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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nurse practitioner who works in an STI clinic here – yes, of course she can decline any tests that she doesn’t want done. An experienced set of eyes might look at what she has going on and be able to give her a sense of what it probably is/isn’t. Herpes testing itself is fickle, the swab (best test) has to be done at the right time or you can have a false negative.  The blood test just tells you about lifetime exposure to type 1 or 2 (most adults have been exposed to one or the other) and does have a non-trivial false positive rate. [/quote]

So my question or thought isn’t totally crazy?  She could always take anti virals and act on that assumption and not have to get confirmed test?[/quote]

We sometimes prescribe antivirals for a short time without a test confirming HSV while we are waiting for results, that’s pretty common. It would be unusual to just prescribe in perpetuity without a result though. Seriously people come in ALL the time with skin bumps that they are convinced are herpes and I can take one look at it and say “probably not”. If this area of concern of hers was never painful, it doesn’t sound a lot like HSV. If it’s scabbed over now testing won’t do a ton for her either so she may want to keep an eye and see if it returns.[/quote]

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