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Herpes misdiagnosed?

Hi. I will try to explain my story as brief and precise as I can.

Last year I received oral sex from a woman that I didn't know. It lasted less than 5 minutes. After that i panicked, and started to freak out about STDs. In less than 2 days after the event, I noticed a red and very small spot on my penis head, almost in the border between the tip and the corona and I started to use a cream that has Neomycin and Hidrocortisone 1%.

I went to the Doctor, an Infectous Dicease specialist, and he said it was nothing.
Three weeks later i masturbated (and did it prone) and the area where I had de red spot became a bit swollen, so I freaked out and used the cream again. At this point I didn't have any blister or open sore.

I kept using the cream for about 5 days, and exactly 32 days after the oral, I noticed the skin swollen again, so I freaked out and used the cream again that day in the morning.

By night I noticed the area even more swollen, so I applied more cream and in that very moment I noticed that i peeled off skin and opened a little wound because the skin was really tender.

I went to the Infectous Dicease specialist again and he said it was Balanitis and said it wasn't herpes or any STD, but 3 days later i developed an ulcer in the spot where I applied the cream. All of this without pain.

Went again to the doctor and he told me that it wasn't herpes nor any STD, that i had weakened the skin with the cream that i used and now it was ulcerated because of that. He only prescribed antibiothics to prevent infection, an exam to discard siphilis and nothing more, because he said that there is no culture or blood exam for herpes in my country. The ulcer healed completely 5 or 6 days after that.

I went back to the Doctor and he said that It wasn't herpes, that i had a self induced balanitis because of the cream that i used. He reasured me saying that in his more than 30 years treating all kind of STIs he has never seen an herpes initial outbreak that happens 32 days after the exposure and that if it would have been really herpes, my lession wouldn't be limited to the head/corona alone. (It was a single ulcer).

I decided to rest my mind in this, but a month and a half after that, i got what looked like a very small red and raised dot in the corona, inside the area of the first lession. This red dot lasted about 2 days or less, it wasn't a blister nor open sore, but it looked bright red. Im talking about a dot of maybe 1 millimeter of diameter, surrounded by a small red area that never ulcerated, and then disappeared.
After that, i have seen this kind of raised red dot in the same area of the first lesion every 2 or 3 months. They disappear sometimes in less than 24 hours, and defenitely always less than 48 hours every time. They never become blisters nor open sores or ulcers.

Yesterday i had one of these red raised little dots with some redness in the same area and decided to go back to the same doctor. He said that it was a normal inflamatory condition, produced maybe by masturbation or by the fact that I am uncircumcized. Today i have nothing again.


My diagnosis for the first event was no herpes, but without any exam, only visual evidence and the fact that i used a cream and that it happened to late to be herpes. The fact is that since that day I almost consider myself as "possibly infected" of ghsv1.  As I explained, sadly, in my country i have nothing else to do.

After all that background, my question to the more knowledgeable members of this forum would be.
Do you think that those single little raised, painless red dots in the corona that last less than 2 days and never become water filled blisters nor ulcers could be herpes recurrences?

Thanks in advance.



4 Responses
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207091 tn?1337709493
COMMUNITY LEADER
Something that just hit me and should have before, so I apologize, is that you noticed the red spot less than 2 days after the oral sex. Herpes wouldn't show up that fast. It takes at least 2 days, but the average is 4 days.

None of this sounds like herpes, which I've said several times, and don't know how to say any differently. Your doctor has said it at least 5 times.

I agree with stopping the masturbation for a bit to see if that helps, and maybe start using your hand and some lube after. Be kind to your penis (seriously). Keep it clean and dry.

If you can't let this go, it's time to talk to your doctor about anxiety.
Helpful - 0
1 Comments
Yes, the first spot appeared about 35 hours after the contact, and it wasn't an open sore nor a blister, it was very small. The doctor said that it looked like a broken vessel caused by teeth.

BUT there is also an overt ulcer that I mentioned, that formed 32 days after exposure (also too late to be herpes as I've learned), and the doctor said it was due to balanitis as a reaction to the ointment I was using. It has been the only real open sore that I've had, more than a year ago, and it was limited to the glans.

My concern now after putting all this to rest for more than a year has been those red spots that have reocurred in the same area but never become blister nor open sores. I just wanted to make sure they were not in any way a possible mild recurrent herpes outbreak.

Thanks for your follow up. I'll put all this behind.
Avatar universal
Thanks for your answer.

Just for my clarity, after a real herpes blister even of a mild outbreak is broken, there would be an obvious open sore or ulcer, not just red or swollen or irregular skin right?
My trauma is that when these episodes happen, sometimes the redness drives me crazy, but i've never seen a real overt ulcer with these small inflamatory events, even zooming with my phone. Irregular skin at the most, and it goes away fairly fast.

I've been researching, I confirmed that all blood tests for herpes are sent to the USA, so it isn't an option for me, at least for now. There is a lab that offers PCR for herpes, but i guess i need an overt ulcer right?

Thanks for the follow up!
Helpful - 0
2 Comments
No, PCR swabbing can be done without an overt ulcer. PCR swabbing can be done to find any active virus on the skin, even with asymptomatic viral shedding, so it's used a lot for situations when a blister has started to dry up, or in cases where people get conflicted blood tests, etc.

Is it possible you are having an allergic reaction to something? Think of everything - do you use hand lotion and then when you use the restroom, could the lotion be irritating your penis? Is the redness in an area that you hold when you go to the bathroom? It could be contact dermatitis, or a host of other things.

I understand wanting to know what it is. If I had something similar, I'd want to know. Just don't do yourself a disservice by only focusing on herpes. You'll limit yourself to finding the cause if you don't look into everything.
Thanks for your answer.

Actually, I think that my main problem is that I'm umcircumcized. I have a bad habit, i masturbate against my bed,  something like simulating sex, and I've heard that the trauma that it involves is considerable. I have atributed the problem to masturbation and maybe that sometimes I have left a whole night the area without washing after I masturbate. But the conflicting fact about that conclusion is that is has happened on days that I didn't masturbated, even about a week or two without masturbation. It i true that most of the time it has happened after a night of plenty of masturbation.

This last time, it happened after a night of a lot of masturbation, maybe 2 or 3 times, asn it has maybe been the worst that i have seen since the first event of apparent reaction to the ointment that i used last year.

I'm going to stop masturbation for a long time, I want to see if it makes a difference or not.

But a first step to my peace is to discard this small red spots of inflammed skin but never blister or ulcer (at least visible) as NOT HERPES. From there, I can advance with more peace of mind.

That is why i would like to read your thoughts on this question:

After a real herpes blister even of a mild outbreak, when it breaks , there would be an obvious open sore or ulcer that i would be able to notice, not just red or swollen or irregular skin right?


Thanks again, you have been really helpful and I appriciate that you take your time to help! :)
Avatar universal
I would definetly want to read your final thoghts on this. (I commented your answer)

I'm willing to put this behind my mind, but every time I see one of those random single little red spots (1 mm diameter) a bit rised in the same área (the Middle of the corona) I just can't help but freak out.

Is there no possible scenario in which I could have a blister there so small that I could not see, that bursted and created a very superficial ulcer that I ignored and thus completely healed in 2 days or less?

I freak out when I read that herpes can be very mild to the point that it can be easy to not recognize it.

Thanks for your help!!!!
Helpful - 0
2 Comments
Yes, herpes symptoms can be very mild, but that means that there isn't a lot of pain, or that the blisters are small. Some people may get itching with the blisters and not pain. Some people get no symptoms at all.

It isn't little red dots, or microscopic blisters, or spots that heal within a day or two.

I can understand not trusting a test with that kind of process, but can they do a PCR swab?
Thanks for your answer.

Just for my clarity, after a real herpes blister even of a mild outbreak is broken, there would be an obvious open sore or ulcer, not just red or swollen or irregular skin right?
My trauma is that when these episodes happen, sometimes the redness drives me crazy, but i've never seen a real overt ulcer with these small inflamatory events, even zooming with my phone. Irregular skin at the most, and it goes away fairly fast.

I've been researching, I confirmed that all blood tests are sent to the USA, so it isn't an option for me, at least for now. There is a lab that offers PCR for herpes, but i guess i need an overt ulcer right?

Thanks for the follow up!

207091 tn?1337709493
COMMUNITY LEADER
No, if you get outbreaks of herpes, they don't clear up that fast. Some people say their outbreaks don't hurt much, but they are blisters of some sort, and they don't clear up that fast without treatment.

The doctor who has examined you has said it's not herpes, at least 5 times that I counted. I can't do any better than that.

What country are you in? There are blood tests in most countries that I know of. Some countries are harder to find the testing, but it can be done.

That said, I don't think you need it. Your symptoms don't sound like herpes, and if you come back positive for hsv1, it won't tell you if you have it orally or genitally. (Ghsv1 rarely recurs with the frequency you are describing, making me think it's not that, either.)

Your doctor can do a culture on the area and see what is causing this - if it's herpes, bacteria, fungus, etc. I'm kind of surprised that hasn't happened yet.

There is also something called a PCR swab - a herpes test that swabs the area of concern to test for herpes, and it's a lot more sensitive than a traditional culture.

I really don't think it's herpes, though.
Helpful - 0
1 Comments
Thanks for your answer. It is very reassuring.

I realize that I have been diagnosed free of Herpes, but i think that i've been needing the best reasurance as possible due to the lack of a precise culture result or exam.

We have some labs in my country that draw blood for antibody tests, but they basically draw the blood and then they send it to the US. To be honest, that Antibody test is very expensive, more than 300 bucks, and i dont trust a test that needs to pass customs from latin america to the US very much. So if i get a false positive, it could leave me with more questions than answers.

About the culture, i don't think that the kind of small red spot without lession can be cultured. When these small spots appear, it is actually  always only one spot, it is red and a bit rised in the corona, it maybe looks like a very small mosquito bite, but there is no discharge of any kind nor open wound. And as I say, they become completely normal in less than 48 hours, some times within 24 hours. The major concern for me is the fact that this spots tend to appear in the area where i had the ulcer, in the corona, exactly in the middle line of my penis. By the way, i have some kind of scar from the first ulcer, the skin there is more reddish, since then, and as far as i know, herpes doesn't leave scars right?

As I am uncircumcised, i've started to believe that  maybe that those random red spots are a normal pattern that i didn't observed before and i started to observe frantically after the first ulcer that the doctor said was due to the use of  a cream and definetly not herpes.

I have fisical proof that the cream was guilty of the mess in my skin there. Its been more than a year, and my penis head still looks decolorated in the areas where the cream was applied. But you know, when you are told that the main cause of penile ulcers is herpes, and you happened to have an exposure one month before, you freak out.

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