HWN Suggests

'It was like a red-hot poker': why the extreme pain of vulvodynia is going untreated

The first time I tried to have sex I was 16. I knew it might hurt and that perhaps I would bleed. I was OK with that: it was part of the mythology. I imagined that, afterwards, I would stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, like the heroine in my own coming-of-age drama.

As it turned out, I had to stop the sex before it properly began. An excruciating pain at the opening of my vagina shocked me into total stillness – it felt like burning and ripping at once. I was so consumed with shame that I couldn’t have looked at my reflection if I had tried.

This was the first time I experienced what I now know as vulvodynia, an umbrella term for a condition characterised by chronic…

read full article

Featured

 Does your vulva hurt? You could have vulvodynia

If you have pain in your vulva, you’re not alone. Around 16% of women will have vulvar pain lasting longer than three months. They aren’t neurotic or promiscuous. It’s likely they are suffering from a condition called vulvodynia.

 I have vulvodynia – but countless gynaecologists dismissed my agony

Statistics say that one in six women will contract this painful condition. So why did it take years and endless misdiagnoses before I was properly treated?

 I Have Vulvodynia. This Is How I Have Sex

While it is not a well-known condition, even among medical professionals, it’s not particularly rare: Experts estimate that about 15 percent of all people with vulvas will experience vulvodynia. At any given moment, around 1 in 20 people with vulvas are likely living with active symptoms.

 Vulvodynia—It Is Time to Accept a New Understanding from a Neurobiological Perspective

Vulvodynia is one the most common causes of pain during sexual intercourse in premenopausal women. The burden of vulvodynia in a woman’s life can be devastating due to its consequences in the couple’s sexuality and intimacy, in activities of daily living, and psychological well-being.

 What Happens to Relationships When Sex Hurts

Women who suffer from the chronic-pain condition vulvodynia often feel isolated from their partners. But a better medical understanding is helping. Perhaps the most important aspect of vulvodynia that the flurry of recent research has revealed is its prevalence:

Articles of Interest

A Couple Opens Up About The Very Real Pain Of Vulvodynia

Many doctors fail to recognize it in patients, and when they do, treatment can be frustratingly hit or miss.

A Little-Known Skin Disease That Can Disrupt People’s Sex Lives

Although lichen sclerosus can form on any skin surface, it has a predilection for a woman’s vulva and, less often, a man’s penis, and it can so disrupt people’s sex lives that divorce or celibacy is sometimes the outcome.

New Insights Into Genital Pain in Women

In addition, Dr. Ledger said, “there’s good evidence that with vulvodynia as a whole, the women have more nerve fibers in the vulva and they are firing more pain signals to the brain.” He continued: “It’s a kind of vulvar fibromyalgia. Most patients with vulvodynia have very tender glands at the entrance to the vagina.”

Seventeen Years of Bad Sex

Medical science is just catching up to what so many women experience.

Vulvodynia: The Debilitating Condition Nobody Seems to Know How to Treat

Unfortunately, vulvodynia patients often find out about the condition on their own and have to shoulder the cost of private consultations and expensive treatments. We spoke to four women about their diagnosis and how the chronic illness impacts their lives.

Vulvodynia: The Unseen Struggle

So many people just don’t know about vulvodynia, and this includes some of the women who are struggling with it. In fact: “about half of our species has a vulva, yet surprisingly few know what, or where, it is.

Resources

The Vulvar Pain Society

The Vulval Pain Society (VPS) is a confidential service for people living with vestibulodynia (previously known as vulval vestibulitis), vulvodynia or other vulval pain conditions. The Society was set up in 1996 by a doctor and a nursing sister. The VPS is not externally funded or attached to any health service organisation..

Center for Vulvovaginal Disorders

Treatment of vulvodynia, sexual pain disorders, dermatologic diseases of the vulva, recurrent vulvovaginal infections, and female sexual dysfunction.

National Vulvodynia Association

Founded in 1994 by a small group of patients, the NVA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of women with vulvodynia.

Healthy Women

Vulvodynia is chronic pain or discomfort of the vulva (the area surrounding the outside of the vagina) that lasts for three months or longer without any evidence of other skin or gynecological causes.