Westover Heights Clinic - Personal Recollections

 
One Man's Story
    I am a 30-year-old man, have a professional career, many friends, lots of outside interests, and genital herpes. In all of my life, I have had two sex partners (sort of).

    About three years ago, I had intercourse for the first time. My upbringing, very Catholic, frowned heavily on premarital sex, so I waited a long time. The woman I slept with was a good friend; someone I had known for years.  We made love once, and I wore a condom. However, before we had intercourse, she also gave me oral sex. About a week later, I noticed a rough, sore area on my penis. My family doctor said it was probably a friction burn, so I ignored it, and sure enough, it went away.

    My next partner was someone I never did have intercourse with, but we engaged in a fair amount of oral sex. A year after the first rough spot appeared, a second one came up. This time I went to a private sexually transmitted disease clinic where they cultured the spot. It came up positive for HSV 1.

    So in my life I had had intercourse once, wearing a condom, and here I am with genital herpes. In the three years I have apparently had it, I have had only the one recurrence. Both women deny any history of genital herpes, but the first one does have a history of cold sores. I cannot remember whether or not she had a cold sore on her mouth when we had sex together, and neither can she. In either case, I certainly do not, in any way, blame her for this.

    I have not had sex since then because I really want to wait to have sex until I am married.  Telling someone would be hard for me and I do worry about giving this to someone else.  But I know that the rate of viral shedding for genital HSV 1 is low and when I find someone special in my life, I believe I can manage the herpes issues.

    Interestingly enough, herpes has had, in one way, a positive impact on my life.  Before the herpes, I tended to be rather intolerant of other people's flaws, particularly things that I interpreted as an absence of moral character. But now, I too, have a "flaw." Truly, it can happen to anyone. The people at the clinic have helped me to see this as less catastrophic, and when I compare it to people who have other serious illnesses, I am able to see it in a more realistic light. The fear that someone I know might find out I have herpes is a major concern.  I know other people who have herpes, but I cannot bring myself to share this with them. Perhaps I am worried that they would think I am not as "good" a person, though in my heart, I do not think that about them.

    I still have a way to go in adjusting to this disease.  On the other hand, I think I have already come a long way. Thoughts of herpes do not constantly run through my mind anymore. I hope one day soon I will meet someone I care enough about and trust enough to tell that I have herpes.  In fact, there's this very attractive woman who works in my office that I've been admiring lately.  Perhaps I'll soon take that risk!  After all, I'm not herpes. I just have herpes.

One Woman's Story
    My story about herpes began two years ago. I had been dating the same man for about a month when it became clear that the relationship was going to expand to a sexual involvement. One evening, he gave me the painful piece of news that he had genital herpes. He was having recurrences about once every two months, lasting a week, sometimes more. This man had become very special to me -- we were involved in the same career, we enjoyed many of the same activities like sailing, the symphony, and dinners with mutual friends. The decision to sleep with him in spite of the herpes was not a difficult one. I knew a little about the disease, and had read the Time magazine article, the one with the big red H on the cover. He assured me that he would always check himself for sores before sex, and if I wanted him to, he would wear a condom when we made love (I didn't want him to.) He took medicine to deal with his outbreaks, but his doctor didn't see the need for him to take the medicine daily.  So, we began to sleep together at least 3 or 4 times a week.  He was always careful to check himself first. A few times, lovemaking was interrupted by him saying he felt some twinges, and he wanted to stop just to be safe.  This was quite disconcerting, and I found myself thinking about getting herpes when we were making love, instead of thinking about what was happening in bed. At times, this made it difficult to achieve orgasm. But as more time went by, I began to think less and less about herpes and more and more about how happy I was with this man.

    One night we made love in the middle of the night, and in the morning, he spotted a small sore on his penis. We both panicked, and I immediately went to my nurse practitioner for an exam, which revealed nothing irregular. However, about a week later, I noticed a very tender area on my right labia. Looking with a mirror, I saw only a small spot that looked like it had been rubbed raw. Being the cautious type, I went back to the nurse practitioner for another exam. She felt that it was probably not herpes but took a culture anyway just to ease my mind, I think.  Five days later she phoned me to tell me it was positive for HSV 2. I went back a third time to see her for more information and a shoulder to cry on. My partner was incredibly supportive, and felt considerable guilt over infecting me. The sore area was gone in a couple of days. I felt fine for a month, and then, just before my period, another sore appeared. Even though I knew I had been taking a risk, I felt angry and powerless. But because my partner already felt so bad, I kept all that inside and tried to be calm and reasonable at all times.  Around that time, the relationship began to go downhill. We talked less, fought over little things, and made love infrequently. Now I was mourning the loss of intimacy we had had, and the problem of having herpes. I thought, "What if no one else wants me now that I am imperfect?" The relationship had looked so promising in the beginning -- so much in common, so special. What had gone wrong? I think that his guilt about giving me herpes and my unspoken resentment had clearly taken its toll.

    We decided to seek counseling. We had both been divorced once and had come to the realization that good couples are partly made, not born. If we wanted this to work, we would have to work. The psychologist helped us talk about out unspoken agendas and encouraged me to look at my fears about herpes in a more realistic way.

    Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.  I started on daily suppressive therapy to reduce the frequency of my outbreaks and just having them mostly gone makes me feel so much better.  We have worked through many of our problems and discovered that for us, herpes does not need to be a major factor in our relationship. We are still dealing with the day-to-day couple issues that everyone faces. Time had allowed us both to see that herpes is only one small part of who we are and what our relationship is all about.  I'm glad we hung in there together and got help for our issues.  I feel really hopeful about our future.