Valtrex as medicine?
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It is not true that if you take it for a year, you will not get an outbreak again. I was told something very similar. I confirmed the information with the Std counselor at another site, and she said it was false. All it means is that your body responds well to the medicine.
Since you have never had an outbreak, it is hard to say if taking the medicine will reduce your chances of having them in the future. You may never experience an obvious one. Valtrex will reduce your chance of spreading it to others though. For that reason alone, you may wish to continue taking it.
As for how long you have had it. The only thing the blood test will tell you is that you have had it for at least 3 months. It takes that long for your body to develop the antibodies that the test checks for. Prior to that point, there are not enough antibodies in your system, and you can have a false negative result. There is no way to know if you contracted the virus 3 months ago or 3 years ago. It would be nice if the tests were advanced enough to give you a time frame but they don't. If you have taken the test before, then all you will know is you developed it sometime between that one and this one.
As for how common it is. It is very common! The current stats imply that 1/4 women have it, and 1/5 men. This is for type 2 only. We don't know for sure how many people have type 1 genital herpes, but it is believed that it increases the stats to about 1/3.
You need to take one pill everyday but you can still get outbreaks, just not a severe. There are some people that only get one outbreak in their entire lives, others that have them constantly. I don't know where the "one year" theory came in, but that is not true. You are susceptible to outbreaks for the rest of you life.
You may not have an outbreak while you are taking the Valtrex, but if you were to stop taking it you would be at great risk for having outbreaks again.
No myth about how common the disease is, but don't believe any myths about a cure or ever being able to say that you are not contagious. You will always be at risk for giving this disease to others, even if you think you are free of outbreaks.
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