We got back home Saturday afternoon to a jam packed Tivo and I immediately did what any respectable person in my situation would do - I spent all weekend watching TV! Coming home from vacation was a little depressing since it meant facing a reality I wasn't yet prepared to face - but a full Tivo queue made it a little easier to solider through. That is, until I watched Private Practice's take on a "broken hoo-ha" and how they wrapped it up so nice and neat in a mere 45 minutes. And how the Virgin was all happy and elated that she finally got her wedding night magic after a quick diagnosis and a couple shots and some deep breathing and acupuncture.
Newsflash my dear Internets. In the real world it doesn't quite work this way.
No ma'am. It does not.
How it really works is this:
You go on your honeymoon with your new husband with the lips! and the shoulders! and things don't go very well. There's pain. And not the "minor discomfort" you're friends warned you about. There's searing pain. Unbearable pain. Shocking and intense pain. Pain you have never experienced on any level. Raw, scary hurtful pain. Then you call your doctor friend who says to call your gynecologist and you go in for an anxious appointment and she does an exam and presses on your full bladder with an ultrasound wand while you worry about tumors and flesh eating bacteria and she says "things look good, just relax and keep trying" so you do that. And it doesn't help. Doesn't work. There's still the white hot pain. So you go back in a couple months and there are more tests and more head scratching and the mention of surgery. You say no thank you because it's surgery but things continue to spiral down a deep and depressing hole and you start to feel like a failure as a wife and a failure as a woman and a failure (if ever!) as a future mother so you re-think the big S. And you talk to Perfect Ryan about it and you both agree that maybe this will work since after all it's been 6 months and this problem, she is getting old. So you have surgery. And they find nothing. And then you cry for about a week solid and feel hopeless and broken and dysfunctional and weird. And for a while you just do nothing. You don't go to the doctor and you don't try and you don't even think about it. Because nothing seems to be working. And then your friend tells you about a clinic that specializes in helping women with sexual dysfunction and you say "that's nice" while thinking to yourself that you would NEVER want to go to such a place. And you continue to try not to think about the awfulness of it all. And then one day you get up the nerve to call the clinic and make an appointment. And they do (yet another) exam that's simply embarrassing and painful and bad. But also they tell you that there's hope. That there's a name for this madness. That all the people who said "just relax" and "have a glass of wine" and "you're just nervous" can shove it. And this makes you feel better. And then they prescribe some muscle relaxers and creams and devices and exercises and physical therapy. And going to physical therapy means one more person that asks you to take off your pants. And you're really tired of taking off your pants. But you do it anyway because you want answers. You want healing. You want an end to the overwhelming physical and emotional pain. And the things you have to do at physical therapy, the things you do behind closed doors while everyone else is walking on treadmills and lifting dumbbells a mere 3 feet away, well those things make you feel like staying at home with the covers pulled over you head. Forever. But you go once a week. Every week. Behind the closed door. And then you have to do at home therapy that is painful and awkward and laughable and just plain strange. And the romance is gone. And sex has become a lights up science experiment that no one enjoys. But you press on. You press on because you have to. You need to. Because you will not let this define you and your relationship. But it does. And you hate that. And one day you find yourself two and half years down the road thinking that you never thought it would be like this. And thinking that it's a good thing you married such an amazing, patient, kind person. And wondering when the nightmare will end. That, my dear Internets, is how it really is.
Let's all join hands and take a deep breath because here it comes.
Hello, my name is Glam Jo, and I have Vaginismus.
Subscribe To The Glamorous Life
Posts
Comments