Am I brave enough to talk about HSV?

I was reading this amazing article about neonatal herpes, and it struck me.

This is about ME. This is about my experience with my precious baby boy, and a pretty detailed explanation at that about what I went through with Dax and meningitis.

I never knew much about HSV. Although now, even the letters give me a chill to the bone.

It was something we were briefly taught about in sex ed, something other people got, and I didn't think much about it. In those days, AIDS was the main concern.

I had known people who had cold sores in the past, my partner was one of them, but my OB never mentioned to me to think about it. As far as I know, I was never tested for it. I never even once to this day, have had an outbreak.

Nothing hit me in the gut me more than this part of the article above.

I got into a loop of thinking about it, and how our evening at the ped's office must have went something like this:

 There is nothing more sobering than to run a case of a neonatal rash by an ID doc and to have them tell you with complete sincerity that “You can save this baby’s life. Get them to an ER. Now.” Untreated SEM disease can progress to infection of the brain.

The thought of that phone call, and that night of us rushing to the ER will forever live in my brain, even though our D has no memory of that awful night. We didn't stop to get anything from the house, we didn't stop for anything. We rushed to get that acyclovir IV, and I will be forever grateful.