“For the most part I forget that I have herpes, because they never appear or change my body,” Kara explains.Įssentially, it’s hard to predict how someone’s menstrual cycle will affect their herpes symptoms, because it’s as individual as people’s symptoms are during the rest of their cycle. Kara was diagnosed with herpes when she was 16 and, almost four years into being HSV+, herpes is almost a non-issue in her life. “I have only ever had one outbreak and that was the first outbreak,” she says. That’s not uncommon herpes symptoms often get less frequent the longer someone has the virus.Īnd for Kara, 20, she says she has no symptoms during her period. Keysha, 23, says, “The first couple of months after my initial outbreak, I would usually get one blister on my labia during the beginning of my cycle.” However, almost a year after her diagnosis, she says she no longer gets outbreaks during her cycle, and hardly gets any at all. Then, once my period arrived, I’d get that one itchy spot between my inner and outer labia that I now knew was a lesion, an outbreak.
In my case, it was the tingling in my vulva a few days before my period began. It would start with prodromal symptoms, which are the symptoms you get before an outbreak. I also began to notice something weird: almost every month during my period, I would have an outbreak.
#HERPES FLARE UP SKIN#
That day I also found out that the other super weird symptoms I was experiencing - the tingling and the achy skin and the sore quadriceps - were also a result of herpes.Īfter receiving answers about what was going on below my belt, I started to get to know and understand my symptoms. However, a blood test quickly confirmed what I was starting to suspect: I had HSV-2, or genital herpes. But it had already scabbed over, making a swab test impossible. But after several months of nerve pain that was so bad it hurt to wear pants and quad muscles so sore that sometimes my legs gave out and what I thought was a recurring ingrown hair that itched a lot, I walked into Planned Parenthood and asked them to swab the lesion to see if it was herpes.