HSV2 IGM and IGG confusion

[GeorgeF1993]

Hey Terri,
so from the beginning of last June I starting seeing a girl and a month into our relationship I noticed I had a small single pimple on the left side of my foreskin that popped like a pimple and eventually started to fill up with puss again like a normal pimple would sometimes. I popped it again and it turned into a scab that went away.it had no itchy feeling no pain nothing. I didn’t think anything of it tell I started feeling flu like symptoms that lasted about 10 days with swollen lymph nodes in my neck. The pimple came before the flu symptoms.
I go the urgent care while still having the flu symptoms. my test came back positive for hsv2 IGG 7.37 I ask the girl to get tested and it came back positive for her. Don’t know her index but I know she has HSV1 do to cold sores.
So I accepted the diagnosis and continued to date her for 5 months. Tell I build up to courage to go to my family PCP.she wants to run a test to diagnose me herself. My tests results from labcorp come back negative for 1-2.
I was surprised because this is 20+ weeks after my assumed first outbreak. So we run some more tests to ease my mind and 3 more IGG tests come back negative. 2-4-6 weeks after. No anti virals taken at all. So I call the lab (sunrise)that ran my first test and they tell me I tested positive for HSV2 7.37 via IGM not IGG. I was in shock. I haven’t had any suspected outbreaks in the region where the single pimple was. I just get sudden tingles that last half a second and I’m itchy sometimes but no lesions. I did notice some single bumps around my anus but they never popped or scabbed and probably couldn’t be swabbed. (2 in 9 months span)What do you think I should do? I’ve read that it takes up to a year for some people to make IGG antibody’s and the girl was asymptomatic if she didn’t have a false positive test results. Should I take the blot?doctor tells me the blot is for low positive IGGs values only and people with negative IGGs after 20 weeks don’t take it.

[GeorgeF1993]

I also had very bad canker sores on the inside of mouth in the cheeks that stayed 2 weeks each and hurt very bad. 3 in 6 months after the IGM test was done. What really bothers me is that once I educated myself on herpes. I called the urgent care twice to confirm that it was IGG not IGM and I was told both times that it was IGG not IGM. For me to have to call the lab to get the right info is absurd. I’ve been on Reddit talking to the mods and they are telling me the only real HSV2 tests I’ve taken are the 4 IGG tests from labcorp that are all negative. They also tell me to disregard the IGM it doesn’t tell the difference betweeen type 1-2.

I have a random question on a scale of 1-10. 10 being the stigma. What is worse the actual virus or the stigma of the virus?

Terri thank you again for all the work you do.

[Terri Warren]

I would agree to pay attention only to the IgG tests, not the IgM tests. Compared to the western blot, the IgG test picks up 92% of HSV 2 infections, so pretty darn good.
The stigma is, in my opinion, way worse than the disease itself.

Terri

[GeorgeF1993]

So you would say I’m not positive after testing negative after 20+ weeks? I want to keep retesting my mind isn’t clear of this. Is 7.37 high on a igm test? would it be so high? I must have some form of HSV? Type 1 or type 2. I did have chickenpox’s when I was a child.

[Terri Warren]

As I said before, the IgG test misses 8% of HSV 2 infections compared to the western blot so you need to decide how comfortable you are with those percentages.
The IgM is an unreliable test and I don’t know what to make of the result. It has many false positives.

Terri

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