Can we just take a minute, please, to talk about all the things that have been in my vagina in the past few years? And before you think I've finally lost it, can we also acknowledge the fact that the vagina is just another body part, specifically, in my opinion, one that the conversation about needs to be normalized? And lastly, can you just calm down? Because when I say things that have been in my vagina, I'm not talking about for fun.
About a month ago when I was in Tampa, I overheard a conversation between two men. One of the men said that he had a strange night the night before, that he'd gone running and then just sat in a park, drenched with sweat, and waited until he was completely dry. Of course he did, I thought, because he doesn't have a vagina. If I sat around in soaking wet workout clothes, I'd have a yeast infection the next day, and I thought about the time when I was at Universal Studios with a group of friends a few years ago--all boys except me--and got so drenched on one of the water rides that I went back to the hotel to shower and change while they stayed a couple more hours hanging out because I was afraid of that very thing.
I also thought, when I heard that guy talk about sitting in his own juices for a lengthy amount of time, about how my friends who have vaginas and I always talk about the unfairness of the vagina and how, no matter how you look at it, we got the short end of the stick. If you look at it from a religious point of view and believe God was doling out the genitalia, like, dude, what the fuck? Men were given something that's basically wash and go while women got what? Their own personal ecosystem with a delicate balance of good and bad bacteria that happens to be maybe an inch away from the home of some of the worst bacteria there is? Flora that's thrown into a tizzy from panty hose or stockings, tight pants or jeans, non-cotton undies or a thong? Far be it for me to be the one to accuse God of misogyny, but how could I not? How more religious women aren't in an uproar over this, I'll never understand. If, on the other hand, you're not religious but believe in science instead, often marveling at the perfect creation of different forms of life, you especially have to wonder what was going on when the vagina came about. What biological sense is there in the vagina having a ph of 4 to 4.5 while semen has a ph between 7.1 and 8? Of all the things that should interfere with a healthy vagina, semen should be the last. Sure, an argument could be made for where saliva does or doesn't biologically belong with its ph of over 6, but semen? Semen and the vagina are literally MFEO.
And yet...
all those things that have been in my vagina in the past few years?
Let's talk cause and effect.
A few years ago I got an IUD and can you say why doesn't a warning come with this thing? Okay, fine, a warning does come with this thing, but not about ph. Intermittent bleeding? Warning. Acne? Warning. Mood swings? Warning. Uterine wall perforation? Warning. Ph issues causing bv nearly every time a woman has sex? A lot of searching had to be done before finding the lawsuits about that, and I don't know what they're brainwashing doctors with because despite the lawsuits and numerous accounts online, both my gynecologist and nurse practitioner I see at the gynecologist still are acting like a connection doesn't exist.
Admittedly, I've been lucky. I didn't think so at first, but once I started doing research--and when I tell you I've done research, baby, I have done Research, and that capital R is no mistake. At this point, I probably know more about vaginal flora, ph, bv, and bv treatment than my nurse practitioner, and actually, that's a fact because the last time I was in and told her about the promising studies using vitamin C, she had no idea. Also, those ph numbers above? From the top of my head. You want to know what color a vaginal ph strip turns at varying ph levels? Drop me a comment and we'll have a chat--I found out how lucky I am.
First, I'm lucky because a woman doesn't have to have an IUD to get bv, but I didn't ever get it until I got mine put in. Some women have it pretty much their entire lives, IUD or not. Second, I'm lucky because when I said something about ph levels being thrown out of whack nearly every time a woman has sex, I wasn't exaggerating; in fact, that was an understatement because for some women, it's not nearly, it's every because if the ph of the semen doesn't do it, the condom they use as a precaution may. When I started researching bv three years ago when I got it for the first time, I felt like I stepped into a horror magazine. Click after click led me to account after account of woman after woman who got bv and then couldn't shake it no matter what she did. These women would be on perpetual cycles of treatment, first an antibiotic to get rid of the bv and then something to get rid of the resulting yeast infection (because of course the vagina, annoying cunt that she is, develops a yeast infection almost any time a woman takes antibiotics because thanks to a misogynistic god/failure of nature, we can't even take fucking medicine without adverse effects) for years, and the bv would just come back as soon as they had sex or were tired and run down or used soap on their vagina instead of treating it like the self-cleaning entity that it is, and the stuff I read about when the bv would come back? The symptoms?
I wanted to cry.
Luckily, though--oh, so luckily--I got/get almost none of them. Other than a feeling that something just isn't right, my slightly high ph causes pretty much no issues at all; still, that doesn't do anything to assuage the fear that one day it might, that one day I might face the horrors that one in four women of reproductive age face. Also luckily, I don't get bv every time I have sex, and that really is luckily because I'd probably die by suicide if I did. I have no explanation for why my body is a fan of some people's chemistry and not others', but my body loved C and loves LDG (who it turns out isn't so much a thing of the past which really shouldn't surprise anybody at this point) while it passionately despised The Korean and is undecided about how it feels about M: sometimes it's a fan, sometimes it isn't (I, on the other hand, am always a fan. Probably his biggest).
And that, people who know way too much about my life, brings me to the reason why my vagina has been home to so many things that normally the vagina isn't home to in the last three years.
I don't like medication or drugs. At all. When I had major surgery a year and a half ago and was cut in half, I didn't take one of the pain pills I was prescribed, and I'd much rather let a sickness run its course than take anything that ends in cillan or cycline or whatever other ending antibiotics have that I wouldn't know because I don't take them. Plus, the medical treatment for bv has all sorts of adverse effects, all pretty much for nothing because the bv just ends up coming back. So while I did take the recommended course of treatment the first time around, I stockpiled my prescriptions and turned to alternative methods. Because bv is such a huge problem--because vaginas are the most poorly constructed body parts that exist--because if there is a god, he's apparently a man, and if there's not, the universe is just inherently anti-women--there's no shortage of sites with homeopathic, natural, and alternative remedies for bv, many that seem to work much better than the standard medical thing.
Plain, no-sugar-added, yogurt-covered tampon? It's been there. Tea tree oil? Yep. Hydrogen peroxide? Only once, but si. Garlic? It's a natural antibacterial, so, um...yeah. I have, in fact, had a clove of garlic inside my vagina. Vitamin C pills? Six nights in a row while I sleep, two out of six months down, in an attempt to change the biofilm that exists (funny story about when at first I bought a pill that didn't dissolve. I woke up the morning after inserting it, checked to make sure it was gone, and lo and behold, I still had an entire pill shoved all the way against my cervix, and let me tell you, I was terrified I'd have to go to my nurse practitioner, mortified, and have her fish it out because although I could feel it with the tip of my finger, I just couldn't make the grab. It turned out, however, my pelvic floor muscles are stronger than I thought, and thank the fucking lord, I was able to push that baby out). Oral probiotics double dutying as vaginal suppositories? Do I even have to say yes?
Pretty much the only thing I haven't tried is the widely accepted boric acid route, which is one capsule inserted for I believe it's 14 to 16 nights, and I'm hoping I won't have to because next week I'm finally getting rid of this IUD. Well, trying to anyway. Because I'm me--the me whose gym literally fucking blew up one day after I wrote how much consistently working out has changed my life--the doctor who inserted it put it up too far and cut the string too short. My nurse practitioner, who I've been seeing so long, she delivered Keifer, who turned 18 today, said I need twilight anesthesia and a special instrument to take it out, but the gynecologist she works underneath? Well, he's a man. He insists on trying without those things.
M says I have an extremely high threshold for pain. I guess we're going to see.
About a month ago when I was in Tampa, I overheard a conversation between two men. One of the men said that he had a strange night the night before, that he'd gone running and then just sat in a park, drenched with sweat, and waited until he was completely dry. Of course he did, I thought, because he doesn't have a vagina. If I sat around in soaking wet workout clothes, I'd have a yeast infection the next day, and I thought about the time when I was at Universal Studios with a group of friends a few years ago--all boys except me--and got so drenched on one of the water rides that I went back to the hotel to shower and change while they stayed a couple more hours hanging out because I was afraid of that very thing.
I also thought, when I heard that guy talk about sitting in his own juices for a lengthy amount of time, about how my friends who have vaginas and I always talk about the unfairness of the vagina and how, no matter how you look at it, we got the short end of the stick. If you look at it from a religious point of view and believe God was doling out the genitalia, like, dude, what the fuck? Men were given something that's basically wash and go while women got what? Their own personal ecosystem with a delicate balance of good and bad bacteria that happens to be maybe an inch away from the home of some of the worst bacteria there is? Flora that's thrown into a tizzy from panty hose or stockings, tight pants or jeans, non-cotton undies or a thong? Far be it for me to be the one to accuse God of misogyny, but how could I not? How more religious women aren't in an uproar over this, I'll never understand. If, on the other hand, you're not religious but believe in science instead, often marveling at the perfect creation of different forms of life, you especially have to wonder what was going on when the vagina came about. What biological sense is there in the vagina having a ph of 4 to 4.5 while semen has a ph between 7.1 and 8? Of all the things that should interfere with a healthy vagina, semen should be the last. Sure, an argument could be made for where saliva does or doesn't biologically belong with its ph of over 6, but semen? Semen and the vagina are literally MFEO.
And yet...
all those things that have been in my vagina in the past few years?
Let's talk cause and effect.
A few years ago I got an IUD and can you say why doesn't a warning come with this thing? Okay, fine, a warning does come with this thing, but not about ph. Intermittent bleeding? Warning. Acne? Warning. Mood swings? Warning. Uterine wall perforation? Warning. Ph issues causing bv nearly every time a woman has sex? A lot of searching had to be done before finding the lawsuits about that, and I don't know what they're brainwashing doctors with because despite the lawsuits and numerous accounts online, both my gynecologist and nurse practitioner I see at the gynecologist still are acting like a connection doesn't exist.
Admittedly, I've been lucky. I didn't think so at first, but once I started doing research--and when I tell you I've done research, baby, I have done Research, and that capital R is no mistake. At this point, I probably know more about vaginal flora, ph, bv, and bv treatment than my nurse practitioner, and actually, that's a fact because the last time I was in and told her about the promising studies using vitamin C, she had no idea. Also, those ph numbers above? From the top of my head. You want to know what color a vaginal ph strip turns at varying ph levels? Drop me a comment and we'll have a chat--I found out how lucky I am.
First, I'm lucky because a woman doesn't have to have an IUD to get bv, but I didn't ever get it until I got mine put in. Some women have it pretty much their entire lives, IUD or not. Second, I'm lucky because when I said something about ph levels being thrown out of whack nearly every time a woman has sex, I wasn't exaggerating; in fact, that was an understatement because for some women, it's not nearly, it's every because if the ph of the semen doesn't do it, the condom they use as a precaution may. When I started researching bv three years ago when I got it for the first time, I felt like I stepped into a horror magazine. Click after click led me to account after account of woman after woman who got bv and then couldn't shake it no matter what she did. These women would be on perpetual cycles of treatment, first an antibiotic to get rid of the bv and then something to get rid of the resulting yeast infection (because of course the vagina, annoying cunt that she is, develops a yeast infection almost any time a woman takes antibiotics because thanks to a misogynistic god/failure of nature, we can't even take fucking medicine without adverse effects) for years, and the bv would just come back as soon as they had sex or were tired and run down or used soap on their vagina instead of treating it like the self-cleaning entity that it is, and the stuff I read about when the bv would come back? The symptoms?
I wanted to cry.
Luckily, though--oh, so luckily--I got/get almost none of them. Other than a feeling that something just isn't right, my slightly high ph causes pretty much no issues at all; still, that doesn't do anything to assuage the fear that one day it might, that one day I might face the horrors that one in four women of reproductive age face. Also luckily, I don't get bv every time I have sex, and that really is luckily because I'd probably die by suicide if I did. I have no explanation for why my body is a fan of some people's chemistry and not others', but my body loved C and loves LDG (who it turns out isn't so much a thing of the past which really shouldn't surprise anybody at this point) while it passionately despised The Korean and is undecided about how it feels about M: sometimes it's a fan, sometimes it isn't (I, on the other hand, am always a fan. Probably his biggest).
And that, people who know way too much about my life, brings me to the reason why my vagina has been home to so many things that normally the vagina isn't home to in the last three years.
I don't like medication or drugs. At all. When I had major surgery a year and a half ago and was cut in half, I didn't take one of the pain pills I was prescribed, and I'd much rather let a sickness run its course than take anything that ends in cillan or cycline or whatever other ending antibiotics have that I wouldn't know because I don't take them. Plus, the medical treatment for bv has all sorts of adverse effects, all pretty much for nothing because the bv just ends up coming back. So while I did take the recommended course of treatment the first time around, I stockpiled my prescriptions and turned to alternative methods. Because bv is such a huge problem--because vaginas are the most poorly constructed body parts that exist--because if there is a god, he's apparently a man, and if there's not, the universe is just inherently anti-women--there's no shortage of sites with homeopathic, natural, and alternative remedies for bv, many that seem to work much better than the standard medical thing.
Plain, no-sugar-added, yogurt-covered tampon? It's been there. Tea tree oil? Yep. Hydrogen peroxide? Only once, but si. Garlic? It's a natural antibacterial, so, um...yeah. I have, in fact, had a clove of garlic inside my vagina. Vitamin C pills? Six nights in a row while I sleep, two out of six months down, in an attempt to change the biofilm that exists (funny story about when at first I bought a pill that didn't dissolve. I woke up the morning after inserting it, checked to make sure it was gone, and lo and behold, I still had an entire pill shoved all the way against my cervix, and let me tell you, I was terrified I'd have to go to my nurse practitioner, mortified, and have her fish it out because although I could feel it with the tip of my finger, I just couldn't make the grab. It turned out, however, my pelvic floor muscles are stronger than I thought, and thank the fucking lord, I was able to push that baby out). Oral probiotics double dutying as vaginal suppositories? Do I even have to say yes?
Pretty much the only thing I haven't tried is the widely accepted boric acid route, which is one capsule inserted for I believe it's 14 to 16 nights, and I'm hoping I won't have to because next week I'm finally getting rid of this IUD. Well, trying to anyway. Because I'm me--the me whose gym literally fucking blew up one day after I wrote how much consistently working out has changed my life--the doctor who inserted it put it up too far and cut the string too short. My nurse practitioner, who I've been seeing so long, she delivered Keifer, who turned 18 today, said I need twilight anesthesia and a special instrument to take it out, but the gynecologist she works underneath? Well, he's a man. He insists on trying without those things.
M says I have an extremely high threshold for pain. I guess we're going to see.
Can you not insist on the twilight and tool? Is that a naive question?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I had to use the Google machine to find out that BV stands for Bacterial Vaginosis, you don't actually state that anywhere. I'm male and I'm betting that's why I had no clue. I have since done some Research ;-)
It's not naive, and yes, I'm sure I can insist on it, but he thinks he can do it and told me that rather than schedule an outpatient hospital visit (which is what would have to be done), it would be better to try this way first.
ReplyDeleteAnd you didn't have to Google because you're a man. Almost nobody knows what bv is. That's one of the things I found during all my research, that despite it being the most common infection for women during reproductive years, barely any women even know about it. Whenever something is wrong, they treat for a yeast infection which is directly opposite on the ph scale, too low instead of too high.
Don't forget, tattoos are a lifelong commitment.
ReplyDelete