Erika

Accupuncture has been great for calming down the tingles and the twitches for me. I can go about two weeks and then I definitely need a session. If I go too long without it, it starts to feel like I have a knife stabbed in my leg or a goathead in my buttcrack. :/

Dancer, Yay another LMT! :) I've been doing acupuncture for a few months now to help with stress management, and i definitely think it helps. Been thinking Reiki might be good, too, as well as yoga and meditation practices. I think i may be more high strung than I realize, and totally get what you mean about building the mental muscles. 2Legit, I recently discovered coffee triggers it for me too. Which is unfortunate, I love coffee, but that probably explains why it has been so cranky. I just wish it would stay put and quit going rogue. I can handle consistency, but I'm not a huge fan of surprises. Does yours break out monthly too?

Hi y'all, I'm a 25 year old female in southwest New Mexico. I've been dealing with this for almost two years, but did not have it diagnosed until about 6 months ago. Anyways, I have good days where I feel like a rockstar and days where I feel like my life is over, so still dealing with that whole emotional rollercoaster. Would love to have a buddy near, far, wherever. Just to talk about this, because I'm starting to feel like my H is going rogue.

So just an update - the boy kinda freaked out on me. But, that's okay because I need to figure out how to love myself after all this, anyways. And since my diagnosis, I've had at least one outbreak a month, and there was three weeks in a row when I got a new one each week. This last outbreak it has moved from the outbreak on the back of my leg 2 weeks ago to the buttcrack area, which is super annoying (And, OW.) , and I'm having an even harder time getting my head over the whole thing because I'm basically 2 years in and it's not calming down, it's like it's revving up and MOVING AROUND. And every time it flares up, it just sends my stress level through the roof, and exacerbates the issue... Any suggestions on how to mind-over-matter that reaction and feel less like a worm? Currently the dermatologist only has me on acyclovir to take for when I break out, but I think I need to get on suppressive therapy and see if that helps. And the weird thing is I feel nowhere near as stressed as I was during the spring semester. But it's almost like now that I know what it is, it's just gonna hang out all the time, wherever it wants.

Oh, and when I told my ex he didn't believe me at first. And then tried to tell me that his doctor told him he doesn't have to worry because he's never had any sign or symptom and that my test came back false-positive. Called me a hypochondriac, and I was like.... wow. But I called him again and told him. Look, this is how it is. I don't know if it came from you or from me but we had a LOT of unprotected sex so YOU need to go get checked because this is real life. He agreed to go get checked in a month or so, and I'm shaking my head at how I could date someone SO narcissistic for so long. SMH. But yeah. If anyone else has leg herp, I would love to pick your brain. I'm doing everything I can right now to get the outbreaks under control and hopefully dormant - Chiropracter, Acupuncture, supplements, antivirals, stupid strict diet, and trying to pinpoint what stresses me our and how to minimize or avoid it completely. Any advice would be beneficial. OH! And I recently found that putting raw organic honey on a big bandaid and squishing that bandaid onto the blisters makes it where I have NO itch. And it doesn't ache. And the swelling has gone down fast. But it could also be a combo of everything else I'm doing this go around.

I was finally diagnosed as HSV positive for this rash that's taken over the skin around my sciatic nerve. No idea what type because the culture didn't grow and docs won't order a blood test when i ask saying, "It's the same thing, it won't matter." *facepalm* Now to backtrack a bit. I've had this rash thing since November 2013. It showed up on the back of my leg two days after I had been home from a backpacking trip (but also two days after my first sexual (unprotected) encounter with my then boyfriend, now ex.) It freaked me out a little bit because i had never experienced something in a clump nor SO itchy before, except getting bit by ants one time. I just figured I must've brushed the back of my leg against some poison ivy when I went pee out in the woods, or that something had crawled into bed with me and just chowed down. All of my friends agreed. Now. When I say 'back of my leg' I mean a quarter sized clump halfway down my hamstrings. Just for reference. So it eventually ran it's course and then went away. Then there was the six weeks I ended up pregnant, went and got a pap that came back normal just a tidge yeasty, but I got that under control. And then miscarried two weeks later. That was mid January. Then the same little bump showed back up during a road trip with some friends about 3 months later (Late February). This time, I figured the cause was I didn't wash all the poison ivy out of my thermals, or something, and it got me again. It was the same leg of the thermal that got me, that's why it's in the same place. Just a small quarter size clump of blisters, that itch suicidally until they don't. After this, there wasn't any huge activity. I had an occasional blister that had moved up to the top part of my glute, all along the left side. I figured it was because I'm a little sensitive to wheat and had been eating and drinking too much of the wrong stuff. But it came and went and I never thought anything of it just chalked it up to a weird gluten allergy. Then in September, I had started a new job as a car salesman which was so far out of my calling -- I was stressed all the time, 56+ hour work weeks, all around suck, boyfriend drama, etc. And one day this old man with Alzheimer's sexually harasses me on the lot while I'm attempting to sell him a car. I freaked out, told my boss, had a total meltdown, and had to take a couple hours off to calm down. Immediately, my leg started to get that familiar itchy burning feeling. It exploded. I had a cluster on the first day, And a second by day 2, by day four i had clusters and individual bumps spread all up and down my leg, and the spot on my glute was huge. I made an appointment at the doc to go see what it was. She took a look at it and said, "It looks like shingles, but you're too young for shingles and I don't want to misdiagnose you." So I went to the dermatologist she referred. He looked at it and said. "It's fever blisters." I laugh and say, "Like, Herpes?" And he basically summed it up as whether it's herpes of the mouth or herpes of the south, it's all the same and treated the same, here's this antiviral prescription. I thought he was a quack. Nobody gets herpes of the leg. I did a recount of my diet before the thing exploded, and came to the conclusion that okay, this thing is caused by wheat and stress. No big deal. Lay off the wheat, lay off the stress and it'll calm down. Since September it has broken out at least once a month, sometimes twice. Every time I could trace it to where gluten snuck in my diet. I broke up with my now ex in January, started grad school, was working 3 jobs and a musical. I rolled single for a bit when I started seeing this new guy i met online. He lives about 10 hours away, but seemed really cool and I didn't want the pressure of dating someone in town. Long story short, we had sex on two separate occasions. Once after a breakout (which I had gone to the school nurse to get STD tested before hand, and to get the bumps looked at. She said it was shingles, and my tests came back negative, but they didn't test for everything like I had thought.) when my leg had cleared up, and once before the demon spawn breakout I had in May. It was on the level of the breakout I had in September. I started looking at pictures online and was like, well what if it is herpes? It looked like a lot of HSV-1 pics, but i didn't have any of the symptoms of HSV-2 in the cooch. No blisters in my vagina, no pain urinating, just these stupid bumps breaking out on my leg. I called the dermatologist to see if I could get in to get a biopsy done, but he was booked two weeks out. So I made an appointment with my chiropractor/neurologist and I muscled tested weak for Herpes Zoster (shingles) but was holding strong for HSV-2. I was like... no way. It just didn't make any sense. So he showed me the nerve chart, pointed to the Siatic nerve, and I kinda put the pieces together that this is probably what it was, since my bumps were breaking out exactly along that nerve. The chiro gave me an energy medicine "dance" to do to clear the virus out of my system to make it calm down - basically acupressure and tapping certain points to make the body realize "Hey, there is a virus here and it's not cool, get rid of it." I went back to the dermatologist a week later and requested the biopsy, but my bumps had already healed up by then so he told me on my next breakout they would work me in and get it done. A week or so later (after trying to gluten-bomb myself for a week, and also while doing my "dance" from the chiro) I had a significantly smaller breakout, but it still happened so I went in and got it biopsied. Came back positive for HSV. The culture didn't grow so I have no idea what type. Still trying to get in and get a blood test done, but I've tried getting two different docs to order it and they tell me not to worry about it, both types are the same so it doesn't matter which you have it's treated the same way. So then I get to break this news to the new boyfriend, who took it very, "Okay. So I need to go get tested. We can still cuddle right?" the first day. Then after he went to get his test, he was freaked out, stressing which added to my stress so I got a new bump from that. His results came back negative, and I was supposed to go see him this weekend, but thanks to doctor google making it sound like asymptomatic shedding is going to contaminate him from a hair that falls from my head to the floor and touches his foot (slight exaggeration, but you know)... he kinda freaked out and we agreed that we should probably hold off physical contact until I can get the OB's under control... though he's going to be gone and deployed before I'll even know if I've got it under control. That's a whole different posting though. He's trying to be strong, but the stigma reaaaally bothers him. I'm just grateful that he is fine for now, he's going to get tested again in a couple months just to be sure. Get the vibe he's a bit afraid to touch me now. We'll see how this goes, but I'm not holding my breath at this point. So yeah. Aside from dealing with the highs and lows of, "it's just a skin condition and I'm still a certified bad-ass", to "I'm a leper/untouchable/dirty/can I even be a waitress with thing and serve people food, etc" I think I'm okay. I actually feel kinda guilty because I'm lucky that it is only on my leg, and not in my hoo-ha. It's not on my face, just the back of my leg. I do love my legs though, so that is slightly unfortunate. (((I write too much - the rest is in the comment))