“In Vagina Problems…Lara Parker unpacks the personal and economic costs of endometriosis.” –Vanity Fair “A refreshingly honest read about living with chronic pain.” –Hello Giggles With unflinching honesty, Lara Parker, the Deputy Director for BuzzFeed, shares her day-to-day challenges of living, working, and loving with chronic pain caused by endometriosis in this raw, darkly humorous, and … endometriosis in this raw, darkly humorous, and hopeful memoir.
I wasn’t ready to be completely honest about my vagina yet, and the world wasn’t ready for that either. But I was getting there. I wanted the world to know that all of this pain I had been feeling…that it was related to my vagina. Thus, Vagina Problems was born. It was a cutesy name. It was my way of taking this pain and saying, “Whatever. I’m here. I have it. It sucks. Let’s talk about it.”
In April 2014, Deputy Editorial Director at BuzzFeed Lara Parker opened up to the world in an article on the website: she suffers from endometriosis. And beyond that? She let the whole world know that she wasn’t having any sex, as sex was excruciatingly painful. Less than a year before, she received not only the diagnosis of endometriosis, but also a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction, vulvodynia, vaginismus, and vulvar vestibulitis. Combined, these debilitating conditions have wreaked havoc on her life, causing excruciating pain throughout her body since she was fourteen years old. These are her Vagina Problems.
It was five years before Lara learned what was happening to her body. Five years of doctors insisting she just had “bad period cramps,” or implying her pain was psychological. Shamed and stigmatized, Lara fought back against a medical community biased against women and discovered that the ignorance of many doctors about women’s anatomy was damaging more than just her own life. One in ten women have endometriosis and it takes an average of seven years before they receive an accurate diagnosis–or any relief from this incurable illness’ chronic pain.
With candid revelations about her vaginal physical therapy, dating as a straight woman without penetrative sex, coping with painful seizures while at the office, diet and wardrobe malfunctions when your vagina hurts all the time, and the depression and anxiety of feeling unloved, Lara tackles it all in Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics with courage, wit, love, and a determination to live her best life.
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Vagina Problems is the real story of Lara Parker, a life that has been surrounded by pain and Doctors who kept telling her lies and misguided her on what to do or how to feel better if that’s something that actually exists.
Vagina Problems, a very eye-opener book, not only do we see ourselves in every page and story Lara wrote about, but also we identify so much on how usually Doctors don’t have any clue about our bodies, the female body, and how they usually throw diagnoses at us that are so wrong just to get rid of us or try to convince us that all our symptoms are in our head.
I identify so much with Lara story, It will never compare to what she went through or what she still going thought, as my story is very different but I’ve been in that chair many, many, times When a Doctor wants to impose his will and diagnose to you no matter what you said he will try to convince you to do or believe everything he says. When they try to convince you that you need a catheter for chemo when they don’t even know if you will even need it, or when they are trying to do major surgery on your intestines because they assure you, you’re in danger when is all lies and you don’t even need the surgery, they just want the money and to get rid of you because they dont have an answer or your clue to what is happening with your body.
Vagina Problems is the story of a misdiagnose of a bunch of doctors who didn’t know what to do and keep lying and misdiagnosing Laura over and over again, she even had a surgery that it wasn’t even necessary, she tells us how all these terrible misdiagnoses hurt her immensely, how the Doctors never took her seriously and keep making up excuses. I felt angry many times reading how they treat her, how they constantly dismissed her. How hard she fought without any help because people could never understand what she was going through. I feel her and I’m sure many of us will feel her and understand her perfectly.
Vagina Problems show us how clueless the medicine world is about us, about the women’s body, how in the medical industry we’re still being discriminated and constantly try to lies to us when they want to make excuses for their lack of knowledge.
I really wish Lara had a different ending, I wish someone in the world could help her, she has been through so much, I wish I knew her so I could tell her to have a soul retrieval.
Thank you Laura for being a warrior and a fighter in a man’s world.
Repetitive and not really all that informative
I had hoped to learn something from Lara Parker’s book that could help me understand how to handle some of the pain issues I’ve been facing for a few years. I did not find any answers here, and I found the narrative overly repetitive, depressing, and pretty well summed up in a few lines.
-Yes, she has pain that took a long time to diagnose and will not go away.
-No, she is not less worthy of love because of her pain.
-No, others who don’t experience it will probably never understand how the pain dominates your life.
-No, she is not alone in her symptoms.
-Yes, the medical profession should do more to recognize and find mitigation therapies or cures for medical conditions that only affect women.
– Yes, living with vaginal problems presents tough challenges in forming and sustaining a relationship, but relationships are not just tough because of your pain.
The book is also heavily focused on the way the pain affects a woman’s sex life. A book recognizing the issue is a good thing BUT I feel this one was a bit of a circular rant heavily critical of “all the doctors she’d known before.” Knowing vaginal problems are common is important; I just wish there had been more light at the end of the tunnel.
Thanks to publisher St. Martin’s Griffin and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.