Hello, I Am In A Bind. I Had Unprotected Sex
I am married. My wife, who is normally very healthy has a hysterectomy, and 3 weeks ago on September 9th, she had a severe pain in her lower back, similar to nerve pain, and couldn’t really sit or stand easily for a few hours. Then, 4 hours later, the pain moved to her upper back. She said it was very painful. Her left arm became heavy and numb, and her chest hurt. We went to the ER thinking she was having a heart attack. Since then, we have went to the ER a second time on 9/16. Both ER's said EKG was normal, negative for multiple treponin tests, blood pressure is fine. CBC was normal, D Dimer was normal. CT of head and chest was normal. She was very short of breath with minimal exhertion after these events. She sweated a lot with minimal exhertion. Other symptoms include chest pain and pressure, jaw pain at one point, and a heavy squeezing feeling on her left chest around heart. If you push her chest their is no additional pain or agitation indicating its muscle etc. No fever during this time. 9/19 We saw a Cardiologist and he said she is very low risk, other than the fact her 30 year old brother had a heart attack and has 2 stents. They walked her on a treadmill again and ekg was fine. They gave her a nitro pill in the office, and it took away all of her symptoms! She could feel her arm again and it relieved the pressure on her chest. The symptoms returned within a few minutes of taking the nitro. The doctor did a heart XXXXXXX on 9/20 to check out the heart and he said it was great. He told us to go see a Gastro doctor and look at her "food pipe". We have that appointment on Wednesday 10/3. AS of today 10/2 (3 weeks from initial symptoms), the symptoms of sweating and shortness of breath are a bit better, but now the main symptoms are having a lot of her discomfort in the center of her abdomen just below her sternum. Also the upper left and right side of her abdomen just below the rib cage. She describes it as a stabbing/burning pain, like it is on fire. If you push on the skin with a little effort, she feels sharp pains on the inside. When she eats she says it gets a bit worse also. Still has left arm tingling and some numbness (like its asleep). She has no sores on her vagina exterior or interior, and she did mention that when she was pushing out her last bit of pee one day that it made the pain worse, but she indicated that was not in her urethra necessarily, just made the abdominal pain worse. She now says she has no issues in the vagina or when peeing. It does not appear there is any lower abdomen pain. It is all as I described above. 9/26 she had an abdominal ultrasound of organs including stomach. Everything looked fine except they did note a “hepatic steatosis with focal fatty sparing adjacent to the gallbladder fossa”. We have been told this probably isn’t the issue. I am concerned I have given her HSV2, and I am putting her through all of this pain and the doctors are having a hard time figuring out what is going on. She has no clue that I was exposed to this. Again, I just tested negative last week with an IGG antibody blood test (I have tested negative for a 10 panel STI test 3 times- Dec 2017, Feb 2018, and now Sept 2018. I would appreciate your best advice in regards to if I have possibly transmitted HSV2 to her, given the information I have provided above. I have found a case online of "Shingles" manifesting on the inside of the abdomen and spreading internally. Is this possible? Or is it possible HSV2 could cause all of these complications as I have described? With her having a hysterectomy (she only kept her ovaries), could HSV 2 possibly go past the vagina and infect an area somewhere in the upper abdomen, and then cause all of the above described symptoms? (Which we initially thought was a heart attack). Thank you.
Your wife's symptoms are not related to HSV 2 infection.
Detailed Answer:
Hi,
Welcome to Ask A Doctor service.
Thanks for posting your query.
I went through the detailed history.
Shingles are different from HSV 2 infection. With Shingles, vague and severe pain elsewhere in the body is possible, but not with HSV 2. There is no possibility that HSV 2 entered through the vagina and manifest elsewhere with such symptoms is unheard and not reported anywhere.
Moreover, when your blood report showed that you are free from HSV 2 infection, how can your wife could catch the infection unless she had some other affair?
Your wife's symptoms are totally unrelated to any STIs, especially to HSV 2, symptoms of which will have confined only to the local area of the anogenital region and not elsewhere. Forget about the past incident, relax and follow the advice of your physician as far as your wife's health is concerned.
Dr S.Murugan