I do remember you. From the beginning, none of this fit with herpes for me. Contracting this from social contact such as you describe from this child is virtually unheard of. Whenever I talk with someone about the chances that they have herpes I always find it very important to understand the event that spurs their concern. So that doesn’t fit at all.
Now I will answer your other questions:
1) I don’t know it might be because the symptoms are so odd
2) I think if you had 10 swabs that were negative, you could put this behind you (assuming money was no issue)
3) Yes, that happens all the time! That’s the majority of what I do here is to clear up false positive ELISA tests by ordering western blots. I don’t believe for one second that you have HSV 2.
4) He likely isn’t breaking out because you don’t have herpes, would be my guess
5) I guess you will find out if you have HSV 1 from the PCR swabs right? We don’t know the exact sensitivity of the western blot for HSV 1 but we think it’s pretty darn good.
Do the PCR swabs and see what you get. Honestly, I believe that something else is going on. Oral herpes is not something that normally isn’t easily apparent to people looking at you, rarely causes problems inside the mouth and certainly doesn’t happen as often as you are describing.
Terri