I hope its not herpes

[not_sleeping]

I’m a 35 y.o. female who has been in a monogamous relationship for 12 years.  4 weeks ago, I had unprotected sex with a married man.  I regretted it immediately, and have been under extreme duress and anxiety over the situation.  I talked at length with the man I slept with about it, and he assured me that I had nothing to worry about.  I can’t eat or sleep.  I was menstruating during the encounter, and after 3 days I noticed irritation during urination and I eventually had some itching and some white, chucky discharge. On day 6 I went snowshoeing for an hour in deep snow and I noticed some groin discomfort that lasted 5 days.  On day 8, I started having tingling/burning sensations all over my inner thighs and groin, but not on my genitals. I started an otc treatment for a yeast infection.  I got tested at a clinic (day 10) for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea and the results were neg.   My symptoms cleared up except for the tingling/ burning, but a week after I started the treatment (day 15), I experienced vulvar swelling and made an appt to see my doctor (day 17).  I noticed a yellow/brown smelly discharge twice between the swelling and the appt.   She did a visual exam and also took cervical swabs (I did’t tell her about my encounter).  I tested neg for yeast and BV, and she thought that I was having a reaction to the otc treatment and she gave me a topical cream.  All of my symptoms disappeared.  I never had any lesions/blisters.  I was checking a few times/day and never saw/felt  anything.  Today is exactly 4 weeks after the encounter, and I no longer notice any symptoms, but am still incredibly anxious.  I will get tested for HSV as soon as possible. Was I having a primary herpes outbreak without sores or blisters? Is the tingling/burning I was experiencing due to herpes, or could it have been anxiety related?  It seemed to subside when I forced myself to relax. I had protected sex with my boyfriend a few days ago.  Should I be worried that I passed it on?

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Welcome to the Forum. I'm sorry to hear what you have been going through related to your causal encounter.  The power of guilt and perhaps shame is enormous and when combined with the urban mythology and stigma which surround herpes, HSV infections become a common conduit for somatization of guilt.  

Nothing that you describe raises any concern for me about HSV.  Presumably if your partner had HSV and knew it he would have told you.  Further, even if he happened to have genital HSV (odds are he did not), statistically the chance of him transmitting infection to you in the course of a single unprotected encounter if he did not have lesions is somewhere in the range of 1 in tens of thousands.  

So, what about the symptoms that you describe?  HSV would not cause the widespread sort of tingling that you describe and if any of these symptoms were due to an initial outbreak of HSV, then we would anticipate that you would experience a rash or lesions in the area.  this did not happen.  What you describe however is quite typical of persons who increase their personal vigilance and attention looking for symptoms following an encounter that, in retrospect, they wish they had not had.  In these circumstances people tend to notice normal sensations that normally get overlooked and filtered out in the course of activities of daily living.

My advice is to try your best to appreciate that you did not get an STD of any sort from the encounter that you describe and to concentrate your efforts on moving forward rather than dwelling on past mistakes.  I also strongly urge you to not pursue blood tests for HSV.  The tests have high false positive rates in persons who have little reason for testing and if your test were positive, there is still no reason to think that it would reflect infection acquired through the encounter you described.  It would be far more likely to reflect infection acquired some other time.

I hope my comments are helpful and that you can move forward from the concerns that you have expressed.  EWH

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Glad I could help. your expereince with the mis-infomration so prevalent on the internet is by no means unique or unsual. Take care. EWH

[not_sleeping]

Thank you for putting me at ease.  I've learned through this process that anything can be a symptom of anything, as far as internet research goes.  In fact, some sites say that widespread tingling is a symptom of herpes.