oral/throat herpes

in early august of this year i had unprotected oral & protected vaginal sex with a partner. about a week after i began to feel ill - sore, red, and inflamed throat, difficulty swallowing, swollen lymph nodes, body aches and chills, exhaustion, no appetite whatsoever. i also had a large white and very painful sore (looks basically like a canker sore) that appeared on the right side of my mouth, on my back gum (right where i'd had a wisdom tooth extracted 2 years ago).

i went to the doctor and had a culture for strep done as well as blood tests for mono, hsv 2, chlamydia, gonorrhea, etc., all of which came back negative. my physician wrote it off as one of many viruses going around. the symptoms passed without treatment in about a week and a half. i didn't think much of it until recently my symptoms came back. it's just like the first time, including the sore.

i'm really worried that one of the STD tests may have been a false negative, if that's possible. i've talked to my partner and he absolutely insists that he's std-free, but he could just be asymptomatic. i don't have any vaginal symptoms - is it possible to be asymptomatic in one area and symptomatic in another? would a viral infection of hsv 2 in one location protect me somewhat from getting it genitally?

please help!

[gracefromHHP]

your testing for most std's a week after the encounter was too early. chlamydia and gonorrhea were the only ones accurate that early.

your symptoms sound more like a run of the mill upper respiratory viral infection than anything. It could've been a newly acquired hsv1 oral infection but odds are based on your symptoms it wasn't even that.

you need to wait 6 weeks post encounter for syphilis testing. 3 months for hiv, hepatitis and hiv testing. since this was protected sex though, it's very low risk that you contracted any std from this encounter.

even though the risk of a std from oral sex is low over all, always in your best interest to only give and receive protected oral sex unless it's a regular partner who you know has had proper testing done. saves you a lot of worry and testing :)

grace