To do preventative treatment or not?

I've just been diagnosed as having HSV-1 in the genitals (specifically, on my penis shaft and inside the urethra-OUCH, lemme tell you, peeing is no fun right now).  The clinician thinks it's my first outbreak but I'm not so sure since I've had some previous suspicious, similar lesions (looking like bad pimples) in the past.

Anyway, she said that for HSV-1 that the standard of treatment is NOT daily drugs, that I can/should just pick up acyclovir from the pharmacy and keep it around and take it only when there's an outbreak coming.  She said that suppressive treatment is only called for if I have 5 or more (!) outbreaks a year.

Doing tons of reaseach now (as you can all imagine I'm sure) seems to indicate that many folks suggest doing suppressive treatment.  Some studies seem to indicate it's a good thing, even for HSV-1/genital which apparently doesn't outbreak very frequently at all.

What to do?  I have two main concerns.  

First is that I don't infect my girlfriend (assuming she's negative; she has to go get tested now to find out).  

Second is that I don't get any more outbreaks- if they were just outside on the shaft I wouldn't be very paranoid about this, but man, the lesion inside my urethra is just killing me every time I take a leak.

I lived with a gal for 5 years who had HSV-1 on her mouth and never got herpes from her (or so I thought) and she didn't do preventative treatment... but maybe that's where I got this after all, hard to say for sure.

Opinions?

[auntiejessi]

I responded to this in the std forum.