Thanks Cosmo: Finding a Solution to Vulvodynia.
In their November 2011 issue (with the lovely Nicky Minaj on the cover, on page 165), Cosmo had an article titled, “I Botoxed My Vagina.”
After my eyes rolled back into my head and got stuck there for a few minutes at the obviously desperate title, I went on to read the article about a woman who suddenly developed vulvodynia, a condition in which women experience chronic pain around the opening of and inside of their vagina.
She writes,
It all began with a yeast infection my freshman year of college. The stinging feeling wouldn’t go away no matter how many OTC creams I tried. I went to my primary-care doctor, who prescribed something stronger. But over the next few months, nothing worked, and I was still in pain that was getting worse. At a loss, she passed me off to a sexual-health clinic, where I had repeat tests for STDs, all of which were negative. Next, they sent me to an ob-gyn. It had been more than a year since I’d first noticed the symptoms.
Luckily, the specialist knew what was wrong. She diagnosed me with vulvodynia, a condition Carrie once called vulva-what-ia? in an episode of “Sex and the City.”
Interestingly, her case is nearly identical to mine. (By the way, I can’t find her name anywhere so I’m just going to call her Anne.) During my second year of college, I got a yeast infection that wouldn’t quit and no matter how many different medicines I tried, the pain I felt continued to get considerably worse. I eventually went to my gynecologist who, after ruling out STDs and such, administered a q-tip test (where a doctor runs a q-tip along various areas and asks about the patient’s levels of pain) and told me I had vulvodynia.
I got lucky. My doctor knew what I had, even if she couldn’t tell me much about it. So many women go years not knowing what’s causing their pelvic pain simply because their doctors are unfamiliar with things like vulvodynia and vulvar vestibulitis (a quick google search of ‘pelvic pain’ hardly brings up any relevant search results, even on reputable websites like Mayo Clinic and the National Library of Medicine).
Following Anne’s diagnosis, she entered weekly physical therapy, where a therapist would stick her thumb into her vagina and massage it internally. She also started taking low-dose antidepressants, which her doctor had hoped would ease her nerves.
She writes,
I had to use dilators to try to soothe the opening of my vagina… They looked exactly like vibrators and I was supposed to insert them for a few hours before bed and to get warmed up before sex. Despite all of these efforts, vulvodynia was still screwing up my life. I work long hours and sitting at my desk would put me in so much pain I’d get up to “use the bathroom” every 20 minutes or so—sometimes wanting to cry as I stood up in the stall.
The thing about vulvodynia is it really fucking hurts. You don’t realize how grateful you are not to have a vagina that hurts until yours is on fire 24 hours a day. For some women, even tight pants can cause the pain to flare up. For me, the pain was the worst when I sat for extended periods of time (which made going to class pretty hellish) and tried to have sex (which I stopped doing all together and cried a lot, even though my lovely boyfriend didn’t care and simply wanted me to feel better). And I couldn’t use tampons, at all.
Four years after Anne experienced the first symptoms, she met a nice guy who she eventually married.
He didn’t understand what was going on down there at first but eventually got it after I walked him through dilators and smearing numbing cream on myself before we could get busy. Occasionally, things wouldn’t be as bad as usual down there and sex would just feel slightly painful at the beginning. But often, it hurt so much that we would have to avoid intercourse. I’d become upset sometimes that I couldn’t have sex with my husband.
I can’t speak for Anne, but I know that being unable to have sex did a number on my self esteem. Sex is an important part of my relationship, and it truly bothered me that I couldn’t do it, regardless of how understanding my boyfriend was. (And, fuck, I am so thankful for how understanding he was.) It got to the point where even seeing sexual situations on television or in movies would set me off and make me feel horrible. I told my boyfriend on more than a few occasions that I was “broken” and he should just break up with me and go meet someone else. (And he’d rub my back and stroke my hair and tell me he loved me and that everything would be okay.)
Anne continues,
I’d convinced myself that I was okay with the way things were when I got an e-mail from a friend that said, “You have to read this!” It was a blog post that made fun of women who Botoxed their lady bits. […] A plastic surgeon in New Hampshire was conducting an FDA-approved trial that used Botox to “freeze” vaginal muscles and relieve the pain felt by women like me.
[…]
I worried that the process was still experimental. But after doing a little more research, I decided to go for it and contacted Dr. Pacik’s office. Once he determined I was a good candidate, we set a date for the procedure and I crossed my fingers.
[…]
It took about eight days for the Botox to kick in. Before then, I had to put in dilators for two hours a day. And eventually, I just felt… better.
Wearing pants is still a little uncomfortable, but I now enjoy a pain-free sex life. The Botox will wear off in four months and, before then, my muscles are supposed to learn how to be relaxed. But even if all goes according to plan, I’m considering doing a second round to see if I can wear jeans with zero discomfort. In the meantime, I’m just grateful that my days of suffering in silence are over.
Like Anne, my own story has a similarly happy ending. I went off hormonal birth control for a while (there are some theories that vulvodynia and going on HBC at a young age are linked, but there’s no proof). It didn’t matter that I lacked birth control because, at that point, I wasn’t even having sex.
And, while I was too broke to afford any professional assistance, my boyfriend was perfectly willing to massage my vaginal muscles (which sounds sexual, but trust me, when it hurts, that’s pretty much the last thing you’re thinking about) and, in time, everything started to hurt less and less, to the point where I could have sex with only minimal pain in certain positions. Now, I can have sex just fine, although sitting in the same position for long periods of time still hurts and I can probably never use a tampon again.
Thanks, Cosmo, for writing about vulvodynia because too many women don’t get taken seriously when they say they have pelvic pain. No woman deserves to have painful sex.
