dr_h_positive

Hi PHM, First of all, *deep breaths* and <>!! I know how hard it is to not know what exactly is going on with your body. Know that you are definitely not alone in this, and that once you find out for certain why you are having these symptoms it will feel like at least some weight is lifted. Hang in there! Do you know what kind of lab test your physician did to tell you that it's HSV? Both the culture swab (where your doctor would have taken a sample of fluid from your sores on a sterile cotton rod, and the test would show whether a virus's DNA is present) and the blood test (where your doctor would have sent you to the lab for a blood draw, and the test would look for antibodies you produce in response to the virus) would be able to distinguish between HSV-1 and HSV-2. If you haven't actually been tested with either of these methods, schedule another appointment or see a different clinician. I'm not a licensed medical professional and this is a forum and not a clinic, but I can at least give you some starting questions to bring to your doctor the next time you do go in for a visit. 1) What kind of test am I getting? How accurate is it? 2) I want to see if antivirals could be effective against what I'm experiencing. Can you tell me about medications I can try when I'm having symptoms? (Acyclovir =Zovirax; Famciclovir = Famvir; Valacyclovir = Valtrex). 3) What is the most serious thing you think this could be? (Or better, what is on your differential diagnosis?) If your doctor has already given you blood test results, and he/she is convinced you do not have HSV-1 or HSV-2: 4) Is it possible I could have shingles (herpes zoster)? What are the tests and treatments for this? Note: shingles is not sexually transmitted, and is basically an adult recurrence of chickenpox with generally more painful symptoms. I'm not saying this is what you have, but it might help to keep it in mind as a possibility. Some questions about your symptoms for YOU to think about (you definitely don't have to share the responses here unless you want to, these are to guide your preparation for your doctor's visit because you will probably be asked these and other questions): 1) What are your most troubling symptoms? Are there any symptoms that seem to go along with the primary ones in terms of time or location? 2) When do they occur? How frequently do they occur? 3) Do you have pain when you urinate? Do you have fever? Headaches? Nausea or vomiting? 4) Are you in any pain? If so, how would you describe the pain? Rate it on a scale of 1-10. 5) Have you ever had chickenpox as a child? 6) About the breakouts on the backs of your arms: does it look like there is a clear line dividing the sores and the normal skin? (Kind of like this: http://www.skinsight.com/info/files/image_upload/dermatomal_vesicle150%20copy.jpg) 7) Does anything make your symptoms better? Does anything make them worse? I hope this helps. Best of luck to you in finding out what this is, and we are all here for you now and after you get a clear diagnosis, whatever the cause may be.

"You are imperfect. As all of us are. And there is a lot of beauty in imperfection. The cracks in our hearts are what allows the love to seep in." ^^Wow! I have to admit the waterworks turned on again by the time I got to that part of your comment. It feels good to be here too, so thanks for your response and your welcome, Adrial! I didn't think anyone would be awake this late and reading my little essay, but you clearly put a level of heart and caring into your people here that goes beyond, so thank you for that as well.

I have been lurking here for the past few days just reading the deeply personal stories you all have put forward, trying to internalize the supportive responses, sometimes feeling encouraged, sometimes – okay, maybe quite a few times – crying. Before I introduce myself I wanted to say, with heartfelt appreciation, how amazing I think you all are for making this place a community and for filling it with so much compassion. I’m a medical student. A week ago I noticed that I had tonsillitis and that my right cervical lymph nodes were swollen. Over the next two days I developed fever with intense headaches but dismissed it as a bad case of the flu. Then I felt those two little bumps. My mind flashed back to the week before when I nicked myself there on the left labia majora while shaving as I was getting ready to hang out with the guy I had been seeing for the past month. I hoped and hoped that the cut was just inflamed from a little infection by cutaneous bacteria, but in my heart I knew that it was an STI. Ten minutes of desperate research (from an incognito Chrome browser) confirmed my fear that my flu-like reaction was in fact due to a primary infection with HSV-2. My feeling at that moment, pants-less and sprawled over my laptop on the bed where I’d contracted a virus that I will have for a lifetime, was an endless sinking shame – down through the floor and deep into the earth beneath my cheap grad school apartment. My life to that point seemed almost comical when I thought about how hard I’d worked just to sabotage myself with the sort of sexual sloppiness that future doctors are supposed to know better than to engage in. That mortification mixed confusingly with a strange satisfaction from knowing with certainty what was making me so sick. I spent the rest of the night looking up clinical trials and dorsal root ganglia and the mechanism by which valacyclovir gets metabolized to a molecule that inhibits viral DNA replication and really anything to keep myself from thinking about how this would affect my life moving forward. I’m a bad procrastinator, and can put off emotional reflection just as well as I can any assignment. Medicalizing abstractly has so far been a coping mechanism for not being quite ready to face my disappointment with myself. Because I know that HSV-2 can be effectively managed, and is clinically just an annoying skin condition plus daily pills, reassuring myself with the science is actually easier than thinking about the social consequences. The worst part of this disease has been not the physical symptoms, but seeing myself differently, and the inescapable feeling that others I will one day tell about it will have a visceral revulsion towards me. Since I already convinced myself so thoroughly of this diagnosis my doctor at Student Health the next morning just had to swab me, write a script, and pass me tissues. The rest of the day I felt eyes all over me. I felt judgment in the eyes of the check-out guy at the Walmart pharmacy. I even heard it in the voice of the man I had been seeing, even though the fact that I had a primary reaction and my sparse prior sexual history made it a near certainty that he had given me HSV-2. (I actually am not bitter with him at all and told him so, and also that I am well able to take responsibility for my decisions and my body. I believe that he didn’t know he had herpes – he reacted with shock and silence, hung up quickly and hasn’t spoken to me since. Because I obviously understand how hard a thing it is to hear I figure I should give him space, so I’m going to stop reaching out for the time being. I know he panicked after our call and went to a clinic, so I can only hope he learns that at least the disease itself is not that serious.) I know that for now I can only control my own self-perception. I know that I have to re-learn how to love myself before I can expect someone else to love me, and maybe before I can even ask someone else to accept me. I want so badly to take care of other people, and for me love used to be both the intrinsic gratification and feeling of appreciation I got from giving of myself to someone. I’m not trying to make myself out to be a selfless person - in fact this approach to love has worked against me so far in life. I invested so much into my relationship with my ex-fiancé that he felt he couldn’t contribute equally to a marriage, and was so trapped by a lack of reasons to break up that he did a lot of destructive things (that included cheating) in an effort to force me to leave him. After all that I knew I had to be strong enough to rely on love from within, and I will probably never be able to expect as much from another person as I did him (I was 18 and naiive when we met, and he was my first relationship). In the year since then I’ve seen a few people, not super seriously but never as just one-time hookups, but mainly I’ve been trying to work on myself as opposed to looking for a relationship. I feel that I’ve made some progress in finding out who I am alone, which I guess can be hard after being with someone for four years. I know that herpes does not undo that work. I realize that most of my own dread comes from the same social stigma that makes people believe overblown things about the disease. I imagine myself having the talk with a future love interest, and try to visualize my eyes not tearing up and my voice even-toned, confident, and encyclopedic. I joke to myself that I’m getting older after all, and that my short-lived days of starting flings with sex may as well be over for one reason or another, and that I should be more mature and thoughtful about the people I spend time with anyways. But somehow still I can’t yet shake the hurt that comes from feeling like I betrayed myself. The thought that I permanently damaged myself through carelessness makes me angrier than if someone else had hurt me on purpose because I can’t trust others to be beneficent, but I should be able to trust me to protect myself. I know that a lot of the last paragraph is overly dramatic and perhaps misguided, and that I have to find a balance between taking responsibility for my actions and forgiving myself, but in the meantime it’s been really helpful to get all the words out of me. Thanks to those of you who made it this far through my stream of consciousness narrative (I just scrolled up...oof). Ultimately I know in my heart, with the same certainty as I had the night I figured out it was herpes, that this experience will make me a better person, and a more compassionate doctor. The actual process of becoming better will not be easy. Most of the positive changes I can make, like being honest about which men I should pursue and not shortchanging myself in love and being fair to myself in feelings of worth, are probably going to be really unpleasant when it comes down to those moments when mindfulness matters and I can’t just do what feels good. As a lot of people have written, a diagnosis that implies something disgraceful to society can be a blessing in disguise in that it weeds out false friends. I’d say it also filters out some personal weaknesses, whether we like it or not. I’m going to be realistic and brace myself for some amount of rejection in my love life, and also for some pain and internal resistance when the soul-searching gets really real. So that’s my story. I’ve been humbled in many ways over the past week, and not least by reading some of the inspiring things that are said here. I’m scared, but also proud to be in this together with so many strong people. I got my culture results in an email from the lab earlier tonight, so that makes 12/7/2013 my official HSV-2 anniversary. Maybe it seems a little silly to count forward for something that will last forever as far as my lifetime is concerned. But maybe this “Day 1” is not just for being herpes positive. I want it to be for starting a new, more reflective, life-long journey of positive growth.