STD Testing at Home: My Experience with NURX

Photo by Natali Voitkevich via Pexels

I was not paid to endorse or use NURX, I bought and took their STD test out of my own curiosity.

In the first couple weeks of the pandemic, the questions were all about the essentials. What's going to happen to me? Will I be able to get toilet paper? Will global distribution chains of food dry up? There were many immediate concerns such as these while we huddled indoors and bought camping equipment, pasta, and sourdough starters. But as the months wore on, other less pressing issues started coming to the forefront.

One of the pressing ones for me was the question of reproductive healthcare. My normal clinic was closed except for emergencies, and I didn't think my regular STD checkup would be considered one, although mentally I was close. As a sexually active person who is also polyamorous, I am usually fastidious about STD and sexual health checkups and until the pandemic, I would go every three months or so. But now, I didn't know where to go. It was starting to make me feel anxious, and I wanted to put my mind at ease, and take care of my health.

Almost as if by magic, the internet daddy Google started advertising Nurx to me via instagram and facebook and all of the other unmentionable places I lurk on the internet, and I was immediately interested. A STD test you could take at home? Perfect for quarantine. Nevertheless, I hemmed and hawed about getting it because I was unsure if it was as reliable as it said it was, and also it came with a decent price tag, whereas previously, all of my STD tests were free through my insurance. Not knowing when the pandemic would end though, I decided that it was worth a shot.

When the kit came, it was packaged in a cute little box that opened up in such a cute way I was almost disappointed that there wasn't shoes or chocolates inside. There were many different packages and labeled bits and bobs, but the instructions were really easy to read and easier to use. It was definitely a bit weird and uncomfortable to do the tests myself, but it was outweighed by my genuine curiosity and slight feeling of glee in doing these on my own. Finally, I can play the Doctor my mom always wanted me to be.

One throat swab and one vaginal swab later, I was left with the blood test. You use a little disposable lancet to prick the side of your finger and then you squeeze several drops of blood onto a little tab. I think of the many times I've been to the lab to get this test done, and how they've always taken two or three vials of blood out of my arm. Can they really accurately test me with just one finger of blood on a little business card? Time will tell. This process is not for the faint of heart, it does hurt a tiny bit, but surprisingly, it was not as bad as I thought it would be, and I could easily do it again if necessary.

After all of that, I packaged everything up neatly and put it into a little box to send back to the company. Postage is already prepaid so I just took it to my local post office to tip into the mail slot. It took about 10 days to get my results back, which is a little longer than they promised on the website (but considering the overworked state of healthcare in this pandemic I was more than willing to give them a break), but I got my results by text, email, and then through the private messaging function on their website. All negative! Yay for me.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. I really enjoyed the process and overall, it took me fifteen minutes maximum to do all the testing bits (I had to wait until the blood card fully dried before I could put it back into the packet which took a bit longer) but honestly, it was a lot more convenient than having to go to the clinic. A feature that I also liked was that you could reach out to your designated provider via the website at any time with your health questions, just as you would at the doctor's office. The cost can be a bit prohibitive, I think it was about $200 dollars for me overall, but during a pandemic in which my usual methods of sexual health monitoring aren't available? This worked just fine and I'll definitely be doing it again.