You know you just can't discount how important anti-virals are and how crafty and sneaky herpes zostrex is, my daughter at the age of 25 had the virus enter her bloodstream and systematically shut down her major organs. She was in a hospital in Tacoma where the ICU was played out like an episode of the Three Stooges. When she was near death a nurse said "I may get fired for this but get her out of here", we transferred her to University Of Wa. in Seattle and within four days she was off life support and screaming for food......She did so well they transferred her to the general floor where she contracted septic shock and didn't recover from that after a three week battle in the ICU. Before this happened I had no idea of the power of herpes in more than just mostly harmless viral episodes!
She was put on acyclivar(sp?) and that was what put the virus at bay, but they took a bunch of her blood for research because healthy young people just don't get sick and die from this. I am a zealot when it comes to rashes now, if they would have biopsied her strange little blisters on her feet they would have seen she was battling the virus that took her life before her heart, lungs, kidneys and liver were so damaged. I can't say enough about demanding to know what a rash is if you don't know.