There are a number of reasons why women experience pain or discomfort “down there.” Some of the reasons are common and harmless, others are ways of your body trying to tell you that there is something bigger going on. If you are suffering from uterine, abdominal, or vaginal pain then click on the resources below for answers to your common questions.
Painful Periods: Most women experience pain and cramping at some point during their periods. For some though, that pain can be debilitating. Sometimes controlling your period can help control your pain through medications or surgery. Once you have had an appropriate evaluation, and we are sure there is nothing physically wrong, you have the option to choose how to manage your pain. You may choose to do nothing or you can try a variety of options to help minimize or eliminate your pain.
Heavy periods can be more painful. In addition, if the bleeding is heavy then you may become anemic. A low blood count is a reason to do something. If you elect to do nothing then you will need yearly evaluation until the bleeding eventually stops when you go into menopause. The average age of menopause is 51.
Fibroids: Fibroids are noncancerous tumors like growths that form inside the uterus. They generally appear during childbearing years and decease around menopause. Fibroids can be very painful and cause extra bleeding so in some cases a woman may choose to have them removed. If medicine is not an option to manage your fibroids, there are several surgical options including non-invasive, minimally invasive and regular invasive operations. Fibroids are not necessarily dangerous. They can be left alone if a patient prefers. We would only remove the fibroids because of symptoms/problems that they may cause.
Chronic Pelvic Pain: CPP is different from painful periods, or painful ovulation, or some monthly-type pain. CPP is NOT pain on intercourse. The diagnosis of CPP is made only after appropriate trials of oral contraceptives and/or Depo Provera, after leuprolide acetate, and in some cases laparoscopy. When the pain does NOT respond to any of those interventions, the diagnosis may be Chronic Pelvic Pain.
Treating Vaginal Pain: Many women report pain in the vagina. It is typically “outside” pain, mainly located where the moist tissue of the vagina meets the dry skin right around the opening. The pain may begin as a yeast infection. Yeast medicine may, or may not help the pain. In any case, the yeast infection comes back, and it comes back often. Sometimes a woman is treated for multiple urinary tract infections. The infections are diagnosed based on painful urination, and her doctor may call in antibiotics, regularly. And for some reason the pain with urination comes back, often. The pain continues to come and go, but it always seems to come back, and it never really gets much better, no matter what medicine is used.
Pain with Sex: Many women report pain in the vagina. It is typically “outside” pain, mainly located where the moist tissue of the vagina meets the dry skin right around the opening. The pain may begin as a yeast infection. Yeast medicine may, or may not help the pain. In any case, the yeast infection comes back, and it comes back often. Sometimes a woman is treated for multiple urinary tract infections. The infections are diagnosed based on painful urination, and her doctor may call in antibiotics, regularly. And for some reason the pain with urination comes back, often. The pain continues to come and go, but it always seems to come back, and it never really gets much better, no matter what medicine is used. A woman may have pain with intercourse. The pain is not really “inside pain,” rather it is pain with insertion of the penis into the vagina. She may have similar pain at other times too. Certain underwear or tight clothes can give her pain or itching. Again, the itching is often treated with yeast medicine, but the itching keeps coming back. Vaginal pain, itching, pain with intercourse, frequent yeast infections which don’t get better with yeast medicine, and frequent urinary tract infections treated with antibiotics… these are all symptoms of a pain problem called vulvodynia.
