rash

[help me!]

last sunday I had sex with my bf.  We used a condom.  During sex, we both felt really dry and he couldn't reach his peak.  So he took the condom off and within 2 min he came. he didn't come inside of me.  He pulled out and the fluid got on the outside of my vaginal area.  The very next morning, I woke up feeling a little tingle and slight itch down there.  That evening it was getting worse so I thought It was a yeast infection. I went to the store and bought some cream.  By Tuesday, the burn and itch got worse.  I examined myself down there and noticed that it was turning slight red all over from the front of my vagina to the back almost near my anus.  So I kept applying the cream.  By Wednesday it was much worse.  The burn, itch and the swelling.  So I called my dr and she order me a diflucan and I took it immediately.  I examined myself again down there and never once noticed any bumps of any sort.  I didn't even have any sort of discharge.  So I went and got a 1 day treatment of monistat.  I applied the cream and immediately felt relief.  The burn and itch was soothing away.  I inserted the ovual and went to bed.  Within 1/2 hr of putting the ovual in the medicine started coming out.  It started burning me like crazy so I immediately wipped it off.  By this time it seemed like the diflucan wasnt working.  Thursday morning I called my dr and told her that I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something down there and she called me into her office.  Now everytime I applied any cream at home I wipped off the area with a towel.  I never wipped hard just enough to cool me off.  Everytime I wipped it felt so much better.  Then swelling begin to go down when I applied the monistat cream.  When I got to the drs office, she looked down there and immediately started going off on me.  She said that I had herpes.  I asked her what did she see and she said that the entire area was just really raw and that the skin was coming off.  She examined the inside and everything.  She did not state that she saw any bumps or anything.  She practically threw me a few trial packs of zovarix, did some blood tests and a culture and told me not to ever have sex anymore.  I went home and applied the zovarix and within hours the swelling was going down some more and the itch and burn was also soothing away.  Later that night, I took a shower examined the area and noticed that the outside vulva area had turned light grey and I could see the skin coming off.  I still never saw any bumps and no discharge nor odor.  My dr said it will be sometime next week before she could get my test results but Im freaking out.  I have been alternating from the monistat and the zovarix. Swelling and itch have went down a lot.  Now that the itch and burn is almost gone, I'm noticing that the inside front entrance canal of the vagina is swollen. No pain inside the vagina where I see it is swelling just a slight itch around the outside the vagina opening. Could this be herpes? HELP ME!!

[help me!]

I just got my results back from the doctor.  The culture and the blood tests came back NEGATIVE for herpes.  She says it must just be a very bad yeast infection.  THANK YOU SO MUCH!!  Without your insight I really would not have made it through the weekend.  I was a nervous reck!!

[help me!]

Thank you so much for responding dr!  Now with the itch and burn and swelling gone from the use of the creams that I mentionsd about, I'm noticing other things happening.  The inside of my vagina looks swollen.  It doesn't hurt, but it looks abnormal and now there is a slight creamy vaginal discharge that I have started to notice when I wipe.  It does have a slight medicated smell to it.  Now I was diagnosed with HPV about 5 years ago.  Could this be genitial warts? or still even herpes?  Still no blisters or bumps.

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

That symptom isn't HPV.  Keep following up with your provider; I cannot speculate further.

HHH, MD

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

The diagnosis and advice of a health care provider who has directly examined someone generally is more reliable than an online expert's based on just a written description.  If you have herpes, though, you didn't catch it during the sexual exposure you describe; symptoms of herpes cannot start in less than 2-3 days after infection.  But if you had sex with your BF any other time in the past 2-3 weeks, that could be when you were infected.  But it could also be a severe yeast infection, or perhaps an allergic reaction to something (latex, medicated douche, spermicide, perfumes, etc).

If you do have herpes, it isn't getting better because of the Zovirax cream.  That treatment is no better than placebo; only systemic therapy (that is, oral medication) is effective against genital herpes.  In other words, the fact that the symptoms started to get better so quickly is evidence against herpes.

Bottom line: Wait for the test results and in the meantime follow your doctor's advice.  If you turn out to have herpes, of course your BF needs to be tested as well.  But my guess is that it's something else.

Good luck--  HHH, MD