Bartholin Cyst Recovery Diary #1

If you read my last post, you know that about ten weeks ago my Bartholin cyst got infected and I had to have it lanced and drained at an urgent care center. It was, quite frankly, the worst experience of my life – which I say not to scare anyone, but because women’s pain during medical experiences is so often understated or disbelieved. The procedure was the most painful, terrifying experience I’ve ever endured, and the recovery has been nowhere near as quick, simple, or painless as the urgent care doctor assured me it would be. Thus, I want my entire experience on record, both for myself and for other women who are going through it.

To summarize quickly, the Bartholin glands are two glands located at the five and seven o’clock spots around the entrance of the vagina. They help lubricate the vagina during sex, and when sex is over, any fluid still in the glands drains back into your body. However, when a Bartholin cyst forms, for whatever reason, the fluid is unable to drain out completely, creating a cyst that is very difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of naturally.

The urgent care doctor who lanced my cyst attempted to do a procedure called marsupialization, which is meant to create a new opening that the cyst can drain out of permanently. It’s meant to create a hole where your Bartholin gland is, forever, giving the gland a second place to drain if it can’t drain back into your body the way it’s supposed to. Marsupialization also reduces the risk of the cyst recurring.

The doctor who did my marsupialization, however, stitched far too small an opening, causing the hole to close within only a few days – obviously not ideal, and honestly, really infuriating to me. I could tell from the first time I looked at the stitches that the hole was too small, just based on experiences I’d read online from other women. A doctor who performs this procedure often should absolutely have known better, and I will forever hold a grudge against her for upping my chances of this horrible thing coming back again. Period.

The doctor used dissolvable stitches, which she claimed would dissolve in two weeks or less. She also told me I shouldn’t feel any pain within a day or two.

Folks? She fucking lied.

The stitches were very painful for me. Very. Every time I went to bathroom, it hurt. Every time I wiped after peeing, it hurt. When I got my period, it hurt even more. And took almost six weeks for the stitches to dissolve.

After the stitches were gone, I still had pain. Last week I had a follow-up appointment, and it turns out I have granulation tissue where my stitches were – essentially ‘over- healing’ of cells in the area, which leads to raised red patches of tissue that can be very painful and sensitive to the touch, and can cause bleeding. Granulation tissue is common, for example, in women who have had episiotomies. The tissue often heals on its own given enough time, though it sometimes requires surgical removal in more extreme cases.

Luckily for me, I only had a small spot of it, and my new gyno suggested an application of silver nitrate to help the spot heal more quickly. Silver nitrate is a chemical compound used for antiseptic purposes, including cauterization of granulation tissue; essentially, it burns off the irritated tissue and promotes healing (which sounds scary, but my gyno promised me that on such a small area it would only sting). I immediately said yes, because this little spot has been the bane of my existence every time I pee for almost three months now!

My gyno applied the silver nitrate, and while it did sting for maybe thirty seconds, it was very manageable. He also warned me that it would leave a gray spot on me skin that might not go away for months, but frankly I couldn’t care less about that – I just want my vagina to feel normal and healthy again.

I took a bath later that day (advised by my gyno), which activated the silver nitrate (and again, stung for a few seconds), and when I got out, the top layer of the granulated tissue had already sloughed off, along with the gray spot. Since then, the spot has gotten slightly smaller and pinker, which is what it’s supposed to do while healing. I haven’t noticed much change in how it actually feels (it’s still sensitive, though maybe slightly less), but fingers crossed that it’s fully healed very soon.

I also sometimes still have pain on the whole left side of my vulva (the side the cyst was on) – if I walk a lot one day, or forget and cross my legs for too long while sitting, or wear pants that rub against my crotch just a little too much, for example, I have a fair bit of soreness the next day. It is slowly improving, though, and I’m hoping that with time, it will go away completely.

That’s the main thing, I suppose: time and patience. I’m trying to be patient with my body and its healing process, but my expectations – given to me by the urgent care doctor – were so totally out of whack with the reality of this process. That doctor told me I would be able to have sex three or four weeks after the procedure, which, it turns out, is laughably false. I’m at almost twelve weeks now, and between the tenderness of the entire area and the granulation tissue, I’m way too nervous to try having sex yet.

Thankfully, I have a new gynecologist now that I love. It feels like a miracle, which it really shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be difficult to find good doctors who actually listen to you and take time and effort to make you feel comfortable… but, here we are.

Some things my new gyno does that put him above and beyond all the other gynos I’ve ever had:

• Doesn’t rush me. Ever. Whether it’s the beginning or end of the exam, and no matter how long I’ve already been there, my gyno does not make me feel rushed to asked questions before he leaves. He gives me plenty of time and space to think, even when I’m struggling to find the words, and he never makes me feel like I need to hurry up and finish the appointment. It’s astounding how rare that is in a doctor.
• Allows my husband to sit in on my exams, and makes him actually feel welcome. When my husband apologized for getting in the way of my last exam, my gyno replied, “You are never in the way. You’re only a help.” I can’t even express how nice it was to hear that. I bring my husband both for moral support and to help me remember to ask all the questions I want to ask, and it’s so fucking nice to have a doctor who not only allows this, but welcomes it.
• Moves slowly, during the exam and otherwise. As I mentioned before, my gyno never makes the exam feel hurried or rushed, and beyond that, he actually moves physically slowly during my exam. He recognizes that my body has been through a lot – it’s been traumatized by chronic pelvic pain and the pain of all the medical procedures I’ve had to go through as a result – and that touching traumatized areas, like my vulva, can be a shock at first. He always announces where he’s going to touch me, and he always starts somewhere other than the affected area (i.e. “I’m going to touch your knee now,” and so forth). I’ve never had a gyno be so cognizant and accommodating of my pelvic pain.
• Recognizes that gaps in knowledge exist, even for doctors. My current gyno is the first I’ve ever had who actually admits that doctors have gaps in knowledge and don’t know everything, and he welcomes his patients teaching him things. For example, he told me that gynos don’t learn anything about birth-control-pill-provoked vulvodynia in med school, and he had to learn about it from a patient of his. Most gynos I’ve had in the past simply did not believe me when I told them about my birth-control-pill-provoked vulvodynia, which is… beyond infuriating.
• Uses a hand mirror to show me everything that’s happening. My gyno whipped out a hand mirror more than once during my last appointment so that I could see what he was doing at different points during the exam, both for my comfort and my own edification. I’ve never had a gyno do that before unless it was obviously necessary.

So yeah. I’m hoping and praying that this gynecologist doesn’t leave my network any time soon, because I would be devastated to lose him. It is way too hard to find a good gyno in this country.

Anyway, that’s the update for now! Stay tuned.

If you’d like to keep up with my Bartholin cyst recovery journey, you can see my previous and follow-up posts by clicking this tag.

Header image via Unsplash.