Should I trust IGG?

[Ellie9708]

Hi Terri!

I am a 24 years old woman living in Sweden. When I was younger, in my teens I had a lot of unprotected sex. Like a lot….with a looot of people. I was not that educated about STDs. I used sex as a form of self harm unfortunately. But that’s a different story.

Fast forward last year. I dated a guy and we had unprotected sex 3 times. After the last encounter he told me he had genital herpes. My heart dropped and I started to google about it. And I saw that it’s not curable, which made me panic. And for your information, I am also diagnosed with OCD. So I started to obsess about this.

I met different doctors and told them about my encounter. After about 5 doctors later, around 5-6 months after the latest exposure, he agreed with an IGG test. I was negative for both HSV1 and HSV2. I can’t recall having a cold sore as a kid either.

Anyways, even though my negative results, I have had a burning sensation in my left labia + left thigh and weird weakness in my leg that comes and goes. Sometimes it just aches. I told my doctor about the burning in my labia and he said that is probably just psychosomatic. This is intermittent and comes and goes about every month or every second month. Sometimes it just last a few seconds/min and sometimes it last 2-3 days on and off.

I have also exessive watery discharge about every second month after the encounter, but the gynecologist think it’s hormonal or caused by my ovulation.

Do you think I should trust the IGG? There isn’t really any lab that will draw blood and send it, in Sweden. Not that I have found unfortunately. I have never had any rashes or sores or blisters that I can recall.

[Ellie9708]

Sorry, regarding the excessive discharge, I have had that before the encounter. But I am not sure if it’s more of it now.

[Ellie9708]

Sorry I forgot to add this. But the weakness in my leg feels a little bit like I’m going to loose feeling in my leg. Like a numbness or “crawling” feeling. Not under the skin, more like inside my leg. The light burning (under the skin feeling) was more on the left thigh and left labia, but this weakness feeling is mainly in my left lower leg.

To be honest I don’t know if my anxiety has made all of these feelings worse.

[Terri Warren]

The IgG test picks up 92% of HSV 2 infections, compared to the gold standard western blot, so I think it is very likely that you don’t have herpes and that these symptoms are unrelated. If you are having leg weakness, this is definitely something you should discuss with your regular care provider.

Terri

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