Valtrex is an antiviral with miraculous side effects such as causing the Herpes patient to sky dive, play with their pets, hike, bike, play sports, run on the beach …
Herpes Simplex II is basically a nuisance…the ones you really want to avoid are the ones like HIV, HPV or CMV.
And the best approach to preventing spread is to use a rigorous, unceasing stream of anti-virals. What doesn’t work is tracking sores and being extra-careful. Herpes cheerfully spreads even when sores aren’t obvious.
Classically, type I is the oral strain, and type II is the genital strain, but it’s not unusually to find them having swapped places. Figuring out how that happens is left as an exercise for the reader.
Patient: Can I play the piano anymore?
Doctor: Of course you can !
Patient:Well, I couldn’t before.
I will steer clear of any drug that causes me to jump out of a plane, play with pets (hate them) or hike (boredom) or run on the beach (what am I in a toilet roll commercial?)
You may be having sex 5 times a week now, but it’s the “for many years” bit which people think is being optimistic. Like it or not, most married couples’ sex lives decline in quantity (not necessarily quality) over time.
How do you know your wife isn’t already infected? Has she had a blood test for herpes II? Many people who have the virus never have outbreaks. Herpes viruses are about as old as our species and herpes II is pretty common in our population now. I’ve worked in public health/STD field for many years and there are a lot of myths out there about herpes, still. Some of them are even found in this thread. You’re welcome to email me if you have specific questions and I can refer you to reputable sources of info.
The only problem here is that many doctors, even who are “experts on herpes” are lousy counselors about this issue. I used to run a support group for people with herpes and some of them were almost suicidal after talking to their doctors. There is lots of good info. out there about herpes, the risks, how you get it and how you don’t. There are also a lot of different ways to present this information.
People who live together, have sex with each other, etc. are probably giving each other microbes all the time. There is no way to completely prevent herpes transmission because, as others have said, it can be transmitted even when you’re not having an outbreak.
If you’re mostly concerned about the risk of your wife getting infected while she’s pregnant, you could avoid sex during her pregnancy if you know she’s not infected before that.
Should he speak to a doctor? I don’t know. It depends on the doctor. Unless the doc is a herpes specialist, my thought is that he is not likely to learn anything more than he’s learned from the research he’s already done. And, depending on the doctor, he may either feel brushed off (by a doctor who isn’t interested in dealing with a condition that isn’t curable and isn’t into discussing his patient’s “feelings” about this relationship issue) or maybe even more alarmed (by a doctor who likes to cite individual, worst case scenarios.) It’s possible he might even be the one to educate the doctor about what’s new in the field of herpes. Probably his best bet is to talk to the medical people at the public health STD clinic. They’re going to be the most knowledgable, up-to-date and experienced in this field.
Yes, there are blood tests to establish whether you have the antibodies to Herpes I, Herpes II or both. (The huge majority of us also harbor the herpes that causes Chicken Pox and can re-occur later in life as shingles.) So that might be useful. A doctor or other medical provider can test his wife to see if she’s already got the virus. If not, the OP might get an anti-viral drug to take to hopefully prevent the spread of the herpes to his wife (a possibly expensive, long-term and not fail-safe option). The drugs have been approved for limiting the outbreaks but I’m not sure if they’ve been approved yet for limiting transmission to others.
