Tartarus52c

Thanks to all for great responses and support. I will be reading much more to get myself educated and your encouragement has definitely helped see things in a different and better light.

Hi All, I'm a newbie, just joined today and am desperately in need of support from others. I married late and had many sexual partners over the years. About 8 years ago, I had about 4 'pimple-like' lesions pop up in my groin area which I promptly went both to a primary care physician and dermatologist to get checked out (wanted a second opinion). The Primary Care doc diagnosed as folliculitis, the dermatologist did not know but took a swab test to check for HSVII. Those tests came back negative. So, i thought, 'Ok, its a bacterial infection' and thought little else until the same thing happened about a month later. I went back to both docs, same thing, and again a swab test came back negative. I had same outbreaks occur for about 8-9 months but then became less frequent going down to once a year. After one bad outbreak, I went same day the lesions popped up, this time, the dermatologist got more sample and the tests came back positive for HSVII. That was about 4-5 negative tests before a positive one, talk about 'false negatives.' The dermatologist explained that those tests required alot of sample/virus to be able to detect and probably just not getting enough or not early enough when the shedding was peak. The problem is that in the meantime, I married and had kids. The first child (daughter) was born with me and wife still thinking this was folliculitis, we found out i had HSVII when she was 8months pregnant with my son. My wife was tested after finding out and since HSVII can wreak havoc on newborn. My wife tested positive. I passed out when we found out from guilt, shame, remorse and fear. Luckily, both children were born healthy with 'no outward signs' of HSV and are developing normally if not better. But, I now have a primordial fear that we have passed down to kids. I have been on valtrex since finding out and have had no outbreaks in 2+ years. I am careful not to kiss or expose kids to anything, my wife is less so having gotten info from pediatrician that hard to spread so she is not as careful. I get faint every time I see any sort of blister or redness on either child but have seen a blister in my sons cheeks about a month ago (he is now 2 1/2 and daughter is 4 1/2. The amount of guilt, shame, fear that I've ruined my family and children's lives is immense and almost unbearable. And one last thing, I LOVE being a dad and father and husband. I love having a family and spoil everyone rotten so this is very hard. I would love to hear from anyone in similar situation or have experienced similar mis-diagnosis then spreading to family members. Thanks so much.