Should I tell my partner before we kiss?

I’m 35 years old and I was recently diagnosed with herpes simplex one, cold sores of the mouth. I was told by my doctor that if I ever felt a cold sore coming on, then I shouldn’t kiss until it was completely healed. Otherwise, she said that it wasn’t necessary to tell other people about this.

My dilemma is this: I still am not sure is I should share this information with whomever I intend to kiss. It seems to me that since the vast majority of people have herpes simplex one (60-90%) then it doesn’t seem necessary to tell a partner before kissing. Of course, I intend to share this information with someone while dating and before having sex, since I know that this can be spread through oral sex.

I realize that this might be a gray area and more of an ethical question. But it bothers me that I can infect someone regardless if a cold sore is showing or not and so my feeling is that they have a right to know. The problem is that this will make it very difficult for me to date people if I have to have this conversation before having developed intimacy with that person. Any advice? I’m deeply confused! - Anonymous

I think people should be talking to their partner’s about their STD status before they have sex. I think most would agree with me that if you are going to be sexual then you should probably talk to your partner about your status. Likewise, I would hope that you guys would talk to each other about it and make a date to go and get tested together for stuff before you have sex.

I’ve heard people say that as long as you are  just kissing that it’s ok not to tell or talk about it before you kiss them. I would venture to say that if you are worried about it and you care deeply for that person that it’s a conversation worth sharing and if they care for you they will not judge you are hold it against you. That’s just my thoughts on it though. I hope this helps - Angela

Frozen Peas can help take the edge off

Ok, here’s the poop scoop:

Hi, I have just recently found out that i got genital HSV-1 from my Bf’s cold sore. The outbreak has been horrible and painful and ive had it for about 10 days now I thought it was finally clearing up but a few more spots have appeared, does the first outbreak usually last this long and is it usually this painful?

My dr. finally got me some antiviral about 2 days ago. but i doubt that it will help much this time. Do you have any advice on how to sooth the pain and make it go away faster? at times its so painful i can hardly walk, and i don’t want to do anything. I’m a college student now and have a lot going on its hard to think or even do my assignments with all of this going on and i just want it to go away. So any advice or anything would be so much help.

Here’s what I think:

Be patient and wait for the antivirals to kick in. Make sure to wear loose clothing and when you can, let things air out down there.

It’s much better to keep the area clean and dry.

If you are desperate take some frozen peas and use that to ease the pain.

Advil works too. =]

Herpes on her face

Here’s the comment I got:

Hi, I just moved into a apartment with two other girls. I just found out that one of the girls has herpes on her face. I just wanted to know what I should do to protect myself from getting it. I was also wondering what the chance are that I contract herpes.

Here are my two cents:

First all, how do you know that your room mate has herpes on her face? Does she have a history of cold sores OR fever blisters?

What makes you think that you are going to contract herpes from her? Are you letting her perform oral sex on you? Have you been kissing her while she is going through an outbreak?

Have you ever been tested for herpes yourself? Do you know your status?

Funny Story

I had a dental appointment yesterday so I went.

When I got there they wanted me to fill out another informational history page because they were getting a new computer system and there was a glitch with the old one.

So I sat down to fill out the page to include my medical history where you have to check which scenarios describe what you’ve experienced.

Among all the other health issues that they want you to check yes or no on I found herpes listed 3 times on the page. It actually made me giggle a bit when I saw that.

They had herpes listed 3 times as: herpes, cold sores/fever blisters, and genital herpes.

So what I did is I said YES for herpes, NO for coldsores/fever blisters, and YES for genital herpes. Then at the bottom of the page where it asked for comments I write a note letting them know that they had listed herpes 3 times and that I thought they should know so they could fix their form.

Then I put a smilie face and turned it in.

My dental appointment was a complete success.

No cavities! =]

Looking for a Herpes Support Group in Seattle

From the Feedback Form

Hi there

WOW I just found this site and think it great.

Found out about two months ago I HSV, basically a rash on my penis. Not to uncomfortable, but still I am horrified over this. I know I adjusting but . . .holy smokes!

Anyway, I am 43 and have been divorced for 6 years. I have had partners since then and have contacted most of them about them and everyone is of course shocked but thanks me for the honesty. None have called back to say they are positive.

My ex wife had HSV cold sores, but I never have had them. I remember her complaining that times during sex she would develop a rash that she treated with something but never admitted that it could be herpes.

The thought never came to mind. But that neither here nor there, just guess I need to find a support group, and also a clinic that can help me in the Seattle area.

Can you help me with that? My outbreak has been continuous for about two months now, comes and goes a bit but its still there. Help! :o)

From Angela aka Yoshi2me

Nobody should have to endure any sort of pain connected to herpes as far as I’m concerned. Have you thought about making an appointment to seeing your family doctor to see if he/she can help you get the pain under control?

I would give your doctor a call and let them know that the outbreak is not going away. Maybe they will have you come in so they can make sure that there isn’t something else going on in addition to herpes, ya know?

I’m not all that sure about what sort of local support groups are in your area off-hand but I can tell you that we have an online  herpes support group:

Shut Up N Post! STD Message Board

I hope you get it figured out and can get the outbreak under control.

Good Luck!

Katie Price aka Jordan gets cold sores too

According to NOW online - Peter Andre, Jordan’s husband doesn’t kiss her when she has cold sores and admits that she gets them when she is working hard and feeling run down.

I wonder what Jordan takes in order to get through her cold sore spell. That’s probably a good idea not to kiss her on the mouth directly but I have to wonder if Peter Andre already has type-1 Herpes in his system and doesn’t know it. After all, it’s not really included in proper STD testing now, is it..

Isn’t she a gorgeous woman? Her husband is handsome but not as good looking as she is. I was reading on that site that I found that she’s talking about getting boob job #5. I don’t think she needs to get any  more boob jobs, do you? I think the twins look find just how they are and I’m sure Peter Andre would agree.

Is this a chance to finally kill the herpes virus for good?

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday they may have found a way to flush out herpes viruses from hiding — offering a potential way to cure pesky and painful conditions from cold sores to shingles.

They discovered that a mysterious gene carried by the herpes simplex-1 virus — the one that causes cold sores — allows the virus to lay low in the nerves it infects.

It does so via microRNAs, little pieces of genetic material that regulate the activity of many viruses, the researchers report in the journal Nature.

It may be possible to “wake up” the virus and then kill it with standard antiviral drugs such as acyclovir, said Jennifer Lin Umbach of Duke University in North Carolina, who worked on the study.

“We are trying to go into animal trials,” Umbach said in a telephone interview.

The Duke team is discussing a potential collaboration with Regulus Therapeutics LLC, a joint venture between Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc and Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc that specializes in microRNAs.

Herpes viruses cause permanent infections. They head straight to nerve cells, where they stay latent for the life of an animal or person, often causing periodic outbreaks.

Herpes simplex 1 or HSV-1 causes cold sores, HSV-2 causes genital herpes, while varicella causes chicken pox and returns in middle or old age as herpes zoster to cause shingles.

Acyclovir and related drugs can suppress symptoms but only when the virus is active.

IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL

“Inactive virus is completely untouchable by any treatment we have. Unless you activate the virus, you can’t kill it,” said Bryan Cullen, who oversaw the research.

Umbach said that for still unknown reasons, viruses infecting different neurons in the same body activate at different times, making it impossible to eradicate an infection.

Her team found that a gene called LAT controls microRNAs that turn off other genes in the virus.

“The presence of these active microRNAs keep the virus dormant,” Umbach said. “When the virus is activated by stress like UV (ultraviolet) light or a wound, production of (other) genes goes up.”

Then LAT is overwhelmed and unable to keep the virus in check. It wakes up and causes an outbreak.

A drug that would turn off the microRNAs could drive the virus out of hiding and allow all copies of the virus to be killed with acyclovir, she said.

“You would have one cold sore but you would get rid of it,” she said. Curing something more painful, such as shingles, might be a little trickier, she added.

One class of drug called an antagomir might work, Umbach said. These chemically engineered oligonucleotides are short segments of RNA that can be made into mirror images of a targeted bit of genetic material — such as the herpes microRNAs. They would attach and “silence” the microRNA.

The potential market is large. An estimated one in five Americans have genital herpes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 100 million have the HSV-1 virus that causes cold sores.

The CDC estimates there are a million cases of shingles every year in the United States alone.

Read the entire article here

Awareness & Advocacy Discussion

This article is used strictly for educational purposes. It’s not often that I repost them so when I do it just means that I think they are worth checking into.

Imulux - What can it do?

People write to me all the time asking me about products and treatments they are finding on the internet. So, on things that I’m not sure of I will definitely ask you my readers about. I will also link the information to my herpes treatments pages so folks can find what they are looking for.

Please remember that if something on the Internet sounds too good to be true then it probably really is too good to be true. Do your homework and look up the research before you buy. Also, don’t ever forget to talk to your doctor first. Don’t let anybody try and diagnose you over the internet either. No matter how knowledgeable they might seem it just can NOT be done. Ok, here’s the latest I received on Imulux…

Angela,

Just wondering what Imulux really can do. I don’t know if you’ve seen the announcement, but I found it on XXX on the recent news page. Is this something that actually kills the virus off, or is it just something that clears up the symptoms, albeit possibly permanently, but the subject would still have herpes and be able to pass it on?

Leave a comment if you know something about Imulux. Feel free to leave a comment if you would like to respond in any way to this topic. For more products and treatments discussion please visit our STD Message Board where you can find a herpes treatment category.

My story on herpes and my infant with neonatal herpes

This story was sent to me so that I could repost it to share with you on my herpes stories pages… I thought it would be nice to switch things up a bit and post a few true stories on my herpes blog so my readers could find them this way too. If you would like me to post your story please send them to me as I would be more than happy to. You are more than welcome to share a photo and if you prefer to remain anonymous that is fine too… we can just go by your first name only. Ok, this next story now begins…

I have had the herpes simplex virus type 1 cold sore since 2002. Being that type 2 is genital herpes I thought that was the only type of herpes that could be contracted from sex including oral..I was wrong. My ex boyfriend had cold sores on his mouth and without knowing he had them at the time, we had oral sex and that is how I got the disease. I didn’t know it at first. It was a few years ago so I can’t remember all of the symptoms. I just remember a burning and itching feeling down there as well as very bad chills and a fever. I went in to see the gyno and she diagnosed me with herpes type 1, vaginally.

I was devastated and depressed but I got over it quickly because I realized just how common this virus is! Then a year later I met my now husband and we got engaged a year after meeting. We planned our wedding for exactly a year from when he proposed. We then got pregnant and I was ecstatic. This was our first little bundle of joy and we were sooo happy!

Well being the worry wart that I am, that led me to think about neonatal herpes. I was aware of it from doing research on the Internet. I told my gyno. at every visit how worried I was and expressed my concerns. They blew off my concerns with “Oh don’t worry, neonatal herpes is very rare” and that was that. Even though I stated time and time again I wanted a C-section because I heard the baby would have a very very low chance of acquiring the disease if I had the baby via cesarean.

Well about a month before I delivered, the gyno prescribed Valtrex. I thought she prescribed Acyclovir which is a more mild form of the anti-viral med. So I went back a couple weeks later and she gave me an Acyclovir prescription. I took that medicine for 12 days up until the baby was born. I delivered vaginally per doctor’s advice, going against my gut instinct. Well I had NO SYMPTOMS of any herpes outbreak coming on. Truthfully, I even forgot about my whole worrying about the baby getting herpes when I was in labor. I remember the doctor telling me she was putting a fetal scalp monitor in me to monitor the baby’s heart rate I believe. But later on I read that if you have herpes DO NOT let the doctor use a fetal scalp monitor, because that punctures a little skin of the baby and the herpes virus could seep in.

Well, a week after we had our beautiful baby home I noticed a red bump on his leg that later turned into a blister. I honestly still didn’t think anything of it and took him to the doctor for his normal check up and I pointed out the blister and the doctor mentioned to me that she thought it was herpes. My heart sank at that point. All of the worrying before I had the baby came flooding back. It was like an ocean of worry that I had built up all 9 months of my pregnancy flooding me and knocking me down, when I heard those words: “I think it’s herpes”.

Without even having the blood work or any of the testing done I knew in my heart my baby had contracted the cold sore virus from me. We took him to the hospital and they did spinal taps on him and hooked him up to an IV. It was a nightmare I was living. To see my beautiful baby in a hospital, potentially dying or severe brain damage because of a disgusting disease picked up during sex. The thought of that just made me so sick- I felt the world was coming to an end for me..

My husband stood by me the whole time and was there standing strong for both me and him. Luckily he knew I had the cold sore virus and he knew how I always went to my gyno during my pregnancy scared shit. So although we were both scared and horrified, it wasn’t a guessing game as to how he got it. We stayed with our baby for 2 days before we got the results. They came back that he had HSV 1 skin eye mouth disease. So far the spinal taps came back negative- Thank God, I thank God every day. But at the same time he is now almost 5 months old and doctors say he could STILL get encephalitis or the herpes virus can come out and attack his organs. I am very angry at the gynecologists for not listening to my concerns. She should have never used a fetal scalp monitor on me, knowing that I had herpes. She was very careless with my baby and my body- I truly hate this person. To walk around with hatred is no good, but I have to worry every day about my baby’s disease..that could have been prevented provided I had good doctors looking after me.

This is a warning to all women who have herpes and want to or are pregnant. I don’t want other babies out there getting this virus. Please make sure if you choose to have a vaginal birth that the doctors don’t use a device called a fetal scalp monitor. Make sure you request herpes cultures to be taken during your last month of pregnancy to make sure that there is no viral shedding. The virus could be present with no symptoms, known as asymptomatic shedding. I think that is what I had at the time of delivery. It scares me to know that you can have the virus present at the time of delivery and not know it. The doctor can’t do a culture test at the time of delivery because it takes a few days to get the results back.

They say it’s rare for a baby to acquire the disease but it DOES happen. It happened to my baby. If you personally feel it is worth having a C-Section, because that reduces the risk of giving your baby neonatal herpes (There is still a change the baby can get the virus while he/she is in the womb..that is called in utero , meaning they acquired it in the uterus) please get the c- section. I know I will with my next. Although it is a very rare disease, it does happen. 1 in 3000 doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you are the 1 like I am out of the 3000, that ain’t nothing but a damn number. I think because neonatal herpes is so rare, doctors take a pregnant women having herpes lightly… and the consequences to that child are deadly.

Note from Angela:

Obviously I don’t agree that women with herpes should be forced to have C-sections. C-sections are major surgery and should only be used (in my opinion) as a last resort. Furthermore, a baby can not contract herpes while inside of Mom. A mother who has had herpes prior to becoming pregnant shares her antibodies with her unborn child. For those who have yet to read my herpes pregnancy story you can do so here…

I’m sure Laura shared her story as best she could but I’m also suspecting that there might be parts of her story she doesn’t understand. Even so… I went ahead and decided to go ahead and post it because after all… it’s her story to share. If you have read this story and would like to share your opinion as well, feel free to leave a comment.

Having herpes when you’re pregnant

Pregnant and worried about STDS

Send me your story

Is it possible to pass herpes back and forth?

I have had cold sores for years and believe I have given my partner genital hsv 1 thru oral sex (when no symptoms present) and than caught it back from him (genitally).

It is possible to pass herpes to your partner via oral sex. That’s how a lot of people wind up contracting genital HSV-1.

You can not contract HSV-1 over and over again the way that you described. In other words, you don’t keep passing the virus back and forth.

He has had no symptoms.

Not everybody that has herpes will get symptoms that they can see OR feel. That is why testing specifically for herpes in routine std testing is so important. But, you have to be carefully because not all facilities will automatically test for herpes during the routine STD testing process which is why you have to be proactive and ask for one.

Herpes Testing

I have been diagnosed positive for HSV1 but negative for HSV2. He has been diagnosed positive for HSV also.

Since you have a history of coldsores then it’s safe to say that your herpes is probably oral herpes type-1. You say that your partner tested positive for herpes but you don’t mention if he has HSV-1, HSV-2, OR both.

My question is: Is this possible?

People are either going to have herpes OR they won’t have herpes. Type specific herpes antibody testing will tell you if you have HSV-1, HSV-2, both OR nothing at all.

I’m not sure what you mean when you ask if proper testing is possible. Maybe you can leave an anonymous comment to this blog post clarifying what you meant.

Herpes Type-1 and Type-2

Some sites say this is not possible because I would have had antibodies to the strain and would not have caught it back genitally.

Ok, now I know what you meant by your question as to if “it” was possible OR not.

You don’t pass herpes back and forth the way that you described in the beginning of your question. Once you contract herpes you keep it. It’s possible to have HSV-1, HSV-2, both OR nothing at all.

Also if we are both positive now do we have to use protection still?

That depends on the two of you and what your status is. I think it’s probably a good idea for your partner to be fully aware of his status and type, etc. I know lots of couples that have herpes together don’t use protection. I also know of couples where one has it and the other doesn’t and they don’t use protection. It just depends on the couple, what they want to do, and the ultimate goal.

If you are trying to keep an uninfected partner from contracting herpes then not only is it a good idea to use condoms but it’s also a good idea for the person that has herpes to be on suppressive therapy. Suppressive therapy is said to reduce transmission by about 50%. You add condoms to that mix and that’s pretty good protection.

Also I had unknowingly had a very small lesion and had unprotected sex with my already infected asymptomatic partner, could this cause him to now have symptoms or now cause worse outbreaks in the future for me? Thanks. - N

Like I said, you just have to figure out if he has HSV-1, HSV-2, both OR nothing at all. Knowing the location of the virus is helpful as well. As far as passing it back and forth goes.. that’s not likely.

Herpes Help