It Happened to Me: My Parents Helped My Vagina Heal

I was 22 and had extreme surgery, because I felt like a knife was stabbing me. Which wasn’t the shocking part.

Recovering in the great outdoors on painkillers. Note the pee pad.

I remember when the pain started. I was 13, and I had just had my first period. My mom was very liberal, so she showed me how to use tampons. Like, literally, pants down, acted out how to put it in. I wasn’t nervous, because it looked easy when she did it. But when she left me alone to try, it hurt like crazy. I didn’t tell my mother or anyone. I just thought, Obviously I’m doing it wrong. Except even with practice, it never felt any better.

I’d always had these chronic yeast infections, ever since I was a little baby, and we didn’t really know why, but like everything else, we kind of brushed it off and let it go. The older I got, the more painful things became. I would ride a bike or sit on certain chairs and pain would sear through my vulva. Tampons felt unbearable. Even wearing thongs or leggings sent shocks of pain through my body.

The first time I had sex, I wasn’t afraid at all — I was in college, in a relationship, and I had done pretty much everything else with this person. I’d had orgasms, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with my clitoris. We were both excited for that next step together. But when we tried to get his penis inside me, it felt excruciating. Like a hot-knife-digging-in type of pain. I thought, Maybe if I keep doing it, it’ll just get better. It never did.

Every time I’d mention my severe pain to a doctor, it would be all this medical gaslighting. You know, “You’re just anxious.” One doctor told me to drink alcohol before sex. He said, “Oh, just get a little wine cooler.” I was like, “I’m 19.” And he said, “You’re in college. I’m sure you have a friend with a fake ID.”

This is me, heading to the women's march in LA, which seemed like a better picture to show here than a GYN office or blobs of vaginal creams.

I had a yeast infection that lasted three years — not even kidding. I tried everything. Even boric-acid suppositories — you know the stuff that kills cockroaches? I was shoving it up myself while I was traveling around Europe, with a note from my doctor. I went on a medication that dropped my blood sugar level so much that for the first hour after I took it, my vision would go spotty and I would be partially blind. I paid $500 for two pills of a new medicine that gave me explosive, uncontrolled diarrhea in my bed. I was told multiple times that it was probably an STD, but it wasn’t. I was even told I had cancer, then oops, no I didn’t have cancer.

My parents live in Philly, and I first told them about the pain when I was in college.