New to Vaginismus MD Forum

[Bethany]

Hello All!

Wow, never done anything like this before! There is a first time for everything…

I am so glad that I have found Vaginismus MD and Dr. Pacik. I am currently trying to work out all the details of being able to travel to NH to receive treatment. Also still working on my patient information packet, etc. I have been suffering and searching for a cure for my vaginismus since 2008. This is when I truly became aware of my condition and what exactly it meant. I finally feel as if I have found something that will actually work and let me live the life I so desire.

Here is a bit of my story:

I met my husband when I was 15. We were “high school sweethearts” of a sort. We began dating when I was 15 and have never been apart since. He is truly the best man I have ever known and I love him more today than ever before. I cannot imagine anyone more patient, understanding or caring. From the start we decided to wait for sex until marriage. We were both raised as Christians and have always held this as being very important. We dated for close to 5 years before we got married (mostly due to how young we were!). We had our dream wedding, surrounded by all of our friends and family (nearly 200 of them!). Then we dashed away on our honeymoon. What a honeymoon it was! Our wedding night was very uneventful. Mostly due to the fact that we were both so exhausted after such a long and crazy day. We did make an attempt, but it seemed impossible and just did not seem like either of us were in the right state of mind at the time. We rested assured that we would try tomorrow and everything would be just fine. We took off the next morning for the East Coast trip we had planned and further attempts at intimacy were rudely rejected by my body. Hmph. This did not make either of us very happy. There were lots of tears and uncertainty. We decided to make the best of our trip and had lots of fun, despite the other kind of “fun” we couldn’t have. We returned home and began doing research.

We found the vaginismus.com site and ordered their books and dilator kit right away. I began trying to work with those, without much success. I went in to see a gyn doctor who assured me she had dealt with this before. She referred me to a physical therapist who dealt with this type of pelvic floor problem. I was told that this physical therapy would be covered by my insurance. After close to 10 or so sessions with this physical therapist I was still not making much progress- then I got hit with a giant bill. Nearly $2700.00 was owed to this physical therapist for her services. Nothing had been covered by insurance. I stopped going to see her. Set up a monthly payment plan to pay off this bill and after close to 2 years I finally got that bill paid off. In the meant time, I would randomly decide to start working with the dilators again and would have a week or so of good practice working with them on my own and then I would “fall of the wagon” and get too busy to work with them.

A little over 2 years ago, I saw my gyn doctor (a different one from before) and had my first pap smear/exam. It truly was not that bad. I had begun wearing tampons occasionally and the doctor used a smaller set of equipment to perform the exam on me. She also referred me to a different physical therapist. I began seeing this therapist. We had close to 10-15 visits as well and tried using bio-feedback. She explained to me (in layman’s terms) that most “normal” people on the bio-feedback meter should show their muscles being around a 2 when they are just resting. When I was laying there, just “resting” I was close to an 8 or a 10 on the meter. Wow! Show’s how uptight I am! Sheesh. I did feel like I made some progress with this therapist. We did lots of relaxation techniques and she truly showed me how to do a proper Kegel, etc. In the middle of seeing her, my grandmother suddenly got very ill and passed away. I cancelled my appointments and have not gone back since.

A few months ago I stumbled upon Jane’s website, myvaginismusstory.com and was pleasantly surprised to read a story about someone else struggling with this problem. I emailed Jane to ask if she knew anything about Botox treatment for vaginismus (which I had heard rumors about 5 years ago, but was never able to find anything about it). At the time, she emailed back and said that she did not have any knowledge of this kind of treatment. About a month ago, Jane emailed me out of the blue and asked if I followed her blog (I didn’t) because someone (well, lots of someones) had come forward with information about Dr. Pacik’s treatment and it’s success. Wow! What a complete miracle. I have now been communicating with people from Jane’s community and the community here and I feel a renewed sense of hope! I had basically resigned myself to probably never having children (my life-long dream) and living as a basic room mate with my husband forever. Talk about a bleak existence. My friends and family that knew about my condition have always been supportive, but pretty clueless. It isn’t something that is very easy for most people to understand. Thank you to everyone on this Forum and Jane’s blog that have given me a new outlook and hope for the future. 🙂 I get butterflies just thinking that I may even be able to have a baby in 2014!

Looking forward to getting my treatment done as soon as we can figure out finances and insurance…
Thank you everyone!

Bethany

[Nakitalab]

Hi Bethany! Welcome to the Forum and thank you for sharing your story. Like you my husband and I decided not to have intercourse until after we were married and our wedding night was a complete disaster with lots of tears. And it continued for many years. I knew something was wrong with me when I was a teen trying to use a tampon and just couldn’t get it in. And GYN appointments were nightmares. After trying every treatment out there including surgery I was finally able to have penetration after being married several years but not without excrutiating pain. I truly thought I was the only woman who had this and felt extremely alone, depressed and out of hope. What a huge blessing when I stumbled across Dr. Pacik’s website and this Forum last year! Dr. Pacik’s treatment truly works. I just knew it wouldn’t for me because I had suffered with Vaginismus for over 34 years. But it did work! And I’m able to have pain free intercourse now. It truly is amazing. I’m so excited for you, Bethany! Dr. Pacik and his team are the most wonderful, loving professionals you will ever meet. They truly understand what we all have/are going through. And words can’t express how thankful I am for this Forum. It is so awesome to be able to share our ups and downs, ask questions and learn from others here. This is a safe place to fall. Sending you a big hug and looking forward to walking alongside you on your journey to true healing!

[Nicole A]

Bethany, I did one session of bio feedback with my physical therapist. Your comments are exactly what I experienced – the PT was so surprised at how anxious I was. She even left the room because she said I was so sensitive and stressed. Although I was anxious, I didn’t think I was as stressed as the machine was telling me I was! Even if the PT talked to me, the machine would respond that I was getting anxious.

[Heather34]

Hi Bethany! Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and I’m so sorry for your struggles with vaginismus. I am also very sorry for the passing of your grandmother. This is all a tremendous amount to go through and I want you to know that I, along with all of us, are here to support you. I suffered with vaginismus for several years in the past and tried and failed at so many different treatments. I, too, had become quite hopeless about finding a cure for this and one of the most difficult parts of it all was not telling anyone what we were going through other than the few doctors/PT we visited. Despite this, my husband and I continued to pray for a cure. In 2011, I saw a post in a yahoo group about Dr. Pacik and thought, why not give it a try, not knowing at all at the time that this was FINALLY our cure. I had my procedure on 6/27/11 with my husband supporting me and by my side every step of the way. 7-days later, on July 4th, we made love for the first time and it was pain-free and simply wonderful – we both cried which rarely happens. It just worked when everything else that we tried in the past didn’t and we still thank God every single day. Please know that we are all here for you and your husband in your journey to overcome! Sending hugs!!!!

[fionamarg]

The main protagonist in my newly-published novel ‘White Cranes Dancing’ suffers from Vaginismus. I’d be very interested to hear what forum users think of it. It’s available via Amazon.