Hi ASHA, thanks so much for everything you do and taking my question.

So I’m really unsure and anxious about what to do with an HSV1 IgG result that my gyne just took. When I first had myself tested in July, she mentioned that it wasn’t necessary because I had no symptoms and was not active with anyone who had signs of herpes. I insisted anyways and now really, really regret my decision. The HSV1 IgG was exactly 0.90, which made the test just barely ‘equivocal’. She mentioned I could retest (same lab) in a few months, which I just did and got a 1.10, which is now the absolute minimum for positive. The midwife who called me with the new results just offered to retest me in 6 months, but my anxiety about this is paralyzing. I’ve read a lot of Terri’s helpful comments to other questions about the usefulness of this test and how a good amount of low-positives (50%) are really false positives. She also said that two low-positive results may just be where someone sits and not do anything else.  I don’t know how to explain to my partner (whom I told about the borderline result before) that I “could be positive?” without the Western Blot test (that I can’t afford) to confirm it. We perform oral sex, and I could not live with myself if I gave him genital HSV1 if I am someone who sheds HSV w/out a cold sore. 

1. What do I do now? This test is 21 weeks after the first equivocal result. If this was a higher index (like 5-6), I’d accept it, but getting barely-negative and barely-borderline results has been awful.

2. Do I tell past partners about this? I want to be a good person and do the right thing, but I don’t want him to get a useless call like “I may or may not have the cold sore virus” and then go through all of this for nothing and deal with the anxiety.