I sat in front of the Pelvic Floor Physiotherapist for the first time in her downtown Toronto office. It was a sterile, clinic room with a lamp in the corner that I’m sure she brought from home in an attempt to make the room more comforting. We covered the bases of pelvic floor dysfunction, pain with sex and urinary pain. We had only been talking for a few minutes when she said the words, “I think you have Dyspareunia.” 

“Dyspareunia? What is that?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

After ten years of misdiagnoses, begging doctors to send me to specialists, unbearable pain and rounds upon rounds of unnecessary antibiotics that no doubt impacted my overall health, there was finally a word for the thing I had been experiencing since my late teens.

She went on to reflect back to me all of the symptoms that my 18-year-old to current 28-year-old self-experienced: chronic bladder inflammation and irritation, pain during intercourse, tension, and stabbing pain after intercourse. She went on to explain to me that Dyspareunia can be caused by a number of factors including bowel issues such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (check); pelvic floor dysfunction (check); chronic UTIs (triple check); and even a bladder condition called Interstitial Cystitis (apparently, quadruple check). 

Checks out, sometimes the pain after sex was so bad I couldn’t get up to walk to the bathroom. My periods came with debilitating internal and external aches and pains. I would spend days on the couch with a hot water bottle over my lower abdomen, hoping that the heat would ease the pain.

Then, there it  was. After a decade of searching for answers, a decade of crippling pain, a decade of anxiety around intimacy so severe that it affected my relationships, I finally had an answer. 

When I left her office, a sheet of homework and breathing exercises folded and tucked under my arm, I thought of all the money I had spent over the last ten years searching for relief. I thought of all the moments sitting in front of various doctors, crying, asking for help. Suddenly, the indignity of the experience – the medical gaslighting and mistreatment – hit me like a ton of bricks. I decided I needed to go home, review my homework and learn everything I could about this little-known condition.

Dyspareunia, it turns out, is not that common – affecting only 3% to 18% of people assigned female at birth (NCIB, 2023). Lucky me! Apparently my new-found condition was also easy to misdiagnose because it resembles a myriad of other pelvic and uterine conditions – from endometriosis to vaginismus. It was also easy to miss because women’s pain is so frequently dismissed. But now I had an answer and a plan.

Over the course of the following year, a few key therapies helped keep my symptoms and flare-ups at bay. I tried everything – from reducing spicy foods to castor oil packs and massage wands. But once I found the ones that worked for my body, I began to do them religiously.

Here’s what worked for me:

• Consistent Pelvic Physiotherapy appointments – working with a trusted physiotherapist helped me feel into my pelvic floor.
• Using castor oil packs and heat therapy (much like the Better Cycle Kit) for pain and inflammation management.
• Using pelvic floor wands for perineal massage on an almost daily basis. 
• Simple manual internal massages – my partner even helped me with these.
• Breathing exercises for pelvic floor tension. 
• More comfortable sex practices – sometimes that means using a buffer ring like an Oh Nut.  

Now when I approach my pelvic physiotherapy appointments, I have far less anxiety and am armed with more knowledge and information on how to best comfort and serve my body. 

Amy Saunders is an SEO strategist and queer writer of poetry, prose, essays and branded content. Her work has been published in Chatelaine, VICE, TeenVogue,SheDoesTheCity and with brands such as DivaCup. She lives in the unceded and ancestral territory of Kjipuktuk with her husband and daughter.