Why wont my doctor prescrive suppressive therapy?

Hi lambfury,

Thanks for your question.  I'm not a doctor, so I can't give any medical advice, but I have also herpes so I may be able to help.

From what I know, the severe outbreak you described above usually only happens during one's first outbreak.  After that, outbreaks will be less severe.  I have a friend who had a similar experience to yours, and then never got another outbreak.  Lucky her.  I never went through those horrible symptoms you described, but I have chronic outbreaks.  So maybe you should wait and see.  Maybe you won't have any more outbreaks.  Waiting for a few months is not the end of the world.  There is no reason to do suppressive therapy if it's not necessary.  You would have to spend a lot of money in prescription medication and, take it from someone who has experience, getting approved for health insurance is much harder with that kind of mark on your record.  

So the worst that can happen is you have such frequent outbreaks (minus the flu-like symptoms) that you must go on suppressive therapy, in which case I'm sure your doctor would gladly help you.  That's what I did, with the hope that after a year or two I could go off suppressive therapy and my herpes would magically be gone.  But that wasn't so.  In fact, I think being on suppressive therapy made my body weaker and the virus stronger.  Now I refuse to go on suppressive therapy, even though I would be the perfect candidate for it.   

Trust your doctor.  And from someone who has been around that block a dozen times, I advise you to only use suppressive therapy as a last-resort, for certain occasions, or in desperate times.

Check out our pages about Treatments and Coping with Herpes for information about various ways you can deal with outbreaks.  

Good luck!

PJ