Monique's Herpes Story

At 17 years old, I was excited to have my first boyfriend finally. He was 21 years old, and it was all very exciting. I planned for it and went on the pill. We had two sexual encounters, and then we broke up. A couple of weeks later, I developed a massive cluster of blisters on my buttocks, and my glands were painfully swollen. I felt like I had terrible flu, and all the muscles in my body were aching. In 1980, nobody knew about herpes. My doctor said I had a blood infection and gave me antibiotics. The sores went away, but that was not the end of the story. I kept getting recurrences until a year later, doctors were becoming aware of a large outbreak of the virus and gave me a diagnosis. They told me it was nothing and would get better as I aged.

Unfortunately for me, this did not happen. I am 58 years old now and have had constant and severe herpes outbreaks throughout the years. It meant I had a herpes outbreak at least three weeks out of every month. It meant feeling like I had the flu more than 3/4 of the year. It meant having large, painful sores and infected blisters on my buttons, vagina and anus 75% of the time. I won't get into how demoralizing it has been to live this way for so long.

To say it affected my life negatively would be an understatement. It killed my already low self-esteem, made having relationships with nice, healthy people near impossible and made me feel sick for much of the time. I was one of the first people to receive the medication Acyclovir. I was extremely allergic to it. The doctors would not believe that I had hives from Acyclovir and made fun of me. I left and never saw another doctor about it again. Years later, the same doctor contacted me and apologized - too late.

I used Lysine for many years, and it does help by decreasing each herpes outbreak. I discovered that alcohol and heavy exercise (which I loved) were big triggers, so I had to stop drinking any alcohol and only exercise mildly. Exercise was a way to keep me from being depressed, so while it helped cut down my sick time, it did nothing for me mentally.
I attempted support groups but was angered when I went. Most people only get herpes 1 to 3 times a year, and all I saw was a group of people whining about having herpes for three weeks out of the year. I was having outbreaks for three weeks every single month. I could not do it, and this left me without a support system.

In my early 40's, I was in and out of the hospital for severe abdominal pain. I was diagnosed with Interstitial Cystitis (IC) an auto-immune/allergy-related disease excruciatingly affecting the bladder. I went on a drug called Elmiron, and it helped immensely. I stayed on Elmiron for 16.5 years and just dealt with herpes as I lived my life. With the warnings about Elmiron and damage to eye health, I decided - as a working artist - that my eyesight was too precious to take a chance and went off the drug.

I began the very restrictive IC diet, and it seemed I was doing well on that. I then shared my IC story on Facebook and was contacted by another friend with Hashimoto's disease who talked to me about LDN. Days later, another friend with auto-immune disease told me about LDN as well. That piqued my interest, and I started searching for a way to try this new drug after doing my research.

When I first started taking LDN the first three months, as I gradually increased my dosage, I had migraines, exhaustion and extreme thirst and generally felt poorly. I pushed through anyway and am very happy I did. After the three months, the side-affects faded away, and I have been on LDN for nine months now.

LDN seems to be helping keep the pain level down for my IC. I also noticed that my low blood pressure was better; my nails always blue were a healthy pink in colour. I have arthritis less often. The most significant and most surprising benefit was most unexpected. In the last five months of using LDN, my herpes outbreaks have decreased dramatically.

As I said before, I usually had herpes 2 or 3 times per month, with each outbreak lasting 5 to 10 days. LDN whittled that down to 1x per month with an outbreak lasting three days and with far less flu-like symptoms. Sometimes I would get the pain and itching - a telltale sign a herpes outbreak is on the way, but it would not manifest. Now I sometimes go more than a month without herpes, which is impressive to me. When I do have outbreaks, they are less severe. LDN seems to be an excellent drug for Herpes sufferers (HSV-2) – at least it has been for me.
I will always take LDN, and it has made my life so much easier. I hope my short story helps somebody else struggling with severe symptoms or even mild symptoms of herpes. It is an unpleasant disease and hard to live with. It has a stigma attached to it and is a very painful, isolating disease. Anything that can help keep the outbreaks of herpes controlled and the symptoms milder gets an A+ in my book. I honestly wished I had found LDN decades earlier. 


I hope this article finds struggling young people and helps make a difference in their lives as they still having so much life ahead of them.