Thank you. I didnt mean it to come off argumentative. I apologize if it felt that way.
Much appreciate the forum and your answers.
These questions are a bit argumentative and hard to answer concisely which is what I must do if I am going to have the time to address others' questions. I'll try to briefly address your questions. the exchance will not be open ended.
Yes, I would feel the same if there was an outbreak and your touched it.
The most common cause of the sorts of unexplained symptoms that our clients have is anxiety over an exposure that, in retrospect, they wish they had not had, amplified by the associated guilt. Almost any time anyone focuses on any specific part of their body and asks themselve if they feel anything "funny" people will feel an itch or "funny feeling".
There are no specific numerical data to address the question about what proportion of intial outbreaks occur more than 24 days after exposure. You can believe our experience and years of study (and writing) the medical literature or not.
I hope this helps. I am trying.EWH
Thank you dr for your answers.
just a few follows ups if ok..
Your confidence with regards to transmission certainly eases my mind. I especially enjoyed your analogy to the glacier. I don't know this to be true, but would you still feel as sure about this if there was an active outbreak and I touched this and then myself with minimal time in between?
its not that i choose not to believe you or grace and others. id rather believe you since it is in my favor. I just was hoping to better understand why you feel this way about hsv not causing these pains without obvious lesions. Is it bc this would be primary for me and therefore with no antibodies, the virus would present itself with classic lesions? I was feeling much better about this whole situation until I started having these strange aches in almost my entire 'boxer short' area around a week ago. also, when patients have complained about this in the past, is there anything that ends up explaining this a lot of the time? i will feel much better once I've figured out what is causing these pains. I've never felt them in my back, legs, butt, hips, and pelvis all at the same time. would you have any suggestions as to what kind of dr to visit first to try and determine what is causing this.
i know you feel my risk is minimal to zero anyway, but in your experience and opinion, if i had been infected would there be any reason to predict that I could have a classic ob at 24 days post(for a primary) in other words, how rare is this timing for that to happen?
Lastly, do you feel the yeast inf that was diagnosed could've been hsv and misdiagnosed? it was seen by a std specialist and derm, so i felt confident. also cream seemed to help the rash. also the treatment with injection and antibiotics would be the right timing to cause something like this?
this has obviously consumed my mind, so i appreciate your patience to answer questions that im sure are redundant.
Thank you again
Welcome to the Forum I'll try to provide you with some additional information.
1. The long and the short of it is that herpes is transmitted to others by DIRECT contact, not indirect contact or the transfer of infected material on hands or an inanimate object (auto inoculation, which is VERY rare, is DIRECT contact). This has been demonstrated in experimental animal studies (cannot do such studies in humans), neither of us has EVER seen such a case of indirect transfer in our combine over 60 years of STD focused practice, nor are there credible reports in the medical literature. While such transfer might be possible on a theoretical basis, the odds of this happening to you and causing your symptoms while reading this are about as likely as your being crushed by a glacier while reading this.
2. You choose not to believe us, Grace or others on the Community sites. that's up to you. If we thought it happened, don't you think at least one of us would have said so.
3. I presume you are discussing first outbreaks. If so, the answer is yes. Not commonly however.
4. No, as we have said innumerable times, IgM tests are a waste of time and money. Just because you did not have a false positive test last time does not mean you won't the next time you test (which I advise against). Some false positive tests are chance events- present on one occasion, not on others.
I hope this will help you to move forward rather than fixating on an infection you are most unlikely to have.EWH