There are a variety of treatments, which your doctor can prescribe for you to make you feel better. Yes, unlike what you've heard from friends, your misery is treatable and your doctor can relieve some of your sufferering, and can do so better if you go see them sooner.
The reason to see your doctor sooner and start treatment sooner is that the virus isn't like a bacteria that you can kill with an antibiotic -- it's more wily than that. The virus enters your own cells so you can't very well go around damaging your cells to try and kill the virus. Instead, antiviral treatments decrease the spread of the virus, but that just helps you get better faster, since you don't have more infection to fight. The infection that's already there must be eliminated by your own body, so that's why it's better to come in earlier for treatment, to stop the spread at an earlier stage of illness.
The different treatments include a two pronged attack on the virus:
- things applied to the skin: wet soothing compresses, drying agents, mosturizing ointments
- antiviral treatments: by pills in a person with a normal immune system, or for 3-4 times as long by pills and even by intravenous for a person with a compromised immune system that doesn't respond to the treatment by pills since they may be resistant to the pills, and some people with a pre-existing rash such as eczema sometimes may need intravenous as well.
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