Many questions

[sinnom]

Hi everyone! I'm new to this site and everyone seems really nice so far. I was wondering if you could help me with some questions. (if you don't want to read everything you can just go straight to the questions below).

 

I've only had sex with 4 different men in my life, the first time it was with my 1 month boyfriend, let's just say I found out I'm a little hypocondriac and got like 7/8 symptoms you get after the window period of HIV so I was freaking out, but then I had a test at like 6 weeks, and then another one at 4 months and they both came back negative.

 

Since that little episode, I have been bombarded with things like "one night stands are ok" and "just wear a condom". not only that but the only time i was taught about STDs was in middle school where they showed us pictures of pus coming out of penises and enormous rashes. So I was thinking I'm pretty much safe as long as I wear a condom. Also I tried googling if you need to use condoms during oral and everyone was saying that not really.

 

Thinking this way, the other 3 times I had sex were in this month with different people. I know it may sound crazy, but I thought I was being safe enough and they didn't even eyaculate inside me any of the times.

 

Fast forward to this week, i woke up feeling dizzy and with a weird sensation on my face, which escalated to be Bell's Palsy (Paralysis of half of your face). I tried to google the causes and what came up the most was herpes. Had I known that Herpes was so contagious and incurable I would have been even more careful.

 

I felt terrible and it makes a lot of sense that it is what I have. What scares me the most is that I won't be able to find a partner good enough who will accept me like this.

 

QUESTIONS:

I want to know for sure if I have Herpes, and the doctor who diagnosed my Bell's Palsy told me that I should get a blood test, what is the minimum I have to wait to get accurate results? (for example with HIV they say 3 months but everyone also says that 12 weeks works for the vast majority of people.

 

The sites that connect Bell's Palsy and Herpes are sites like WebMD, but I haven't seen any real stories from people, have you experience Bell's Palsy? How was your experience?

 

How long does it take for the bumps to appear after exposure? Some sites disagree a lot, I've seen 2 days, 4 days, 2 weeks, and even moths or years.

 

I've read that Herpes can be itchy in your private areas, but I've also been itchy most of the day in my stomach and other parts of my body, does this mean anything?

 

How long do the bumps take to burst? because i think I do have a really small area that looks bit like the pictures of herpes, but they are too small, and it's been like 3 days like that, when will they turn into blisters?

 

How does the oral and genital herpes thing work? let's say I have oral herpes in my genitals: when the first outbreak ends, the second one will move to my mouth?

 

Thank you so much!!!!

 

 

 

 

[2Legit2Quit]

1. 3-4 months is the time period to wait, after possible infection. W that said, you didn't say ,if you had an oral outbreak during this period or if at all ever. Have you had cold sores before? You do realize that orak herpes, is passed from someone else having oral herpes like 90 something % of the time? 60% of those w oral herpes, got it as a kid from an infected adult kissing them;.. oral herpes is very common and people don't disclose just to make out w soneone. Should it be disclosed before oral sex w someone? Absolutely. Does it? No...Why? Lack of education on it. If he had oral herpes, a condom wouldn't matter, as you kissed him. Btw... Other things can cause Bell's palsy, than just H, but that typically is the go to reason for it.

 

2. You can't know for sure that, it is H causing Bell's palsy, especially w out a blood test. Just because you experience symptoms that H can cause, doesn't mean you'll actually experience a physical sore. There is no telling. I got oral herpes from my ex husband and we were always careful. My primary OB was horrific in my mouth. I was severely fatigue and inside my mouth and on my tongue only, was I covered in ulcers, but lasted like only 4 days. My mouth hurt so bad to eat or do anything. To this very day, I have not, 14yrs later, ever had a cold sore outside my mouth. After that primary, I only got what looked like a paper cut in the corner of my mouth for yrs and then the last 5, just a red dot in the bottom of my lip, almost inside that disappears in two days. H presents differently in everyone and the best way I can explain that and why I can't give you a black and white answer is, everyone's immune system is as unique as their thumb prints. So that means, that the virus will be handled differently for each person, which means they can be completely asymptomatic, symptomatic once and never again, symptomatic once in awhile or all the time. The symptoms very person to person as well. My body controlled oral H very well, but did not w HSV 2 genitally at all.

 

H could pop up one day out of the blue... There is no telling and I'm going to tell you right now for your own sanity, let it go. If you obsess about something you can't control and this applies to everything in life, not just H; you will be miserable for the rest of your life. Just.. Let it go..

 

I suspect your itching is your anxiety and getting inside your own head. When I get anxious, I itch all over.

 

So H doesn't always turn into blisters. In fact, I've never had a blister orally or on my genitals. I had canker sores in my mouth upon my initial oral OB inside only, nothing ever again like that. I had fissure's that turned into ulcers on my primary genitally and after that, it's only been red bumps. The rest of the text book H symptoms crap you read, is mostly garbage and worst case scenario for the most part. Probabky like 90% of people who are symptomatic, don't have those text book symptoms and the other 80% w H, are asymptomatic... Red bump's don't mean it's H and red bumps from H, don't mean they're going to turn into blisters or ulcers.

 

Just because you may get oral herpes, doesn't mean you'd get it genitally and vice versa; I've seen it happen and I've seen it not happen. I think you're getting ahead of yourself right now and you need to take a deep breath and relax.

[sinnom]

Thank you for responding! I don't recall having a cold sore before and I still haven't, I just have that little tingling spot on my genitals and it's been like that for 3 days. I was waiting to see if it would grow into something worse but it still hasn't. And since they say that oral herpes can be in you genitals I wanted to find out if it is type 1 or 2.

[2Legit2Quit]

Well you're getting ahead of yourself right now and making assumptions. Yes, if he had cold sores, it is possible to transmit it to you, through oral sex. Unfortunately w ghsv 1, unless there is something that can be swabbed, there is no telling where the infection resides if you come up positive for a blood test.

[WCSDancer2010]

@sinnom

 

Bells Palsy can be caused by many other infections/conditions including influenza or a flu-like illness, headaches, chronic middle ear infection, high blood pressure, diabetes, sarcoidosis, tumors, Lyme disease, and trauma such as skull fracture or facial injury. I had a client who had it after a short operation because the nerve got impinged due to the way they had her lying on the table. I know another who got it due to Lyme disease.

So it's not necessarily Herpes.

 

I suggest you get a blood test now - if it comes back positive then you likely have had HSV1 orally since childhood. 60% of young people have it by the time they are young adults. I got it at age 4. If that is the case then you want to get on Valtrex or one of the other antivirals as it just means that something happened that helped the virus to manage to flare up.

 

Just wondering..... did you give a lot of Oral during these trysts? If so, I'm wondering if the nerve got inflamed/irritated from that? It's not out of the realm of possibility....in which case, time, perhaps some anti-inflammatories, and massage should help.

 

If you didn't give oral then if you got H genitally, the Bells Palsy is nothing to do with that... genital Herpes stays in the area of the genitals... so that would then point to some other source.

 

Hope that helps :)