When I told my fiancé I poured Listerine on my vulva, he asked through muffled laughter, “Are you stupid or crazy?”
Neither. I was desperate. Desperate to the point of madness. For two years, I was repeatedly diagnosed with yeast infections that left the whole of my nether regions itchy, irritated, swollen, and often feeling like they were on fire. I was at the end of my rope.
My mother got lots of yeast infections when she was younger so when I first became afflicted, doctors diagnosed my problem as hereditary, saying I was simply more susceptible to the overgrowth of yeast. (Three out of four women get a yeast infection at some point in their lives so it’s pretty common.) But when the infections started coming just as regularly as my period, my mother said, “God, even I didn’t have that many.” As part of a gossipy Portuguese family, it was only hours before almost every female in my extended family knew about it. For Christmas that year, I received what my aunt referred to as the Itchy Vagina package. It was stocked with tubes of Vagisil, medicated vaginal wipes, pads. I was less embarrassed, more thankful. My stockpile was running low.
At that point, I had taken every over-the-counter medication available. Truthfully, I could have been the poster child for Monistat. The pharmacist seemed to think so—his eyebrows raised as I approached the counter with a basket full of vaginal products for the second time in a month. I had gone to see my primary care doctor, nurse practitioners, and gynecologists. I did everything they told me to. I ate yogurt. I popped probiotics. I never sat too long in my wet bathing suit. I only wore cotton underwear. At night, I lay naked from the waist down, spreading my legs wide imagining air flowing in and out of me, fanning the disease away.
The infections had also infiltrated my sex life. Sex was was no longer about pleasure—at least, not the pleasure I was used to. My doctors told me to stay away from sex as it would only irritate the infection further (the vast majority of yeast infections aren’t contagious), but like an unruly kid who plunges a pencil under her cast to satisfy that burning itch, my fiancé’s penis became my own personal scratching stick. I no longer wanted the slow, rhythmic hip thrusting I typically preferred. Every time my fiancé and I got under the sheets, I wanted it hard and fast, screaming for more. I never orgasmed, but afterward, I fell asleep feeling satisfied.
But this—like almost everything I’d tried to relieve the itch—eventually proved more painful than pleasurable. My yeast infections were getting worse and my poor vagina seemed like it would never heal. Still I scratched and scratched until my skin was raw. Until I got cuts and bled.
One day, feeling helpless as I sat in the bathtub for the fourth or fifth time that week with tears in my eyes, pressing a cold cloth against my burning skin, I looked up and saw the blue-green Listerine bottle sitting on the vanity: “Kills 99% of bacteria.”
Yeast infections are fungal infections, not bacterial, but I didn’t care. I imagined microbes of bacteria floating through my vaginal canal, clinging to the walls. I imagined them multiplying by the thousands, creating metropolitan cities of red rashy skin. Skyscrapers of itch. Smokestacks of fiery burn. I grabbed the Listerine and poured.
Spoiler alert: this was not a good idea. It was about five seconds before I screamed in even worse pain than I could have imagined, turning the faucet on full blast. I cursed and bit down hard on my tongue until the burning was over.
You’d think pouring mouthwash on my burning vulva would constitute a turning point but it was still a little over a year before I was finally referred to a vulva specialist. She ran her gloved finger around my labia as all the doctors I’d seen had done before. I tried not to flinch. When she was done, I pried my legs out of the stirrups, and sat straight, gloomily awaiting another non-answer or ineffective home remedy I’d already tried a thousand times.