I’m a sexual health nurse, AMA!

[WhackingPhoenix]

As it says in the title

And can the lack of psychological interest or distraction, also cause a snake, not to achieve full stiffness ?

@Hawkins001 possibly, there’s only so much the sphincter can take! Also most likely, although that’s more psychosexual therapy territory.

Much appreciated, I had wondered with the plugs, I've dabled, but then there's a company that does bad Dragon toys and I thought, jezz, they gotta be a splitter, so to speak.

Something I've often wondered about. Years ago I went to see the nurse at the GP and she asked me if I'd had more than one sexual partner, I had and I wondered how she guessed/knew. Sounds silly but I wondered if she could see two types of sperm inside me or if it was because I was sore/inflamed.

That’s a standard question we ask everyone also if you were diagnosed with BV then a trigger for that can sometimes be a change in sexual partner.

How long can HPV lie dormant? I’ve recently been diagnosed with cervical cancer (the type to develop from HPV), but I have been celibate for several decades, so I’m deeply baffled. Thanks very much.

As the OP hasn't come back I can answer @SeeAndMore this as wondered the same.

After contacting a couple of the cancer charities (Eve Appeal has a great Ask Eve information service and Jo's Cancer Trust a helpful forum) I found that HPV can lie dormant in the body for many years. It's rather like chicken pox where the virus lies dormant and many years later can resurrect as shingles. Also it can take many years to develop and depends how often we attend regular smears for it to be picked up.

I hope you have good support and the cancer is soon treated.

BV… have it permanently for years. No one takes it seriously. Just throws more useless antibiotics at me constantly. Nothing at all works for more than 2 days. Had investigations at GUM clinic sevEral times, tested for everything under the sun but only BV shows up

always told to basically suck It up. literally no one wants to help. Repeatedly told by GP just to go back and have more STi tests at GUM clinic, I have to keep repeating back that I’ve had every test multiple times and nothing else comes up.

i follow every single golden rule as how to try and keep it at bay. Nothing makes a difference

How do you manage middle-aged women who are distraught at having to visit the clinic because their long-term partner has been using prostitutes?

A long, long time. That’s why the smear campaign is so incredibly important! Best wishes for a smooth recovery

Have you tried preventative lactic acid gels? Our consultants manage several women in clinic for recurrent BV and a few of them have been started on lactic acid gels each night.

I suffer with chronic BV too, so I truly do empathise.

We sadly see women in your situation a lot. We triage each patient before attending so we would have a long chat on the phone to talk through how we can help. If I triaged you, I would make every effort to book you in to see me personally so you didn’t have to explain the situation to someone new when you saw them. I’d offer you a choice of clinics (I have found that some women in your situation don’t want to be seen close to home), if you didn’t have symptoms then we could offer you the option of a home testing kit to avoid having to come in, but we would ideally like to see you in person so we could offer you extra layers of protection such as Hepatitis vaccination.

Ultimately, you would be treated with nothing but compassion and empathy. We would also offer help with finding psychological support if you need it.

Sorry, I misread your post. I read it as if you were asking for yourself, apologies if this isn’t the case and it was just a general question.

@WhackingPhoenix yes I’ve honestly tried everything. Best so far is boric acid pessaries but they have to be used every night otherwise it returns within 2 days. Don’t really want wanna be using any kind of pessaries every night for the rest of my life :-(
everything is only a solution for max 2 days

Do sexual health practitioners get taught anything at all about the fact that chlamydia can progress into the womb/tubes/pelvis but then clear at the cervix? My GP and GUM clinic told me over and over that I didn’t have chlamydia, but all they ever did was cervical swabs. When I finally got a positive private test of womb tissue the NHS still insisted the private test must be wrong. So how come I have tubal damage infertility and PID then, that my NHS gynaecologist said after the surgery can only have been caused by something like chlamydia?

Bit bitter about how confident GUM clinics are in their cervical swabs.

Sorry for butting in and this might have been done/considered but some suggestions:

If having sex semen can change the PH levels so suggest wearing condoms.

If approaching menopause or menopausal low estrogen can cause this to happen due to changes in the vaginal biome. Topical estrogen can help.

Have you had levels of health lactobacillus in the vagina checked? Some sexual health clinics will do this.

How about changing diet and probiotics either in food (kefir etc when you can make yourself) and oral/vaginal probiotics eg Optibac?

This is quite a good article though US based www.prevention.com/health/health-conditions/a35577218/recurrent-bacterial-vaginosis/

PID isn’t always caused by an STI. It’s the most common cause, but PID can occur without ever having had an STI. I can’t explain why your gynaecologist told you that STIs are the only cause of PID because it just isn’t true.

If multiple STI tests were negative but you were still symptomatic then we would refer to gynae as we don’t have the means to swab the upper reproductive system. If you were diagnosed in clinic with PID then the antibiotics you received would cover chlamydia as well.

I would also hazard a guess that the private test might have been a false positive. False positive/negative results can occur on any test, and if you had multiple negatives and one positive then I would be inclined to take the positive as a false result. Chlamydia very rarely self-clears at any site.

However, the latest evidence base suggests that vulvovaginal swabs are more accurate in detecting chlamydia than endocervical swabs.

Sorry you went through that