A Lady Bits Update

I just did the math. It has been eight months since I started seeing the Dr. of Vaginas. I have several other blogs in the queue at the moment but I have decided that my VVS readers need an update. Sooo, heads up Uncle and Auntie. You may want to stop reading.

I have had excessive vaginal pain for two years now. TWO. WHOLE. YEARS. That is very nearly the entirety of Husband and I’s relationship. I know a woman who knows a woman who is forty and has never had sex in her life. Ever. I guess that puts my vulvar pain in perspective, but it really doesn’t make it suck and less. Sex is, and always has been, incredibly important to me. I love it and I need it. Without it – with this pain – I feel like a part of my person as a whole is broken. Regaining it, little by little, has been like rediscovering my sexuality.

I don’t know how to do it anymore. I don’t know what pleases me and I don’t know how to please without hurting. I feel like a child. A very uncomfortable child.

Over the last eight months the Doctor of Vaginas and I have seen each other four times. Her first course of therapy didn’t work. The cream and the valium suppository only somewhat eased the pain. Somewhat is not enough. I was having pain sitting and tight pants were too much to bear. As soon as I can I switched onto Cymbalta.

It’s a magical drug, Cymbalta. In addition to working really well on my depression, my vagina almost immediately felt better. Like, eighty percent better. Like, I can have sex again better. Just to test it, I stopped taking the cream and suppository to see if it the drug alone was working or if it was a combination thing.

I thought my doctor would be pissed but at the next visit she was actually happy to hear that I was proactively testing the waters. Doing this had narrowed things down. Cymbalta worked miracles for the vestibulitis but did nothing for my pelvic floor. We had found the soft spot, so to speak, and that was a big step.

Our next course of action would be physical therapy. The pelvic floor muscles, apparently, are attached to all the other muscles in your lower body. Should any of the surrounding muscles suffer trauma that pain can be deflected into the pelvic floor. This is logical, if you really think about it but I had never given it one thought in my whole life. Things in the body are connected? Crazy!

After several months of trying to find a physical therapist who performs pelvic floor elongation and is also covered by my insurance I finally had my first appointment yesterday. Despite knowing that pelvic floor elongation is essentially being massaged from the inside – and HOW AWKWARD IS THAT? – I was not nervous. At this point in my life I am not shy about my lady parts. They are doctors, they have seen worse and really, I can’t afford to be shy if I want to get better. This isn’t a secret in my life. I write about it here, after all.

Oddly enough it was the relatively-new-to-this-treatment-therapist who turned out to be shy, quickly covering me with the white sheet when I lifted my legs for her to begin. I think she may have blushed and naturally I felt embarrassed that I flashed my vag at someone who didn’t want to see it but she was about to get very intimate with me so we all just moved on. The process wasn’t nearly as weird as I thought it would be. She worked from the inside but also located points in my inner thigh that connect and are tender – places I would never have considered needed work.

I will go back every week for awhile. I am also using a vaginal dilator (which is a fancy word for a medical dildo – comes in all sizes!) four times a week to help make me “strong and long” as the Doctor of Vaginas put it, along with continuing the valium suppositories as needed. I have no idea how long it will take to make this thing finally go away.

I realize how lucky I am, on so many levels. Some people never get relief. Some people don’t have insurance and some people who do have insurance are not covered to go to the fancy Doctor of Vaginas (who runs a pretty penny per visit, not to mention ridiculously expensive testing). Some people don’t have incredibly patient boyfriends or husbands standing by just wishing they could have normal sex but never saying one word of criticism. I am infinitely lucky and I do not take it for granted.

I am also brave, though, and relentless. I am not afraid of trying anything and everything and I refuse to give up. Not on this.

I remember one time Husband shared with me that he was worried that I would give up if it got too hard. “You have given up on a lot of other things, what if that happens with this?” To which I replied that would never happen.Not with this. It was too important for us – for me. I don’t give up on things I really care about, I chase after them in a dead run until I get them in my grasp. It gives me hope. And if we don’t have hope we have nothing at all.