“My valacyclovir works. So why was I still counting days before every trip?”

Her valacyclovir didn’t fail her

It took her from an outbreak almost every month to a few small ones a year. When she feels one starting, she doubles up for a day or two, the way her doctor showed her, and it usually stays small. The CDC’s treatment guidelines say daily suppressive therapy cuts recurrences way down for people who get them often.

But “managed” still took up room. Two valacyclovir pills in the zipper pocket of every purse she owns, even the little one for weddings. A tingle that wasn’t there, more times than one that was. Every trip counted in days and pharmacy hours.

Jen was already doing what she’d been told

✕

✕

✕

✕

Jen was doing everything the internet told her to do. None of it touched the time between outbreaks. “The outbreak takes a few days. The rest of it takes the other fifty-one weeks,” she said.

What she ended up adding for those fifty-one weeks costs under 80 cents a day on the 3-bottle bundle.

“There is nothing you can do. Just ride it out.”

On the fourth night in Sedona she couldn’t sleep. At 1 a.m. on the balcony she typed it into her phone: on daily valacyclovir, still get outbreaks, is there anything else. That was the reply she found.

Back home she read for three weeks. The long-timers who sounded calm kept mentioning lysine, on top of their antiviral, not instead of it. In plain English, lysine turns down the virus’s fuel supply: the herpes virus needs an amino acid called arginine to copy itself, and lysine looks so much like arginine that your body moves both through the same doors. That’s the idea researchers have been testing since the 1970s.

Then the detail that stopped her. A 2017 review of the lysine research found it looked ineffective under a gram a day. In one trial it covered, 1,248mg a day cut recurrences and 624mg a day didn’t. Her old drugstore bottle was 500mg. The popular lysine and monolaurin combo she’d seen online was 600mg a serving. Both under the line.

What she added fit next to the coffee maker

Now there’s a second bottle next to her valacyclovir: Nuvary®. Two capsules with breakfast, two with dinner, and her valacyclovir stays exactly where it’s always been.

And if you’re going to take lysine at all, check the milligrams on the back.

Fear was the last thing in the way

Eleven years of ads promising to wipe it out, every one of them saying the others were lying. And the one thing that actually worked was a prescription she wasn’t about to mess with. So she read the label to her pharmacist.

Even so, the bottle sat on her counter for two days before she opened it.

What changed, slowly

Results vary.

Five months later, the two pills were still there

Spring, Sedona

Packing for the spring trip, she moved everything into a new purse and unzipped the little inside pocket. The same two backup pills from October. “Five months, and since that one in week three I hadn’t had to double up once. Not even a tingle I believed.” Mark walked in and found her crying over two pills. She told him she’d explain on the plane.

She still takes her valacyclovir every morning, same dose, same time. The two backup pills went straight into the new purse, and she’s still waiting for the day she needs them. “So to anyone reading this on valacyclovir: keep it. You might need it one day. I’m just not counting days anymore.”