This STD Is Making A Terrifying Comeback After Years Of Decline

Good morning, my sweet vixens. I'm about to ruin your day with this lovely piece of information: Syphilis is making a comeback.

The scary, seemingly ancient STD has even permeated the ultra clean Midwest, with Indiana's syphilis cases sky-rocking by 70 percent in just a year.  It's even made its way into the very "belle" of the South, with Texas' Lubbock county being locked under a super official "syphilis alert."

This news just makes me want to bat my mega lashes, take a meaningful gulp of gin and cry into the high heavens in my best Southern accent, "Is NOWHERE SAFE ANYMORE, DARLING?"

Seriously speaking, syphilis is back, and it's all over the great nation of America. I'm going to throw a statistic at you because I care for you and you need to know that this shit is real: In 2000, there were only 6,000 cases of syphilis, and the CDC was pretty sure the disease would eliminated soon. Jump to 2014, and there are 20,000 cases of both primary and secondary syphilis in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is scary AF.

Look, the moral of the story is get yourself tested, girls and boys. Because this disease can be cured with a healthy dollop of the good ol' antibiotics, but it's super dangerous if left untreated and can spread like wild fire.

According to The Atlantic, syphilis is "a bit of a secret agent, transmissible through almost every sexual means and erupting as a tiny lesion about a month after exposure. At various stages of the infection, it might cause no symptoms or a puzzling array of them. If gone undiagnosed, it can cause everything from disfigurement to seizures."

We are too pretty for disfigurement, and seizures are terrifying. So, kids of all ages, shapes and sizes and sexual orientations, head over to the local walk-in clinic, bite the bullet and GET TESTED FOR EVERYTHING. I don't care how long it's been since you've been laid. You must take ownership over your sexual health ASAP.

Message me if you're freaked out. I'll hold your hand through this process. (Lord knows I've taken many sneaky trips to Planned Parenthood.) Stay healthy, wrap it up and I'll see you at the clinic, babe.

Citations: How Syphilis Came Roaring Back (The Atlantic)