Tag: contraceptive pill

  • The fun part? | Pleasure Moans #1

    The fun part? | Pleasure Moans #1

    1. Try not to intellectualise your bodily experiences (much too late for that)
    2. If you start dating again, you’re likely to unconsciously pick someone with erectile dysfunction (can I unknow this?)
    3. When you’re ready, try penetration but on your own (oh shit, here we go)

    Those are the three nuggets of wisdom my sex therapist gave me when we finished our sessions together in the autumn. She made it clear to me that she expected to see me again, or that I would see another psychosexual counsellor at some point in the near future. I was being discharged a) because my sister’s Danish health insurance had dried up and b) because we’d hit something of a brick wall in terms of progress. My generalised pelvic pain had improved and I was beginning to handle the upsetting side effects of the pill, the only thing left to test was the penetrability of my vagina. The fun part, right?

    I was in no rush to test this theory, partly because I was so encouraged by the way everything else had improved. Even in terms of vaginismus, we had come to the conclusion that any superficial, psychological pain and reaction I had was situational and secondary. We also agreed that I wasn’t ready to try penetration again. I was happy with the progress I’d made and while it was a really big deal to test the theory at some point, it was nice to live in the pain-free-ish, worry-free bliss for a little while. And it was worry-free. Until…

    A letter arrived announcing the date of my next appointment with my gynaecologist. I knew exactly what it meant. If I went into that appointment and said “yep, all good, pain’s reduced, periods are lighter, plus I’m handling the acne and mood swings” that my gynae would say “job done” and discharge me – rightly so. Honestly, I felt ready to be discharged. But in the back of my mind, the deadline of this appointment deeply worried me. I needed to test the theory that everything was fixed. I could foresee how upsetting it would be to be discharged and only then discover the horrible deep pain during sex was still there, meaning that if I needed more gynaecological care I’d have to start again, again, again.

    Despite the advice of my well-intentioned friends to ‘find a lad’ in order to test my internal mechanics, I knew exactly what to do, or at least, where to go. The Vaginismus Network has hosted a couple of its events at a Shoreditch sex shop called Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium that has proven itself to be deeply knowledgable about unwanted pain during sex. Months of avoiding this big ominous question but one letter had me on a bus to a sex shop after class. Whatever it takes, I guess.

    Sh! hooked me up with a dilator set. These are specially designed vaginal trainers of different sizes, mostly used to treat vaginismus. While I wasn’t specifically treating vaginismus, I was advised that it was the best option for testing the water again, especially since I didn’t know if vaginismus was going to be part of the process or not.

    I was so sure it was going to be alright, because (have I said it enough?) everything else had genuinely improved. So I tried the smaller two. No pain, no vaginismus. I stopped there for a week or so, but this really bolstered me. I had reached the dream articulated by Fran Bushe in Ad Libido, I had fixed sex. 

    And then I tried the third one.

    Pain. Pain, pain, pain. Deep, cramping, breathtaking pain. Shortly and sharply followed by a different pain and resistance: vaginismus.

    What’s worse, the deep pain didn’t go away. It was like I had just turned my pain back on again, all of it, like a switch. Two days later I vomited up my breakfast because of pain, something that hadn’t happened since I started the pill. And I hadn’t even tried the largest one yet.

    Safe to say, I did. And it was agony and pretty upsetting. Not just for that moment but also because it was quite #triggering in ways I did not expect. I must have tried them for two, maybe three minutes. Not long at all. It just made me feel deeply disturbed, uncomfortable and worried by the fact I have had sex with that pain in the past.

    As a bonus stroke of discomfort, I currently live with my parents. They were pretty aware of my situation and how much it had improved. So when I was suddenly in pain again I was really unsure how to mention, “oh I’ve been upstairs testing out my vag before I see the gynaecologist on Tuesday!” So I did the very rational thing of saying nothing, becoming a bit of a stroppy teenager and not being a very nice person to live with. Oops. Sorry, folks!

    There are lots of things I hate about pain, but up at the top of the list is the exhaustion that comes with it. Whether it’s due to the cause of the pain itself or just by the toll being in pain takes, it sucks. I’ve found the masters draining and challenging, so adding some extra stress, pain and fatigue meant that by the end of term I just felt like a blob of matter floating around. Most of my diary entries from November and December start with “I am so tired,” “I’m fucking exhausted” “bloody exhausted” “you’d think I’d be used to exhaustion by now…” or various uncreative phrases of a similar ilk. I really thought it was just university, but my workload this semester is much bigger and yet I have had so much more energy and I wonder if it has a lot to do with my return to the regular use of painkillers and the fact I’ve stopped using the dilators for now.

    I can’t tell you how much I’ve hesitated over writing this blog. At the LSE Gender Department there is a lot of talk of so-called Imposter Syndrome. I’ve certainly felt it there, but I’ve felt it in this respect too – how can I spend so much time writing about sex but feel uncomfortable discussing solo vaginal training? And yet I didn’t want to force myself to write about it. If I felt there was a new line being crossed then I was going to cross it slowly and thoughtfully. But I did want to cross it eventually. The rediscovery of this pain has opened up a whole load of new questions, like was my pain ever hormonal? Did the pill actually fix something or did my pain just improve because more time had passed since the last time I had penetrative sex? The other feeling of imposter syndrome came from the fact I had restarted the pain myself. Should I devalue this pain because I had unknowingly but voluntarily made it worse? These questions haven’t gone away and I think this part of the story is crucial if I’m going to tell the next part. And though it does continue on from the #Periodically blogs, which aren’t going anywhere, I’m going to do so under a new banner: Pleasure Moans. 

    This blog is already way too long so I’m going to end it here. It’s obviously not the end of this (never-ending) story. I didn’t want this post to be quite so depressing but it is what it is. I promise the second half of this ‘episode’ is more constructive and angry and funny. I’ll try to write it soon, rather than leaving it another four months, but I’m making no promises. Thank you as always for your support, kind words and patience! 

  • The pill & my face #Periodically 31

    The pill & my face #Periodically 31

    Here’s a blog I didn’t want to write but that’s been itching to get out for a couple of months. It’s about a problem I didn’t realise the extent of until the worst had passed, so keep in mind that this story has a slightly happier ending than most of my blogs!

    A Skin Thing

    I have never had particularly ‘good’ skin — that is to say since puberty I have always had some acne. But it was completely synced to my menstrual cycle and, while annoying, it was totally manageable. The only time it got a little out of hand was around exam periods, which was always perfect considering exams are nearly always rounded off with a prom or a summer ball. But that was as bad as it got. When I was on the pill in the past I noticed changes but never anything drastic, other than that it was much better when I finally came off all hormonal birth control in 2015, by which point I was 20 and thought maybe I was just beginning to grow out of it.

    When I went back on the combined pill in February of this year I was prepared for a little skin turbulence. I knew that while things were settling it was likely to get worse, but I also knew that the general rule preached by my doctors and countless anecdotal stories was that my acne was likely to improve on the pill. At the time, it felt like the only silver lining of selling my pill-free self to the hormone gods.

    What I didn’t expect was that when things did eventually settle on the pill that my face would be taken hostage by what my doctors were by now calling “adult acne.” Oh good, not only am I spotty but I’m also out of the designated spotty age bracket!

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    The irony is that I took the “before” shot thinking “my skin is going to get so much better!” A classic case of you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone… 

    My GP immediately said, “that’s unusual, it usually gets better,” and my gynae said, “that shouldn’t happen.” We literally watched my face get worse and worse the longer I took the pill — it was like an accumulative allergic reaction. This was the only visual sign I had of my “improving” health, which didn’t make things feel all that improved — shocker! “If it’s not supposed to do this then surely it’s a sign that there is some kind of hormonal imbalance in my body?” I asked my doctors. They both agreed but said there was no point investigating it because “we know so little about hormones that even if an endocrinologist did spot an anomaly we wouldn’t know what to do with that data.” Which, while completely true, didn’t make me feel much better.

    Remember how a few months ago I said, “it’s a bummer but acne is something I am well-used to dealing with, and I’ll take it over pain any day“? I don’t necessarily take that back, but when your pain hardly improves and your acne just descends into total chaos it’s hard to take it on the chin (very literally). To add insult to injury, the blistering hot summer we just had meant that 30 million freckles also descended on my face (regardless of how much SPF I put on). I just felt and looked like a bit of a mess. No wonder I started taking Bookstagram so seriously, I was hardly likely to be posting summer selfies. In fact, I now realise that I was cutting my face out of Bookstagrams to hide the acne, case and point:

     

    (Remember kids, Instagram is a web of lies!)

    Funnily enough, this did not help my mood, which was already being tormented by raging mood swings and rampant PMS. I’m pretty good at hiding acne with makeup but it was so painful that I didn’t want to touch it. I like to think of myself as pretty skin-positive (I love everything Em Ford does for the movement!) but I really avoided leaving the house or wearing makeup unless I absolutely had to. Dyspareunia and vaginismus aren’t exactly conditions that make one feel particularly sexy, throw some angry acne into the mix and it understandable results in a slight crisis of confidence.

    However, I’m not beating myself up about that too much. I did eventually think, “stuff it, I don’t have to look at my face when I’m out, that’s the rest of the world’s problem.” But it’s not great when you do finally leave the house, spots-and-all, and are then bombarded with well-meaning people telling you to “drink more water” or “try this horrifically expensive product.” And when you dare say that you chug water by the gallon or that you can’t afford this particular product then somehow it becomes your own fault — you’re not trying hard enough and therefore you want your skin to be bad… Um, sod off?

    There’s no doubt in my mind that there are dietary changes and some products that genuinely help some kinds of acne. Hell, I’ve tried lots of them, but given how quickly and aggressively this came on it felt so obvious to me, and my doctors, that it was hormonal. Personally, changes to my diet have never made a difference to my skin, but I think acne is nearly always a case-by-case, individual issue and unsolicited advice about it, for me at least, is always unwanted.

    A little bit of this and a little bit of that…

    As promised this story has a happy-ish ending. My GP and gynae both suggested that the pill was more likely to reduce my pain if I skipped periods. This meant I would take two or three pill packets back-to-back without a withdrawal bleed. When I eventually gave it a try my mood improved in a matter of days and everything else followed. I had no idea it would make such a big difference but it really did. Around this time I also started using prescribed Adapalene gel and taking Evening Primrose Oil. Whether it’s one of these treatments or a combination of all three, the last two+ months have seen a drastic improvement in my acne, mood and (fanfare please) pain! (Typically, three days after I penned this blog things got a little worse again, but overall things are definitely better!)

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    What now?

    It’s getting better as the scarring goes down and the further away I am from my last withdrawal bleed the better my skin is, but considering going on the pill was a last-resort solution for my pain, this skin journey doesn’t exactly feel like a triumph. The last few months have mostly been about treating problems that the pill caused. As mentioned, I have finally noticed an improvement in my pelvic pain but I would be lying if I said I don’t worry about what happens to that progress if and when I have sex or come off the pill. Long-term readers won’t be surprised to hear that staying on the pill for the rest of my ‘reproductive life’ isn’t my plan of choice.

    Why didn’t I want to write this blog? Because I didn’t want to start moaning about something else. So many of my friends have struggled with their skin for years, dealing with Roaccutane and its complications. Eight months of bad skin hardly feels worth complaining about in that respect. But I had no idea that the pill could have this effect — so that’s something I’m keen to share and leaving it out of these blogs felt a little dishonest.

    Love the skin you’re in, unless it bloody well hurts, in which case: seek medical intervention… Thanks for reading! 

  • Peaks and Falls #Periodically 22

    Peaks and Falls #Periodically 22

    You might have noticed in my last #Periodically that I wasn’t feeling too hot about my time on the pill so far. I’m happy to report that things are going much better, but this second pill pack hasn’t been without its fiascos. Before anyone gets scared, don’t worry, I do not plan on documenting every pill pack ever, cycle by cycle, but during the adjustment phase and partly for personal record, I want to document the changes I experience during the first three months.

    The Second Pill Pack

    I won’t lie, the start of this cycle and my first withdrawal bleed on the pill didn’t catch me at my most mentally stable. For moments, and I mean brief seconds, I repeatedly convinced myself that I was about to drop dead, which I’m sure you can appreciate, isn’t very nice. My PMS is undeniably worse on the pill and unusually for me this bout extended well into my period.

    After early signs suggesting the pill was going to improve my skin, this cycle proved that that is not the case, it has in fact got worse. It’s a bummer but acne is something I am well-used to dealing with, and I’ll take it over pain any day. A more positive facial change (this one feels like TMI but hey, sharing is caring) is that my “beard” has vanished without a trace. I say beard and mean like four hairs but it was one of the reasons my doctors suspected I had PCOS way back when. Now that it’s gone, I can only deduce that whatever was causing it was hormonal.

    My period itself was exactly the same except it was two days shorter. I guess that’s nice but it was the two good days at the end that were cut off so if we could switch the off-days around that’d be ace. As my period ended and I began to think about starting the next pack, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of normality that I was certain was because I had been off the pill for six days. I even began to get my writing groove back, so taking the pill again felt like I was poisoning myself. But I did, and once I started I wrote in my diary “feeling slightly better about the pill but not actually any better – confusing feeling” – I’ll say!

    So a few things, like my face, began to settle into new normal realities on the pill. My weight is up and my hair is being weird but my motivation and creativity didn’t slump like it did last month which I am so grateful for. In fact writing-wise, March has been a bit of a boom. I’ve started reviewing plays for AYoungerTheatre.com and I had an amazing response to the article about the Always Period Poverty campaign I wrote for Harpy. You can read it here. I’ve even had a couple of moments where I’ve tracked “euphoria” and “clarity” on Clue – there were a few days and mornings where I just felt really damn good for inexplicable reasons.

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    On reflection, these peaks might have been because the mood swings began. Maybe I missed that phase of puberty but I do not remember my mood ever swinging so literally. My sister was staying with us and wanted to have a bath and mentioned that she had scuffed-up my book (The Cows, come on Sally!) and I just flipped. I was sitting in a different room but my blood felt like molten lava and I wanted to hit something. Five minutes later I wanted to cry and another quarter of an hour later I was laughing at something and then it all happened again. I’ve always had grumpy days and sad days and happy days, but to swing so violently from mood to mood is new for me. When it finally settles I’m just left sitting on my bed like I’ve been bitten by a magical creature going “what’s happening to me?!” I was hoping this was just a phase too but they’re still rearing their heads regularly, so that’s a thing I’m trying to navigate.

    By this point I had finished three months on iron tablets and had a blood test to see if my anaemia was gone now. When I called to get the results, expecting the all-clear, I was told I needed to see my GP. “Piss it, what now?,” I thought. Disturbed by the mood swings, thoughts of spontaneous death and occasional “growing” pains in my legs I was looking forward to speaking to a doctor the next day. But then when I woke up, I couldn’t move. It was so bad that the first thing I remember thinking was “is today the day my ovary finally takes me to hospital?” Something in my right side had been bothering me all week, but on this particular morning it was stabbing me every time I so much as wiggled a toe. I called the doctor as planned and got an appointment with yet another new doc, this time a female Dr P. When I got there she told me that my iron levels were fine (yay no more horrible iron tablets!) but that she was worried by how much pain I was in. Given that it was my right side it was important to rule out appendicitis, which she did swiftly since I didn’t have a temperature. After she felt my belly up and read my file, she expressed concern that either a cyst on my ovary or the ovary itself, had “torted” – twisted.

    Not greatly comforted by that prognosis I sat while Dr P called the hospital and arranged for me to go straight to Gynaecology Emergency Unit (GEU). As my dad drove me I had a look through the files she had sent me with and took pictures of them – for the first time I was actually made privy to the inner goings on of my body and my doctors’ conversations – a rare treat. We got to the understandably rather scary and sad place that is the GEU and I was seen by a nurse who took my vitals, a gynaecologist who did a pelvic exam and another nurse who did some tests. Typically, by now whatever the pain was it had peaked and eased off and the gynae reasonably came to the conclusion that I was not at any great risk of emergency. The pelvic exam hurt, but not as much as it would have if a cyst or ovary had been twisted. She sent me home with an obscene amount of co-codamol and an appointment for an ultrasound in a few days.

    By the time the scan arrived I was feeling a lot better, without any help for the co-codamol which I didn’t take. I was relieved to be having the scan though because I was going skiing at the end of the week and was growing increasingly worried that if I fell over I was going to burst a cyst. Before I went to the scan I wrote my expectations on a post-it to make the inevitable easier to process. The post-it says “there will not be anything there. Good and healthy. Looks normal. No change”. I was right. The sonographer was really helpful and speculated that it was possible the sudden increase and then complete drop in pain I’d experienced was caused by a cyst rupturing or going away. The gynaecologist I then saw in the GEU afterwards was not as supportive or helpful. As far as she was aware, and I understand she had very little to go on, there were no cysts or any other indicator of a gynaecological problem, and so there was nothing a gynaecologist could do. I think the fact I still have an open case with my regular gynae made her words easier to swallow because even though she was saying ‘”nil gynae” case closed’, I knew the case was far from closed. I was once again told “that’s life,” “we rarely get to the root of these problems” and “try your bowels” – just like after the surgery. It was all horribly familiar but I took it much better this time. My mum was irritated by it too and fought it more than I did – thanks mum!

    Anyway, I was happy to have confirmation of a cyst-free uterus for the beginning of our mini ski break. I was nervous about it (as were insurance companies who took more money than normal, ugh) because about a year ago I stopped running as it was aggravating my pain. Since I refuse to pay to exercise when running is free, this has meant I’ve done nothing more than hiking and walking in the last ten months. If a cyst didn’t interrupt our ski trip, a heart attack might… I am so happy to say that three days of skiing were accompanied by absolutely no uterine or fitness induced pain – all injuries were purely skiing and ski-boot related!

    When I returned home an amalgamation of PMS, sciatica and post-holiday blues left me feeling pretty glum. Yet when I look back on March and the second round of the pill, I actually feel really hopeful. I’m working on the basis that I’m cyst-free for now because the pill is working. My pain levels haven’t come down drastically but there is a small improvement, and I’m confident it’s going to get even better. Now that I know I can ski I’m also filled with the hope that I can start running again soon, or doing something at least, because the pill/croissant combo has done nothing for me on the scales… Plus, if it does all get better on the pill then it will prove that the cause is gynaecological –  that would be a really satisfying up-yours to the doctors who have said “nil gynae”. I just hope that if the pill is the solution, that I can get a grip on these mood swings soon.

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    Hilary – 1, Ovaries – 0 (Ski boots – 2)