Thursday, December 1, 2011

This is what's causing my vulvodynia. I'm serious.

Read this.  Published September of this year.  Researchers created vulvodynia in mice by repeatedly giving them yeast infections and curing them.

This is what's causing my vulvodynia.  This has been my instinct all along.  I had two bladder infections in the six months prior to vulvodynia and countless others before that.  I never had recurrent yeast infections, but I think the principle holds: recurrent infection leads to inflammation which leads to chronic pain.

My cooch is still stinging, literally, from infections long gone.  This is probably why eating well helps, and why treatments involving the immune system are successful at reducing or eradicating pelvic pain.

Onward!

P.S. I'm keeping up the two lame posts before this one for context.  It all started when I read this post about how prolotherapy (a treatment involving the immune system) is making a fellow v-girl's pain go away.  First I flipped out about having to add yet another treatment to my list.  Then I got mad at chocolate.  Then I posted in a vulvodynia Facebook group and ranted in an email to a vulvodynia penpal.  Then I decided to try the probiotic yeast reader Hannah says helped her.  Then I googled "saccharomyces vulvodynia."  Bing. O.

Chocolate is the real evil


I think chocolate is the major offender, not sugar alone.  I made some french toast and my cooch didn't even wince at the syrup.  But as soon as I eat chocolate the lady gets angry.  I'm not even a chocolate fiend.  I just eat it because it's there and I hate not being able to eat it.

Is there anything that doesn't cause vulvodynia?

I appreciate receiving emails and blog comments and reading other blogs and the posts in the vulvodynia groups on Facebook.  But really, every time someone figures out what caused their vulvodynia, it's always something different.  Every time someone says a treatment is helping them, it's always something I've never heard about before.

The more I read, the less helpful it all is.  I have no idea where to start.  Is there any doctor who would consider all these causes and all these treatments in assessing my pain?  The doctors I've visited have been extremely specialized and unwilling to consider diagnoses and treatments outside of their specialty.  I think that is universal.

I don't want to doctor hop again.  Where do I start when there are thirty treatments that MIGHT help and no doctor willing to try them all?  When there are hundreds of possible causes and no doctor who is unspecialized enough to consider them all?

It's a crapshoot, and so I gave up.  But all that frustration is still there.  I reorganized my apartment so I don't have to sit at my desk.  Just the thought of getting a desk job lights my feet on fire.  Waitressing keeps my pain pretty low.  I am broke but at least not on fire.

But I feel like an asshole loser for being a waitress after all the education and work experience I have.  It's not only because of vulvodynia -- I like waitressing and I hate being at a desk.  But I have never felt so trapped in my life.  I feel like I've tried everything and nothing works for me mentally or physically except waitressing.  I feel like I'll be stuck here forever, broke and lame and unaccomplished.

Then there's the sex.  I dream, dream, dream of the day that I'll have pain-free sex again.  It's going to happen.  I just need to figure out where to start.  How.

When I am less frustrated, maybe I will make a list of all the treatments I've read about.  I'm sure this blog is that list, more or less, but I'm going to put them all together in one place just so I can get more frustrated.