So I am in the bath sitting there looking at my naked belly and there's this weird thing that you know how you look down on your body and it looks larger than it is. The "rolls" looked massive to me and I am thinking how did I get to this and why won't it just go away? I agree with myself to spend a few minutes in the mirror before I get dressed. I pulled the wardrobe mirror out of my guest bedroom, propped it down on the floor against the wall outside the bathroom (I'm too lazy to close the blinds, I'd rather take down the mirror!).
My reaction is more pleasant this time. I am not as large as I perceive in the bath. That makes me feel better because for me in my job, I need to be in good physical shape. Unfortunately, my job is very stressful and has caused a 7 lb weight gain over the last year. I work out most days and I've been pretty smitten with running right now. Five miles at a time is my workout of choice.
I'm thinking about what I want for my future and I do think that I want to be in a relationship eventually here but right now I have too many things in the air to fully give it the appropriate attention. Regardless, I want to be dilated and not have to think about that. It's just one more thing that haunts me when I start dating. It's not the drive to have sex, it's not having the option to do it very comfortably that's most disturbing. I do tend to explain the MRKH stuff before sex and I am very slow to move to that level of physicality.
Britney Spears "Work Bitch" is the song for tonight. My neighbor tells me that it reminds him of me, the words, not Britney.
I've recently learned about MRKH syndrome from reading a young lady's story in an article. My heart went out to her and goes out to women that is born with this physical condition. So I joined a group that supports women with MRKH. And as I read a young woman's story this morning something she shared peeked my curiosity. She wrote she must use a method of dilation. Given that I was once a back office assistance to a prominent OB/GYN, we never treated a woman with MRKH; therefore, her medical advise, again, peeked my curiosity from a medical point of view. As a result I started surfing the net for answers and that is when I stumbled across your blog. The process is still not clear to me but I'm sure overtime I will understand it as I continue to learn about MRKH. Wishing you all the best. --Annette
ReplyDeleteHi Annette,
DeleteThanks for your comments. Basically, MRKH gils are born with missing vaginas (and often some skeletal, kidney, and other anomalies). MRKH can be "solved" through several methods.
1. Dilation. You put dilators of increasing size in the location of where your vagina should be and just make it. Believe it or not, it lubricates and acts like a vagina you were born with. The challenges are getting depth after so far (at least for me) and even wanting to do it and maintain it. Guys don't know the difference between dilated girls and other women born with a vagina.
2. McIndoe procedure. They take this piece of skin off your thigh, wrap it around a dilator and somehow surgically insert it in you. I have heard this procedure takes a week of hospital time. The dilators are still needed in the end to maintain the vagina. I have not talked to anyone who has done this.
3. Thomas Lyon's neovagina work. This is a new procedure that I don't know a lot about but it sounds like it is supposed to be more successful than dilation and better than the McIndoe procedure.
Maintenance of the vagina is done via sex or dilation. No way around that one.
It doesn't surprise me that you never heard of MRKH. My original OB had no clue what it was either and said some pretty insensitive stuff. I have lucked out on my most recent one because she trained with the doctor who actually treated me. I'm glad you know about us now...spread the word so that we're not such a hidden group. :)
There is another procedure that they use the buccal mucosa (the skin inside your mouth on the inside of your cheeks) and use it in a similar way as the McIndoe procedure. The mucosa skin has natural moisture and is said to work better than other skin. It also requires a week in the hospital.
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