Question:
I've been pretty distraught over numerous symptoms and circumstances in the past few weeks. Any help analyzing them will be appreciated.
Everything started when I received oral sex for about 20 seconds from someone on a Wednesday night, about 3 weeks ago. The following Sunday, I saw them for dinner, and they had a full blown cold sore on the lower lip. I immediately got sick to my stomach a bit, because I remembered what we did, and later that night I felt pain in my groin and testicle area.

that week I experienced
- a 2 or 3 day minor cold with sniffles, sore throat (just gotten back from a trip where i stayed up late)
- what i thought/imagined to be leg tingling like herpes can cause
- irritated foreskin, which I've had before
- eventually swollen/sore testicles (I had gone cliff jumping the past weekend, and hit them pretty hard on the water, so who knows, it could have been that)

recently I had a small blister/pimple thing in my inner thigh that I popped. It wasn't painful and left no ulcer. I've tested negative for herpes 1/2 before, and have had these small pimples, but in light of the recent events I can't help but connect this. It gives me no pain right now, and I saw the doctor recently. He diagnosed my foreskin irritation as balanitis, which i've had prior and is an irritated foreskin. It has begun to subside, and its been about 3 weeks since the oral sex.

I am going to get a blood test after 8 weeks, and I figure I can't simply worry about it until then. So I'll be living my life in a good way until then, regardless of if I have herpes or not, and hopefully the blood test will be good.

Does anyone have any advice or comments? The blister confused me because I figured if it was genital herpes it would hurt a lot, and there would be an ulcer that was very painful. None of this is there, its mere a red peck, where a pimple might have just been. It doesn't hurt to touch. I'm confused, and I probably should have left it for a doctor to look at.

Thanks for any help!

Answer:
forgot to say that he said his coldsore did not appear until Friday morning, and he had prodrome symptoms on thursday night such as fever and headache.

Answer:
usually the sore are painful, altho for some people they aren't... so it's hard to be very conclusive here.

it sounds like the prodromal symptoms and subsequent OB happened a couple of days after your encounter... Most of the time, people are most contagious during the prodrome or blister phase. However, people who get cold sores might be contagious about 5% of the time even with no symptoms, so there is no guarantee.

Really, since all the symptoms you have you can explain by other things, you might just be paranoid. It sounds that way to me. It's just like if you hear someone has lice you start itching on your own head! Those of us with the H already are frequently paranoid about another outbreak or spreading H to genuinely unlikely locations.

It also sounds like you are going to do the responsible thing and get tested just in case. You never know with herpes. Just a FYI, for some people it can take up to 16 weeks (and in rare cases even longer) for the tests to show up positive.

Answer:
well i went to the doctor about 4 weeks after-- and they did 2 tests.
the culture test and the blood test, (IGM)
both came back negative, so I'm relieved (?) but confused, and was fully expecting a positive result. I haven't had explicit or classic looking sores, so I guess that would make sense if it's not herpes. I'll be getting another test later on, because i've read that the blood tests need time to have the antibodies accumulate.

The culture was from a sore that was never really "open" like a herpes lesion. I tried to pop it but just got some blood beneath the skin. I got the culture about 3 days after that. So... I'm not going to throw a party yet, but I guess this is good news? Any thoughts?

Answer:
Cultures aren't reliable without an open sore that is less then 24/48 hours old... as for blood tests.... you want a Western Blot IGG test... the IGM isn't as reliable.... if you still test negative... then you probably are... :D

Answer:
I got another IgG and IgM bloodtest done last Saturday, about 8 weeks from the exposure... both came back negative.

I still feel like I'm experiencing some weird symptoms of tingling and some pain occasionally. It's good news but I'm sad I can't feel definitive about it. Thoughts?

:confused:

Answer:
so i got a negative IgG and IgM for both HSV 1 and 2 after 15 weeks from exposure....

I haven't had any sores or anything, or any explicit herpes symptom.

What do I think? Negative? I'd like to think so. I'm not sure.

Answer:
It sounds like you are negative. You can keep testing until you get a false positive, or you can be content until you see more symptoms. If there are ways to explain all your other symptoms, i'd say you probably blew those out of proportion a bit given your recent experience, and you're fine.

It's probably best to still take precautions when engaging in relations, but moreso to avoid another scare like this, and not as much because you might be contagious. Now you know how easy it is to get -- maybe you can avoid another accidental exposure.

Answer:
so i got a negative IgG and IgM for both HSV 1 and 2 after 15 weeks from exposure....

I haven't had any sores or anything, or any explicit herpes symptom.

What do I think? Negative? I'd like to think so. I'm not sure.
let me explain my little situation to you. I was first tested in March 06 and i had a positive and negative result so the doc made me come back in June to test again. While she never really saw any lesions she said she did see two very tiny ones and was 90% positive i had herpes and started me on valtrex but did the second blood test to make sure. A week later they call and tell me my results are negative. So i go back and she's dumbfounded as to how I don't have it but I don't. Me being the persistent person I am kept asking if she was sure and she said yes as it would've shown up in my blood test. So i go on my happy way meet my bf in Oct 06 tell him the above story and think everything's okay. Well since about almost 2 weeks now I've been having vaginal itching pain and redness similiar to how I felt from Mar-June 06. I took otc yeast infection medicine,didn't work so I had my doc call in the pill for it and took that friday night, still not much better than before.I had my pap done friday,too,but by a different office that was only doing my pap and couldn't diagnose or treat me for anything hwoever when she went to do the pap she saw the area of redness I was talking about she asked if I was ever tested for herpes,this was what I'd been afraid of. So i called my doctor's office and talked to the nurse about it very angry and upset but my doctor acted like I didn't definitely have it. So the nurse told me if the pill didn't work to come back and get whatever testing I wanted done. First off I don't trust going back there because obviously the above. But where do I go? i have no health insurance and I could go to our local health dept but it's a matter of getting in there and them doing the right tests. I was recommended by another member on here to get a swab done,which my doctor never even mentioned from what I remember, and an IgG Western Blot or Herpeselect. To this day I don't know what type of blood tests I had before although I vaguely remember looking at the lab report in my record while the nurse was getting ready to do the second test and I thought I saw IgG and IgM on it but who in the hell knows. I live in a small area in the mountains and I think a lot of our doctor's around here aren't the greatest. We have a population of about 20,000 I think but that's the whole surrounding area as well, should be anyway. So all I'm saying is that you should continue to test. I read some websites that said some doctor's simply aren't educated on the newest best tests to use and the blood tests don't detect the virus just the antibodies. When I talked to the nurse i had for the pap on fri, she said I could've been incubent my doctor never said anything about that the second time i went. All she said the first time was that I had to retest in 3 months because the virus takes awhile to break out or whatever and just because I had a negative HSV 2 then didn't mean anything. Also I didn't know hsv 1 causes genital herpes,too, until reading online. I've read other posts on here and it seems other's are having the same problems as me and you not being able to tell what's going on and having negative results but symptoms. one member replied to my thread and she said she tested negative and nearly 2 years later, longer than me, had an outrageous outbreak and went to the docs and tested positive and was basically unquote devasted.So apparently, for some it can take a really long time to surface and I have a bad feeling I'm one of those people. I don't know if I can legitimately sue my doctor or not but I want to try because it isn't fair, she should've known the possibilities she shouldn't have went from being sure i had it to a week later that I didn't when I apparently was showing symptoms enough for her a week prior to say I'm 90% you have it, you know what I mean? I told my boyfriend I'll get tested again I'm just not sure where to go to make sure I have accurate tests and of course I have no insurance so most doctor's won't see me around here unless i pay in full, that's usually anywhere though, but also may not be accepting new patients. the doctor's i go to have a sliding scale program for peopl w/o ins that's why I go there but my mom doesn't like them and she knows others that have complained about them that they don't provide good service, etc.soooo. but oddly enough my boyfriend has had no symptoms whatsoever if i do have this