Herpes question - TheBody.com's Bulletin Boards

I'm now 43 and was given genital Herpes when I was 16, so I've had it a long, long time. In fact that so-and-so that gave it to me (he knew he had it) ruined my whole adult sexual life, because I was always getting outbreaks and unable to have sex normally. I went onto Acyclovir in the early 1990's and that worked for years, though recently it has started being less-effective and I have switched over to Valtrex which is stronger in the body for some reason. It seems to be working fine.
The question was can you get a second strain of genital Herpes, and through my experience, yes you can. I will tell you why I think this is true and you can make up your own mind.

First I was given genital Herpes at 16, the guy had it in his butt, so I got it on my dick, it always came up on the side of the shaft and was very painful, though as the years went by it became longer between attacks and less severe also. A couple of years later I came out with a cold sore on my top lip, probably from snogging some guy at my favourite sleazy disco. I know that the cold sores on your lips are the same virus as the genital ones, though you would have to ask a doctor as to why they come up in different places as they do. A year or so after that cold sore showed itself, I was in the same disco (I loved that place) and I had gone up to a guy I knew and I went to plant a big kiss on his lips to say hello. He said to me; "Oh no! Don't kiss me,. I have a cold sore!!" I said to him; "Oh, don't worry, I have one already...." and proceeded to kiss him on the lips anyway, thinking that I already had been infected and things couldn't get any worse. Well after a short incubation period, I got the most huge and horrible cold sore come up in the middle of my bottom lip. This was in ADDITION to the other one, and they used to come up at different times, in their respective places, and they never moved. One would come up on the top once in a while and then at other times the bigger bottom-lip one would emerge and say hello. Over the passing years the top lip one dissappeared never to be seen again, I haven't had that one for years and years. But the one on my bottom lip has come back time and time again to ruin my life and make me look like I had a really badly botched collagen implant. The reason that I think that you can indeed be re-infected with a new strain of Herpes is based on the fact that I have had this happen on my mouth with two diiferent strains, well I got another kind years later on my bottom lip to the side, but it only happened a couple of times then gave up and dissappeared, so that was three. But if all Herpes are the same virus, it would make sense that you can be re-infected on your privates in several places with several strains also because I've expereinced it on my lips. My personal view on re-infection (I follow this belief with my HIV also) is that if I am already sick, if my body is already battling against an infection, the LAST thing I want to do is introduce MORE stuff for it to have to deal with. If my immune system is already compromised I'm hardly going to lump even more stuff on it. I personally don't agree with the guys who say "I have HIV/Herpes already so I can afford to take more chances now......" I reckon you need to be more careful, not less. But that's just my opinion.

In answer to the question about time taken to show up where Herpes is concerned, I think it was something like 4-6 weeks. I know that Herpes, like HIV, has an incubation period where it sits and makes itself at home in your body, before starting to jump around causing trouble and making itself known.

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I'm like fake fruit...... I don't bruise that easy.

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