12 Weeks on from unprotected sex with HSV2+ female. Tingling and fever symptoms

[ChrisJ2022]

12 weeks ago, I had sex with an HSV-2+ female unprotected. She uses Aciclovir daily since her first HSV-2 (2.5years ago) and had no outbreaks since.

Day1; I was panicking, 18 hours after first sexual contact I instantly felt groin discomfort, ED, pain in my legs, tingling on the tip of my penis, dry shrivelled up penis and anxiety. Woke up in sweats and my legs were burning up. I washed my penis with soap.

Day2; Symptoms intensified, such as tingling penis (tip of the penis to the right of the urethra) a slight itchy and discomfortable groin. Flu like symptoms (forehead 36.8 ear 37.4 degrees). Leg and pelvic pain/tightness. Tender groin and abdominal.
I was stressing out and googling non-stop.

Day3; Tingling of penis tip faded slightly and was non consistent. Went to a GUM clinic. Tested me for, 1) Blood: HIV Hep B, 2) Urine: Ghon, Chlam, Syph, 3) Swab for herpes from area tingling (no lesions) NHS only swab test. Nurse checked me over, I had no redness or visual/touched signs of Herpes. She said a tingling penis is a precursor to an outbreak and symptoms don’t usually happen hours to a day or two after. Was told to monitor for lesions.

I couldn’t sleep symptoms felt unbearable but came/went.

Day 4/5; Symptom status;
Leg pain: less today
Joint pain: less today
Tingling of tip: less today
Tightness/discomfort: less today
Lower abdomen pain: less today
Lower back pain: less today
Fever/flu symptoms: less today

Day 6/7; Symptom status
All symptoms from day 4/5 were a lot less at this point.

Day 7 onwards;
All symptoms slowly disappeared and no sores etc developed. Groin Lymph Nodes did not swell, no visible signs and ED stopped at day 6.

All Gum clinic test were negative. Including swab for Herpes.

Week 12 onwards;
Western blot isn’t available in the UK (unless advised otherwise).
Should I get a blood test?
Am I at risk of a false positive diagnosis?
We’re my symptoms even Herpes related or was it my anxiety causing the fever/aches and tingling?

[Terri Warren]

Your symptoms honestly came on way too fast for HSV 2 after your exposure and the odds of contracting HSV 2 at a single unprotected sexual encounter with a female are just very low indeed.
I think your mind has really got you going down a rabbit hole here.
I don’t recommend testing for you unless you really just can’t put this away.
All IgG tests have some risk of a false positive result but the risk is not terribly high.
And if you want a western blot, we have a person in the UK who handles the blood drawing and shipping for us.

Terri

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