Disclaimers:

I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice, this is only a story of what I did. Always consult a healthcare professional for your healthcare needs.

The 7 Steps to Heal:

1. Open Mind and Willingness to do Whatever it Takes
2. Products Effect your V- Cleaning Products, Shower, Makeup, Condoms, Etc.
3. Prayer
4. Diet Changes and Testing to Determine the Best Diet for You
5. Sleep
6. Beverages
7. Environment

My pain is 98% healed. I consider myself healed, as my vulvodynia used to cause me agony every day, harming my relationships, self image, ability to concentrate and work normally. I only feel a tiny twinge of pain here and there now. In those times, my pain is like a 1. If I break my protocol, I will typically feel more pain than that. My steps to healing are permanent, lifestyle changes. If I go back to the things that cause my V pain, my pain will start to come back. If I stick to my protocol, I live basically pain free. After I had completed paperwork with a new doctor recently, I realized that I totally forgot to list vulvodynia in my history or as a diagnosis. It’s so wonderful to forget this cursed illness, after years of suffering.

It took me 1.5 years to heal it, from start to finish. I felt some minor, but noticeable, relief in the first WEEK that I started my protocol. I have been healed for almost a year and a half since then.

As someone who was searching desperately to find relief from my pain, I feel I must share what finally helped me. If you have vulvodynia, my heart breaks for you. It’s a horrible condition, which not only brings all of the distress of a chronic pain condition, but also messes with our sense of wholeness as a woman.

I also want to share this, in case you see similar possible causes. I don’t know for sure what caused my vulvodynia, but I have some speculations. Please reach out and share which similar things maybe led to your diagnosis as well.

My Vulvodynia Symptoms (My diagnosis was “Vestibulitis,” specifically):

1. Painful sex- first it was painful, then eventually I was totally unable to have sex at all. Even having something “in there” without any movement was excruciating pain. I literally couldn’t do a pap smear at this time. (My one pap smear attempt was literally traumatizing, thanks to this one insensitive OBGYN.)
2. Greenish, yellowish, globby discharge started right when the pain started.
3. Dr. Marvel said that the area appeared red, which meant that it was probably not just nerve pain. He said that the nerve pain patients are harder to treat, and usually their V’s look normal. He said that he did NOT see splotches that would have indicated a skin disease, such as Lichen sclerosus.
4. Constant vaginal pain, at my worst. During the 8 months or so that my V was the worst, there was never a time when I didn’t feel at least minor pain in my V. I remember when I started to improve, and felt my first few minutes where I felt no pain.
5. My pain was worsened by:
   1. Not drinking excessive amounts of water regularly. At my worst, I could not make it more than a half hour without drinking at least 12 ounces of water. I had to drink water immediately after peeing, to try to get the pain to go away. I was drinking about 8 liters a day at one point. I had to drink so much sometimes, that I was having symptoms of over-hydration.
   2. Peeing made my way pain worse. It hurt really bad while peeing. It hurt really bad after I peed, sometimes punishing me for hours after. Drinking water afterwards was the only thing that helped the pain. If I didn’t wait until I was about to explode, then the peeing would cause so much more pain than the steady pain I was already in. In this game of holding my pee as long as I could, I did pee my pants a few times. I don’t think hardly anyone knows what it feels like to need to pee that badly. Heck, I don’t think anyone knows what it feels like to have this condition, but I digress..
   3. My pain got the worst in the evenings, leading up to bed. It also seemed to be the second worst in the morning. This was probably because the first pee of the day is usually less diluted. The pain typically calmed down once I was asleep. I figured out that I could drink exactly 8 gulps after peeing in the night, and this would be enough to calm my V enough to sleep without making me pee again soon.
   4. I could not sit on hard, wood chairs without being in agony. At work, I sat on a 2 blankets, folded on top of each other to make a cushion. I switched to a different chair than everyone else used, because it hurt my V less.
   5. Tight jeans and underwear hurt, so I wore jeans that were 2 sizes too big. I switched from sizes small/medium underwear to XL. Even leggings were too tight, so I wore loose sweat pants or pajama pants instead.
   6. Food did NOT seem to effect my pain at all. I didn’t notice at this point that any beauty or shower products seemed to effect my pain either. My pain was basically the same every day, it just got noticeably worse every few months.

My Story:

I got vulvodynia in December 2014. My first ever yeast infection had occurred 2 months before this. I had tried to treat this infection with over-the-counter Monistat vaginal cream. That didn’t work, so I got a one-time pill from the doctor, which worked. My symptoms had been mostly just intense itching. I think this was a basic yeast infection. Just as a side note, I got my first HPV shot around this time also.

2 months later, my vulvodynia symptoms came on so suddenly that I thought it was a UTI. Just a side note, I got my second HPV vaccination somewhere around this time. I went to the minute clinic, and did a urine test for a UTI. It came back positive for a UTI, per their test. I took the pills that they gave me for it. They did nothing. My pain continued. My vagina hurt when I peed or tried to have sex, and I had greenish, yellowish, heavier discharge.

I went to a urologist next, and they had me wipe my crotch with a wet wipe before doing the test. The tests all came back as normal. Weirdly enough, I also had super bad nausea the week right after I got vulvodynia. I had to miss two days of work because of the nausea. I was dizzy too, and it was mostly bad in the mornings. Also, I got vulvodynia on the second day of a brand new job. I had worked at that place for 3 months in the year before, but in a different department.

Anyways, they tested me for a yeast infection and everything else that they could think of. Everything came back normal. The pain continued. The one OBGYN said that I should try to get off of birth control. I tried that, and it only helped a tiny bit. I had been on Yaz birth control for about 2 years. Other solutions from OBGYNs included drinking a bunch of alcohol when I had sex so I wouldn’t know that I was in pain, and having a kid with the hope that childbirth would fix my vulvodynia. No thanks!

My pain stayed about the same and was manageable until I got off of an antibiotic (doxycycline) that I had been taking for acne for 6 months in 2016. At this point, my vulvodynia got way worse, and continued to get noticeably worse every few months. I was afraid that I would not be able to hold my job soon. This level of desperation brought me to the place where I was willing to try anything to stop the pain.

I went to two specialists who specialize in vaginal pain, specifically. They both tested me for everything they could possibly test a vagina for. The first specialist was Dr. Marvel in Maryland, and another was someone in Ohio (I can’t remember her name). I tried Dr. Marvel’s estrogen cream that contained other stuff in it to “kill an overgrowth of good bacteria in the vagina.” It made me bleed way too much, and made my pain worse for months after. I stopped it after a few days because the excessive blood loss was freaking me out.

Next, I googled how to heal vulvodynia, and found two women on youtube who had healed it naturally. I was open to anything and willing to do whatever it took to heal.

STEP 1: Willingness to do literally anything to stop the pain

This mindset is Step 1 to fully healing from vulvodynia. I truly believe that if a person is willing to try anything and everything, they will find their cure. I think that this requires:

1. An open mind- open to literally anything. If you told me that I had to drink my own urine to heal it, I would have done it.

2. You need to believe that if you write down every idea you ever hear for healing vulvodynia specifically or even major health issues in general, one of them will heal you or at least give you significant enough relief to function in life. I joined Vulvodynia facebook groups, searched google for people’s V healing stories, and watched YouTube videos about how to heal the body naturally. I wrote a list of every single thing that a person claimed gave them healing. I had a separate list of things that just gave people “some relief.” Those were last resorts, because I wanted total healing.

I then organized the healing ideas by the ones that seemed the least risky and that had worked for multiple people. I wrote down doctors’ names, clinic names, prescriptions, supplement names and brands, etc. Surgery was at the very end of my list, my absolute last resort.

The protocol that worked for me might not work for you. That is why this mentality is so crucial for your healing, because then you will have the drive to try whatever it takes to get your relief.

The least risky thing that seemed to have worked for multiple people was an all natural approach. I found 3 women who said that they had healed in this way from vulvodynia. One of them also had hormone issues, which was healed by a specific diet. So I changed my diet, which will be covered later…