I might be a symptomless carrier of Herpes...anyone else heard of this situation?

Hey guys. I haven’t posted for a while since I’ve been at school. Anyway here goes:

In an earlier post, I mentioned that my long term girlfriend had what we thought was a herpes outbreak. But the test results came back inconclusive, and as far as I knew it was a one time thing.

Then she recently went on Valtrex and told me that she’s had 7 or so outbreaks since then and that she’s managed to keep them relatively secret by segue-ing them into her period or just not being in the mood and/or giving me head.

She also told me that that her whole family has it as cold sores, and there’s evidence that they’re particularly susceptible to outbreaks. However, she says that there’s a 99% or so chance that she caught it from me, since I’m the only one who she’s done anything with (previous virgin, making out and hand-jobs (2) only before me) and it only appeared after we had been dating for a year and a half. And that hers is only vaginal. Cheating is out of the question.

Now, I had previously prided myself on being very cautious in the past. The only girls who I’ve had sex with without a condom are her and my ex, who was also a virgin (and I didn’t finish in the ex because we were paranoid). But then she asks, did you wear a condom when they went down on you? Did you go down on them without a dam? Well…no. Honestly, I’ve made it a point to be tested regularly to know if I was clean or not, and I’ve asked the same of everyone I’ve done more than make out with. They told me they were clean, and since I knew all of them as friends before doing anything with them, I took them at their word, especially with regards to oral.

Damn abstinence only sex-ed.

As one might imagine, this caused a fight. That’s pretty much resolved now.

However, I face the prospect that at some point I caught herpes from someone I made out with, got a blowjob from, or went down on. However, they can’t test me because I’ve never had an outbreak. Anywhere. I know that they say that confirmed cases can spread even when symptomless, but what about cases like me? The only thing we do know is that if I didn’t have it to begin with I have a decent chance of having it now because we’ve kept doing it since then.

While it won’t likely happen, this will be a nightmare if we ever break up and I have to figure out how to disclose this to someone else.

Has anyone else ever heard of this? Or experienced it?

They can test you even if you have never had an outbreak you have to tell the doctor what you want to be tested for. The fact that your girlfriend was hiding her symptoms on you really sucks she is not to be trusted and most likely she is lying about her past and gave them to you not the other way around. You also may not have caught them yet if she avoided sex when she was active. You need to get tested and rethink your relationship with this girl.

A few points of clarification:

1. I know this might sound extremely naive, but this girl would not lie to me. She despises lying. Extremely moral without being religious and so forth.

She’s had one boyfriend before me and she told me when this happened that the only thing of his that got anywhere near her snatch was his hand.

It does sound coinscidental that she conveniantly only had an outbreak(s) since she’s been with me, but when it first happened, she didn’t know what was going on. She was just so freaked out by the whole thing. Said it was like having little tearings all over the place. Then she called me up crying and told me to come over because she had been to the OBGYN and that takes us up to the present.

2. They were pretty sure she had herpes after the first time because she took Valtrex and it went away. The tests did come back inconclusive, but apparently they said that since she had a condition that was identical to herpes, and valtrex made it go away, then she probably had herpes. I was fully aware of this when I decided to stay with her and continue to do things with her.

3. I told the doctor that I went to about the situation and that I wanted to be tested for herpes. He said that they only tested when fresh sores were present. He didn’t seem to know about or support the blood test.

Apparently there was a very similar case here:
Herpes, Me?

Eh.

Bossa

You can easily have blood tests done for all forms of Herpes. They test for antibodies in your blood, and the tests can be obscure if your body is not presenting white blood cells while the virus is dormant. Nonetheless, they are still quite accurate.

I might suggest your doctor may have not seen a reason for the test because you are not having outbreaks, but you can demand it. Be pushy.

Also, some doctors will only test cultures from prospective herpes sores, and they can be inconclusive because your body may have already killed the virus in the very sore itself. Outbreaks usually only last a couple weeks and start healing within the first week.

There’s two types of Herpes : Type 1 and Type 2. Whereas the first type is more related to oral herpes, the second one is mostly genital.
The thing is that both types can actually cause both herpes (genital or oral).

You could have kissed a girl who had herpes (could be asymptomatic) and got it yourself, asymptomatic, and you could have given her during oral sex.

My pathology teacher always says “Do you know the difference between marriage and herpes? Herpes lasts a lifetime.” So keep in mind that there’s not any therapy to cure herpes. There is two treatments that help reduce infectiology and most outbreaks, but you’re still infectious, so you still got herpes in your nervous cells (this is why you can’t get rid of it).

You don’t have to be in an outbreak to be tested. The doc could tell if you’re, or not, a passive carrier. If you’re not (which would be a bit weird, but possible, because you had sex with your girl before and herpes is not only contagious during the outbreaks), then that’s another case.

I’m only first year medschool, so that’s all I know!

JD

There’s more than 2 types of herpes, but these are the most common…
By the way, someone telling you “I’m clean” may not be clean.
As I said, asymptomatic carriers are most of the time not aware they are carriers, so you may think you’re clean, but hey, you’re not. Happens all the time.

Herpes is not good, but it could have been worse. Someone may tell you “I’m clean” and be an HIV carrier (going through the first phase, for example, that is sometimes asymptomatic and, most of all, undetectable! She could have been checked the week before and got negative tests on HIV but still be contagious) so :

You’re clean? Really? F*ck off, wear a rubber.

JD