Natural Remedies Designed to Kill You
Last night some time after 1:00 a.m., I was sitting half naked in my bear-claw bath tub, shaking and rocking back and forth while the inside of my va-jay-jay experienced the worst burn I’ve ever felt besides the ring of fire during natural child birth. What a way to start off the new year, eh?
That is one natural yeast infection remedy that I will never try again.
I’ve mentioned before that yeast infections and I go way, way back, but I don’t think I’ve ever truly gone into detail.
Until now. (Dum dum duuuuuuum!)
I get more yeast infections a month than most humans probably get their entire life. For whatever reason, I’m horribly prone to them and always have been. Diet, herbal supplements, yogurt, voodoo, prayer, and just about every other natural remedy has never been able to rid my body of the infections completely. Battling an extreme amount of yeast is just a way of life for me.
When I was seven months pregnant with Julie, I had a yeast infection that got so out of control that I ended up in the hospital. Yeah, it was that bad. Thrush with breastfeeding was a given… nothing I did could keep it from happening.
My body is, apparently, the perfect environment to host yeast. Which is really disgusting when you think of it. Let’s not go into detail because it kind of grosses me out… and we all know that the last thing I need to do is obsess over how broken my vagina really is. Once I get started, my mind blows it out of proportion and I’ll end up babbling about the demons in my hoo-haw on the streets of downtown Seattle.
So anyway, when I went to my new midwife/naturopathic doctor for my annual pap smear last month and she discovered at first glance that (*gasp*) I clearly had a yeast infection, I asked if there was a remedy other than Monistat that I ought to try to get rid of it. If I use the over-the-counter medications too often, they stop working, so I try to use them only when my infections are at their worst.
She recommended a number of things and we settled on one that I hadn’t yet tried… these natural suppositories that are supposed to be used only once a week along with a vinegar douche 12-24 hours after insertion. Now, I’ve never done a douche before because I always learned that the vagina is a self-cleansing organ, and douching disrupts the natural balance of blah blah blah… but whatever. At this point, I’ll try darned well near anything. So I bought the bottle of vaginal suppositories and finally got the nerve to try it out last night to attempt to fight the bad case of burning and itching that was doomed to keep me awake.
Insertion was easy enough. Just stuck it up there like one of those OB tampons that I had to use while I was in Europe. At first, nothing. I went to bed.
About five minutes later, steam and fire spurted out of every orifice on my body. My vagina was burning… and not in a good baby-I-need-to-fuck-you sort of way. When I say it was burning, I mean I was ready to call the firetruck to come save me.
I spent the next hour sweating and shaking while my hoo-haw screamed in agony. I tried shoving a garlic clove up there to neutralize the burn. Tried wiping the homeopathic remedy out as well as I could. Sat in tub of warm water. Nothing could get rid of the burn, and I was ready to scoot my ass across the floor like a dog and howl at the moon when finally, finally, the pain began to slowly subside.
Needless to say, I woke up with a stiff neck to accompany the bizarre, tea-tree-oil-smelling discharge falling out of the southern end of my body. And I am unsure whether I actually survived last night’s horrific agony, or if this is the ghost of Tamra typing this morning’s entry to forever haunt my blog readers.
Holy crap, just the memory of the pain is making me sweat. If yeast can survive those sort of extreme conditions, then so be it. I surrender.
Current Mood:
Alarmed
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:37 pm
um… ouch. i’m lucky enough not to have yeast issues (ever) but i am extremely susceptible to UTIs. luckily, there’s not much for me to try other than cranberry pills on a regular basis, and trying to cut out the sugar while drinking massive amounts of water. having a vagina is such a pain in the twat. you have my sympathies.
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Ouch, sorry you had to go through that. Nobody, your last line made me giggle. Thanks, I’m bored…
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:48 pm
While I can’t begin to imagine all the pain and burning, I have to ask, did it work?
January 2nd, 2010 at 7:10 pm
I feel your pain…I really do. While I’ve never been hospitalized for one, I’ve had them bad, bad, bad. I had bleeding when pg with my daughter and the ER doc said “you might have some yeast” and the next morning at my OB’s, the nurse said “he said might? Really? I’m not even gonna do the test, I can see it!” Yeah…thanks idiot ER doc! And the o.t.c. crap? Yeah, never works for me and a prescription that I’m gonna end up with is cheaper anyway!
BTW – I thought this was supposed to be our year? What’s the deal?!
January 2nd, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Ouch! I’ve never had a yeast infection before but that sounds awful.
January 2nd, 2010 at 8:31 pm
LMAO Sally… um… I’ll let you know once I can feel my hoo-haw again!
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:52 pm
You might want to check out a book called, “The Yeast Connection and the Woman.” Have you ever done a candida diet? Might be worth a look.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:46 pm
I’m sorry you were in pain and I hope by the time you read this that you are all healed and better….
But this gave me a good solid laugh.
I know I’m a shitty friend for laughing at your pain…but it wasn’t really your pain I was laughing at…it was the HILARIOUS way you describe it!
Feel better!
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:07 pm
LMAO… That’s okay
. I love making people laugh… and I was laughing at myself while I wrote it!
January 3rd, 2010 at 5:28 am
I am like you when it comes to be unavoidably a yeast target. When I just can’t shake it and nothing works the only thing that will is Diflucan. I have to get them to give me two pills for an initial dosage then one pill a week later for good measure. I am sorry you went through that torture. It sounds like something I would only wish on my enemies.
January 3rd, 2010 at 5:38 am
All I can say is I’m so glad I’ve only ever had one. It was the result of being given the wrong antibiotic for a UTI. Luckily it went a way and never went back.
January 3rd, 2010 at 5:39 am
Ah I’m sorry! I didn’t get them that often until lately.. I had one about 3 weeks ago and I think it’s coming back. Lovely. Try the 7 day treatment, I forgot what it’s called but it starts with Clotrim (get the 1%)… they sell it at walgreens. Monistat doesn’t work for me.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
So sorry you had to go through that. I once used a store brand monistat and was in the bathtub screaming as my skin was literally peeling off! Talk about you get what you pay for!