Vaginal symptoms nobody mentions in either conversation

Started 13 November 2024 · 24 replies · 271 hearts · read 3.4k times

HannahSheffield, UK · 13 November 2024

1.7 years ago

Something I have been sitting with: Vaginal symptoms nobody mentions in either conversation Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

Some background first, because it matters for the question.

Nobody in my life has this combination and I have never met anybody who does, which is most of why I am writing it here.

I have brought this up at two appointments and been reassured both times without anybody actually looking at it, which is why I want to go in better prepared.

Any experience from somebody with the same combination would be worth a great deal to me.

HollyBath, UK

What helped was writing everything down and then reviewing it with somebody who knew about both, because separately neither clinician could see the pattern.

LeniLeipzig, DE

My sleep, my mood and my appetite all changed in the same six months and I attributed all of it to the wrong cause for a while.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

Gently: a test that comes up often in this circle is worth asking about, and not one of us can say whether it is right for you. That is the line and it does not move.

NyreeChristchurch, NZ

The hot flushes were unrelated in my case, as it turned out, and finding that out took a specialist appointment and a lot of patience.

GwynforLlanidloes, UK

Ada said something I want to sit with for a second.

Something I did not expect was how much the strength side mattered at this stage. Two sessions a week has done more for how I feel than anything else.

6me too 5

CoralieMarseille, FR

My bone health conversation happened because I asked for it, not because it was offered, and I would encourage anybody here to ask.

FenellaCirencester, UK

What I found is that the general advice is written for a body ten years younger, and adapting it took a dietitian who understood the stage I am at.

AbramAmsterdam, NL

Building on what Coralie wrote rather than answering the original question.

I had a period of very poor sleep that I assumed was one thing, and it was the other, and correcting it made everything else more manageable.

LlianCarmarthen, UK

The mood side was the hardest for me to talk about because I did not want it attributed to the obvious thing before anybody looked properly.

Birdie BWhitstable, UK

#10

Reading Fenella, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Mine has settled into something workable over about eighteen months, with a lot of small adjustments and one significant conversation.

10me too 1

BettinaGraz, AT

#11

Building on what Llian wrote rather than answering the original question.

Three things happening at once and no way to tell which was doing what. That was my whole first year and I know I am not alone in it.

8me too 8

WellsChester, UK

#12

No advice, only that you are not the only one who found this part hard.

HalCambridge, UK

#13

My records were spread across three services and putting them in one document myself made every appointment since more productive.

MarnieAyr, UK

#14

What surprised me was how much of my long-standing experience of hunger changed, and how much of it I had assumed was simply my character.

HannahSheffield, UK

#15

Mine required patience more than anything else. Nothing was quick, everything took a season, and it has all landed somewhere good.

HollyBath, UK

#16

Picking up Marnie’s point rather than starting a new one.

I would say the strength work is the thing I would not give up. Everything else has been adjusted at some point; that has been constant.

12me too 4

LeniLeipzig, DE

#17

Reading Marnie, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Nothing here is medical advice, and this is a subject where the interactions really do need somebody qualified looking at the whole of you.

BirdieMargate, UK

#18

What I did not anticipate was how much better I would feel once somebody simply acknowledged that three things at once is genuinely complicated.

NyreeChristchurch, NZ

#19

Same here, and I am glad you said it first.

GwynforLlanidloes, UK

#20

Picking up Nyree’s point rather than starting a new one.

Something practical: I keep two columns in my notes so that each thing gets recorded against its own story rather than in one undifferentiated list.

CoralieMarseille, FR

#21

The night sweats and the sleep disruption were the things that wore me down, and neither of them was the thing I had gone in about.

FenellaCirencester, UK

#22

This is the honest version, and the honest version is harder to write.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

#23

Speaking as a facilitator: asking what the clinician would want to see next time turns a review into a plan, and several people here have found that.

LlianCarmarthen, UK

#24

I found this circle because I could not find anybody talking about both at once, and it is still the only place I have found where people do.

7me too 5