

Her initial prognosis was two years. The results of the PET Scan will determine whether she gets more or less time. Her life will almost certainly be taken, long before her youngest daughter is grown, all because of a virus. A virus, like the flu. Or the common cold. Just a virus, that almost all of us have come into contact with in our lives.

Her story brought a harsh reality into perspective. Cervical cancer is a real possibility; cervical cancer comes from HPV; HPV is sexually contracted, and we are now in a world where "hookup culture" is the norm on college campuses and beyond. Those college days may come back to haunt many in ways never considered. Those days may, quite literally, determine the outcome of the rest of our lives.