One of our recent botulinum toxin patients just had intercourse with her husband after 9 years of marriage. Pretty cool, no?
She had been trying to have intercourse for years with no success. She tried traditional dilator therapy and though she could insert the smallest sizes, she felt pain when she got to the medium one. It was just too severe, and the years went by…
Then she tried traditional talk therapy. She spent two years “doing really great work” with a sex therapist. I question the nature of that work, since the problem was pretty clearly in her vagina and not her head. A therapist who keeps a patient in therapy for two years talking about why they can’t have intercourse instead of getting them to find more appropriate help is nearly irresponsible. But the patient found it helpful…and maybe, ultimately, the work she did in therapy gave her the courage to call us.
About a month ago, she found our website and, despite having to fly in from Denver for the treatment, she made the decision to do so. She called and had a phone consultation, and decided that she had spent enough time trying “everything,” and that she wanted to arrange for a botulinum toxin procedure to help her overcome her severe vaginismus.
She received her pre-op review from her primary care physician in Denver, and then flew in to see us about two weeks ago. She came in the day before the procedure so that we could meet her and give her a last minute consult on her feelings about the procedure, and her physical preparedness to proceed. The next day she had the procedure.
This patient could not believe that by the evening she was inserting and removing a large dilator with no pain.
She stayed in town to see us four days later and flew back to Denver and to her husband. A week after the procedure, they got clearance to have intercourse. It took a few tries, a little bit of coaching from our staff and a sense of humor; but by this past weekend – within two weeks of the procedure — they were really and truly having pain free intercourse.
Now that’s what I call a week well spent!!
