Question:
Here is what I found out today 10/04

I visted my OBGYN today and explained my distress over come out (+) for HSV 2. He was suprised to hear that I had an STD test and that the doctor had performed a blood test to check for HSV 2. He explained that a blood test was very, very unreliable for checking HSV 2 and that he will not perform blood test to check for HSV 2. He further stated that if I had been exposed to HSV 2 I would have shown signs of it by now. He also told me that if he performed a blood test on a 100 women to determine HSV 2 that 90% would test (+) for the antibodies!! And if he would run the same test on men about 50% of them will turn out (+)!! WHY? Because a women's body is fighting off more infections and bacteria then men.

Women....

When a women wipes herself after using the bathroom if she doesn't wipe from front to back then bacteria enters and antibodies start to form right away to fight off any infection. There are also antibodies present to fight off a yeast infection and if you had the chicken pox?s (which I?ve had), a cold sore or shingles (which I am suffering from now) then these antibodies would leave a "thumb print" in your system and it is this thumb print that the blood test check for not the virus itself!!

Then I asked him what about the Western Blot test. He said that the Western Blot Test was developed specially to determine if someone had HIV not HSV.

Why I went to get an STD test....

Because I have a lying, cheating, dog at home!!! I caught my husband of 10 yrs (we have been together for 12yrs) cheating. Where did i catch him... online!! My husband travels a lot and he has a lop top. One day back in Feb of this year I happen to look on his computer for directions and stumble across websites that he has been on like... married-but-looking, meet for sex, adult sex ads,.... (you get the picture) anyway I thought about confronting him with it but I knew what he would do he would "lie like a guy"... so I tracked him and actually got into most of his ads, where he stated that he was "looking for fun no stings", anyway to make a long story short... after tracking him for a couple of months I took it a step further and answered his ad (under the screen name SpicyAngel)... It didn't take him long to answer my ad, we exchanged emails (where I found out what he has been doing on his business trips in the last 10yrs!!!) and even chatted online a couple of times. Anyway he insisted on meeting, so as he put it "he could not wait to make me exhausted for all the orgasms I was going to have" (ahhhhh who was he kidding.. I barely got one that I didn't fake)!! So, I agreed to meet him (I stood him up of course), when he got home I asked him if his girlfriend had stood him up and he called me a jealous paranoid unhappy person (ahhh, hello mr. cheat you would not be a very happy person if the shoe was on the other foot) so, after being called unhappy I then revealed who SpicyAngel really was....

Becasue of my fear of STDs I never slept around or had a one night stand. I've had 3 men in my life, two of them were husbands, one of them was a 4 year long term relationship. I do believe in my heart that I don't have HSV 2. I will reveal if and when I have a relationship that I tested (+) but that I have never had a breakout or even a pimple down there.

Anyway, I never thought he would be that kind of person that would cheat and it never, ever crossed my mind that after 10yrs of marriage, 3 kids (6, 4, 2) at 35 I would be going to my doctor asking him/her for an STD.

My advice...

If you test + with a blood test and have never broken out... don't kill yourself about it, you probably don't have it. Tell people you date that you have tested postive for it, but have never had a breakout and you can both take it from there....

My heart goes out to all and for those of you who are cheatting or thinking about it ask yourself.... is 30sec of pleasure really worth causing my love ones pain, distress, or disease? .....is 30sec of pleasure worth my life?

Answer:
your obgyn is wrong though. I mean, I wish he was right, but chances are if you tested positive for hsv2 you probably are positive. False negatives tend to be more common than false positives and there really isnt such a thing as exposure to the virus...you either have it or you dont.

the antibody your body produces for herpes are different than other antibodies your body produces, hence the ability to test for different viral infections in the bloodstream. The ability to test for a viral infection by other means isnt always possible (HIV), so an infection of any other sort aside from chickenpox (or shingles, which you said you have now) wouldnt produce similar antibodies or anything else that would set off a positive reaction on a herpes blood test....and in most circumstances Ive heard of HSV1 being triggered by a shingles outbreak. That was confirmed as shingles, right? I heard of a woman getting a "shingles" outbreak on her waistline as diagnosed by a doctor and it was discovered to be HSV2 several years later when her husband got it.

Also, testing postive with symptoms one shouldnt make the assumption that they dont have it. The person who gave me herpes never showed a sign or symptom in her life (according to her). Id say wait until after the shingles dies down, and see what your test results yield in a few months.