Do you still find me attractive? I made a funny face at B. We were sitting on our click-clack wooden couch in the lounge room.
Of course, he replied and smiled. The three casement windows with bobbled glass let in a subdued light from the overcast day outside.
I pointed to my Hollywood boobs and said, Even with these?
B reflected for a minute then said, It’s different, I focus elsewhere now.
Okay. This was fine with me. Are you worried that we might become a no-sex couple? We won’t always be one. It’s just that I’m not feeling like a sexy lady, I babbled on.
Sure. B gave a Don’t be silly look and added, All couples go through highs and troughs in their lives together. I know we’ll get sexy again. I don’t feel that interested at the moment either.
Right. He was so logical and so assured. I wondered if B’s sense of stability in relationships was because his parents had stayed together and worked side by side as creators of substantial gardens most of their adult lives. When it came to relationships my emotional ground was much rockier. I knew that relationships failed and marriages ended, and that sometimes passion turned violent. I once witnessed my mother thrown against a flimsy wooden cupboard. It had creaked like it was cracking. I was nine, and raced up the stairs to my private attic bedroom that I loved so much. Mum had raced up the stairs too and found me cowering under the duvet.
Look what you’ve done! she screamed down to her circus ringmaster.
She had thrown the first punch.
Now I was a eunuch woman, and focussed on other things to do in bed, like reading as much as possible. Flippancy aside, the relief of the situation reminded me of what it had been like to find a life partner. The energy involved in trying to meet the right one or partner up once you did went into other life pursuits, like focussing on study, career decisions or home building. The same with diminishing sexual desire.
At the time I was resigned – this was how it was going to be. And later, when my desire for B returned, it stemmed from a different place. Just like the brain attempts to create different neural networks after cerebral damage, my desire for my partner was top-down, head first instead of lust first. The arousal came from my love for him and the way he smelt. As the comedian Robin Williams joked, you want someone who gives good mind. The rest follows.
But my vagina itself? It was not dried-grape size, but it wasn’t yoga queen either. For several years the elasticity of my vaginal tissue was reduced because of low oestrogen, and this made full sexual intercourse almost impossible, and extremely painful without synthetic lubrication. I’d spoken with quite a few women about this side effect of their treatment and one woman in particular introduced me to plastic vaginal expanders provided by her radiation nurses. I called the hospital straight away, leaving a message with a male oncologist standing in for mine. The message read:
Want to get my portacath out so I can return to New Zealand and trek with my family without worrying about getting it flushed or having my pack’s straps irritate it. I also want some vaginal expanders as I’m shrinking.
As getting an appointment and seeing my oncologist or any medical specialist took a while, I’d taken matters into my own hands. I decided that as my body was fit from the gym post-chemo I should similarly get my vagina in shape post-chemo too. I went online and found a women-focussed sex aid site and bought a toy. It resembled a large, somewhat dented U with one side smallish and the other side bigger. And it was purple. I was going to practise until perfect like all good devotees. Smirks aside, I needed to get her adequately stretched again if I wanted a full sexual life. At the time there was no motivation, as it basically hurt like I was being injured. Eventually, though, it worked pretty well, so I upgraded to a waterproof vibrator.
Another trick I’d heard about was to pop a Vitamin E capsule inside you daily to lubricate the walls of your vagina. I didn’t need to try this at that point. Sex had re-entered my life, but all the surgery and particularly drugs had aged me in ways I never could have foretold.
Within another year I had to take a proactive response to my thinning ‘skin’ and tried the MonaLisa Touch: a laser treatment for vaginal atrophy (the treatment came into being because allegedly half of all women eventually experience this). One female gynaecologist’s website said it was pain free, which is rubbish, as my male gynaecologist lathered me in topical anaesthetic before using the metal, tubular probe. You walk out of the rooms with a pad in your pants like you’re a menstruating woman again, complete with spotting.
My gynaecologist was in communication with the Italian developer of the probe about designing one to reach the scar tissue left behind in a woman’s vault (the real term) when the cervix is removed during a radical hysterectomy. Currently, the laser goes sideways along the canal of the vagina, but doesn’t hit the end, which I needed because that was where my particular pain was coming from. He thought a nerve might have got trapped up in the scar tissue. He’d performed laparoscopic surgery on women – going in and recutting the vault closing to help his patients maintain the ability to have intercourse.
From what I know, the MonaLisa Touch came about during a gynaecological plastic-surgery conference in Italy. Scientists and gynaecologists got talking about laser treatment for taking wrinkles out of rich women’s faces. One man asked the question
