I Broke My Vagina

A Warning From My Vagina

The last thing I ever thought I’d want to write about was my vagina.

And yet, here we are.

She’s somehow still making everything about herself. I haven’t named her, but lately I’ve become a lot more forthcoming with the vag jokes in doctor’s offices, which is either personal growth or a cry for help. Possibly both.

I should probably start by saying this is not the sort of book I imagined writing. I write fiction. I like making things up because I am an introvert who prefers other people’s drama, like the drama of the crew on Below Deck. I like problems that can be solved with plot twists, questionable romantic decisions, or, depending on the genre, a vampire with boundary issues.

So if you’re here because you need a brief timeout from dark romance, fantasy kingdoms, billionaire CEOs, possessive werewolves, shadow daddies, and morally grey vampires who are somehow six hundred years old and still look twenty-five, welcome.

This book has none of those things. There is no chosen one, no mate bond, no supernatural prophecy, and no mysterious billionaire arriving to solve my problems. There is just me, an increasingly irritated vagina, and a healthcare system that occasionally felt like it was making things up as it went.

Unfortunately, this was not fiction. This was my actual life.

It also needs to be said early that I am not a doctor. I am not a medical professional, microbiologist, gynaecologist, dermatologist, pharmacist, naturopath, or anyone whose advice you should follow about your body. This is not medical advice. Nothing in this book is a treatment plan, recommendation, diagnosis, or invitation to put pantry items anywhere near your genitals.

This is simply my experience, and honestly, publishing it feels vulnerable.

Even Inkitt’s categories don’t really know what to do with this book. It’s not romance. It’s not fantasy. It’s not a tragic illness memoir. It’s not exactly health and wellness either, unless your idea of wellness includes crying in GP offices and Googling vulvar symptoms at midnight.

But I’m an Inkitt author, and this is where I want to share my story. Maybe only a few women will find it, and that’s okay. If even one of them reads this and feels less alone, asks another question, pushes for another opinion, or realises that “just wait and see” is not always enough when something feels wrong, then I’ll take the awkwardness.

Nobody dies. Nothing here is terminal. This is not a tragic illness memoir where I stare meaningfully out a window while everyone learns life lessons.

It is, however, the story of how irritation turned into two years of doctors, specialists, misdiagnoses, chronic infections, allergic reactions, Reddit rabbit holes, dietary experiments, probiotics, pathology tests, medical bills, and an amount of vaginal self-education I did not consent to.

I now know things about vulvas, fungi, microbiomes, steroid creams, pH, probiotics, dermatitis and vaginal skin that I sincerely wish I did not know. This is not a skill I asked for. No careers adviser at school ever said, “Have you considered becoming the project manager of your own irritated labia?”

And yet here I am.

The strangest part is that before this happened to me, I had no idea how hard it was to talk about. Women will talk about a lot of things. Periods. Birth control. Pregnancy scares. UTIs if we’re feeling emotionally brave and the table has had at least one glass of wine.

But a long-term vaginal issue? That kills a conversation.

How do you bring that up casually? “Anyway, enough about work. My labia has been angry for eighteen months, and I’m starting to lose the will to live.”

You don’t.

So you sit there nodding along while everyone talks about holidays, renovations and Pilates, quietly wondering if anyone else at the table has spent their evening Googling whether vulvas are meant to look like that.

The funny thing is, whenever I did tell women, properly tell them, something shifted. They leaned in, lowered their voices, and then came the word.

Actually.

Actually, I had something like that once. Actually, I saw three doctors before anyone listened. Actually, I thought I was going mad. Actually, I never told anyone.

The more I opened the door, the more women stepped through it.

One of the most useful conversations I had in the whole disaster happened during an iron infusion, which had absolutely nothing to do with my vagina. For once, she had not been invited.

Then the nurse looked at my file, paused, and looked at me.

“Do you have a chronic infection?”

Now, this was not relevant to the iron infusion. It was nosy. Technically, very nosy. But by that stage I had explained my vagina to so many medical professionals that privacy had become more of a concept than a lifestyle.

So I said yes.

And she said, “Me too.”

Just like that, two women in a clinic, casually acknowledging that our vaginas had betrayed us.

And honestly, it helped.

Because the thing nobody tells you about a chronic intimate health issue is that the symptoms are only part of it. The other part is the loneliness, the cost, the appointments, and the way you start to question yourself because, surely, if something were really wrong, someone would have fixed it by now.

Except that is not always how it works.

Sometimes you get misdiagnosed. Sometimes you get fobbed off. Sometimes you get told everything looks normal when your body is screaming otherwise. Sometimes the treatment makes things worse. And sometimes you end up on the internet at midnight reading Reddit posts from women all over the world, whispering “oh my God, same” into the void like a lunatic with a sore vagina and no better options.

So this is my warning. Not medical advice. God, no.

This is just my story. A funny one, hopefully. A useful one, maybe. A deeply inappropriate one, definitely.

And if you are here because the title made you stop scrolling and think, “Sorry, what?” then welcome.

I get it.

That was also my reaction to my life.

Let’s talk about how I broke my vagina.