My vagina fell out of my body
Reckt O. Sel
Woman's Health Horror: 'My Vagina Fell Out'
(Nov. 6) -- Allison Henry isn't the first to suffer from a horrifying
medical condition that few women talk about. But her case was particularly
bad, and she's just one of the few brave souls willing to come forward so
that others will have the courage to seek help.
To put it bluntly, as Henry does: "My vagina fell out of my body."
The 39-year-old school psychologist from Kenmore, Wash., suffered from a
rare combination of disorders that began when she was pregnant with her
son, Kirian, and she writes an amazing account of her bizarre medical
condition on MomLogic.com.
"I know it sounds like a science fiction movie," she told Sphere.com.
"Every time I retell this story, I still tell myself, 'I can't believe this
happened to me.'"
It began five years ago, when Henry was in her 10th week of pregnancy with
Kirian, her second child. She had vowed that she wouldn't gain 60 pounds
this time around, and she was practicing prenatal yoga in her home when she
felt a sudden pain.
"It felt like someone rammed a pitchfork up my butt, so I stopped," she
writes. "It was an intense, sharp paint, but it passed."
Later that day, while giving her daughter lunch, she ran to the bathroom,
thinking she had to urinate, and found blood gushing instead. "It was the
biggest scare of my life," she writes.
Her OB/GYN couldn't figure out what was wrong, and she kept bleeding. "I'd
bleed through a maxi pad in 30 minutes," she says.
In her 25th week, she was put on bed rest in the hospital, where she stayed
for three weeks. When she finally went home, she started bleeding again and
had to go back.
"My husband and I were so worried," she says. "My son was born 6 1/2 weeks
early. Thank God, he's OK now."
Doctors found that she had developed a hematoma outside her placenta, and
they thought that was the root of her problem.
In fact, her problems were just beginning.
'My Insides Were on the Outside'
"One day in the bathroom, I felt something kind of strange when I was
wiping," she writes. "There wasn't really a hole there -- it felt kind of
flat. I thought it was a little weird, but I had a 19-month-old and a
newborn to care for, so I brushed it off. I wasn't bleeding, I wasn't in
pain, so I didn't address it."
What Henry was describing was the beginning of a vaginal prolapse, a
condition in which the vagina, uterus, rectum, bladder, urethra and small
intestine shift and -- in severe cases -- innards may protrude from the
body.
"Women will suffer for years and not tell anyone," says Dr. Suzanne
Gilberg-Lenz, a gynecologist in Los Angeles. "They'd rather tell their
doctor they have a sexually transmitted disease than say that something is
hanging out of them."
"Allison Henry clearly had an extraordinary, horrible case," the doctor
says. "But it's widely estimated that 30 percent of women or more suffer
some degree of prolapse in their lifetime."
Instead of dealing with her health problem, Henry turned her attention to
raising her children. She also had to have an appendectomy, which consumed
much of her time over the next year.
Still, each time she went to the bathroom, she noticed her problem was
getting worse.
"One night, I took a look down there, and it was like my insides were on
the outside and they were coming out," she writes. "I knew I couldn't put
this off any longer. I went to my doctor and said, 'My vagina is falling
out of my body!'
"I was referred to a pelvic floor specialist. She took a look and said,
'Holy crap -- your vagina is falling out of your body, and it's dragging
your bladder and your rectum along with it!'"
In addition to a uterine prolapse, Henry also suffered rectocele -- a
condition wherein the rectum pushes into the back walls of the vagina.
"That explained why I had been constipated for months," she says.
Henry also suffered from cystocele, a condition similar to rectocele, only
with the bladder.
While the normal uterus is 8 to 11 centimeters inside the vagina, hers was
only 3 centimeters up, and when she was standing, it was sticking out at
least 5 centimeters.
After confronting the problem, Henry was able to undergo a series of
surgeries to restore her vagina, untwist her bladder, and push her rectum
back into place.
"On top of this, I had a labia reduction, which was brutal," she writes.
"All of 'Dr. 90210's' patients who say it doesn't hurt are lying. I'd
rather get my teeth pulled out than do that again!"
Stable Mable Regains Her Humor
Her road to recovery has not been easy. At one point, she lost 30 pounds
and had to return to the hospital several times to deal with complications.
"I had always been a healthy person, nothing so much as a yuckie pimple
when I was growing up," she says. "And then, I was incapacitated for
several weeks, many times.
"Among my friends, I was always the stable Mable," she says. "'I eventually
started taking anti-depressants to cope with the chronic stress and I
became so emotionally depleted."
Henry credits her husband for pulling her through. "He is the kind of man
who doesn't need to be asked to do something," she says. "He just does it.
It helps a lot that he was working at home most of the time this was going
on."
It's now a year and a half since her last stay in the hospital, and Henry
came forward to tell her story because she wants women to seek help if they
have to face what she has gone through.
Uterine prolapse is most common in women following following menopause,
childbirth or a hysterectomy, according to eMedicineHealth.com.
"Once I got past being mortified, I tried to keep my sense of humor. I can
laugh about a lot of this now," she says. "But I also know what it means to
not have your health."
