Kayote B. (kayote) reviewed on + 254 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I've struggled for a while about what to say about this book.
It started out really really good. Fast paced, gives a good emotional slide into her world as her vagina goes nuts. The desire to want it fixed, then just want it gone..that comes across as real and connects with the reader.
The ending, however, is less than ending. Obviously, her problem hasn't been fixed, but I just can't relate to the horror that she was attracted to someone who didn't jump into bed with her. Nor do I think life is completely gray if one isn't wet all the time. I just don't relate. I think she is being incredibly whiny, that she used to live very stupidly, and that maybe she needs to think with the rest of her body for once. Geesh.
I also want to smack the author about her treatment. Medical science doesn't know what causes vestibulus (or vulvodynia or any other similar thing down there), but there are treatments that work for some women. While avoiding surgery makes sense (it really does seem like a last resort), and I realize that the medical profession as a whole isn't the most....sympathetic or reliable when it comes to females & medicine, I still want to smack the author repeatedly.
Her idiocy over pills irritates me. For example, anatryptaline is a drug that usually takes a couple weeks to build up enough in the system to have an affect. Like most drugs that work in the brain, it has a ramp-up period to adjust the body to it, and slowly raise the dose. (Why the pharmacist didn't mention that, I don't know, else she didn't bother to put it in the book). Yes, side effects can hit early--but it's also a drug that you body has to adjust to and the side effects will (sometimes, usually) fade. I do have to question if she really wanted to treat her pain if she wasn't willing to give it the couple weeks required for the body to accept the drugs. A lower dose might have been called for, but dropping an adjustment-required drug after one dose? One dose that WORKED? Good grief! *insert more author whining here*
Try SOMETHING (other than whining at the universe), and give it time to work! What's the point of all the research (good idea) if you aren't going to pursue any of the treatments anyway? There were quite a few options given -- some of them pretty drastic with limited success rates (surgery), others less drastic, less invasive, more able to be done on a trial version. She didn't want to do ANY of them--and then whined that nothing got better. Yes, it sucks to have the pain. But it's not going to just magically go away (probably not, at least, though admittedly no one knows why it's there in the first place), and I have a hard time sympathizing with someone who appears to primarily want to shake her fist at the world and yell "Not fair!".
It's also very hard to accept as "normal" the ability to discuss her vagina with hordes of friends, many of which happen to be assorted medical professionals. Great for her, but very different from what a normal woman would go through.
I can't say I'd recommend this book. It starts out so well, and it's a book I think needs to be written. But not by her. By someone with more normal friends, by someone with less of an instant-gratification-demand of life and the medical profession. By someone who is less of a whiner.
It started out really really good. Fast paced, gives a good emotional slide into her world as her vagina goes nuts. The desire to want it fixed, then just want it gone..that comes across as real and connects with the reader.
The ending, however, is less than ending. Obviously, her problem hasn't been fixed, but I just can't relate to the horror that she was attracted to someone who didn't jump into bed with her. Nor do I think life is completely gray if one isn't wet all the time. I just don't relate. I think she is being incredibly whiny, that she used to live very stupidly, and that maybe she needs to think with the rest of her body for once. Geesh.
I also want to smack the author about her treatment. Medical science doesn't know what causes vestibulus (or vulvodynia or any other similar thing down there), but there are treatments that work for some women. While avoiding surgery makes sense (it really does seem like a last resort), and I realize that the medical profession as a whole isn't the most....sympathetic or reliable when it comes to females & medicine, I still want to smack the author repeatedly.
Her idiocy over pills irritates me. For example, anatryptaline is a drug that usually takes a couple weeks to build up enough in the system to have an affect. Like most drugs that work in the brain, it has a ramp-up period to adjust the body to it, and slowly raise the dose. (Why the pharmacist didn't mention that, I don't know, else she didn't bother to put it in the book). Yes, side effects can hit early--but it's also a drug that you body has to adjust to and the side effects will (sometimes, usually) fade. I do have to question if she really wanted to treat her pain if she wasn't willing to give it the couple weeks required for the body to accept the drugs. A lower dose might have been called for, but dropping an adjustment-required drug after one dose? One dose that WORKED? Good grief! *insert more author whining here*
Try SOMETHING (other than whining at the universe), and give it time to work! What's the point of all the research (good idea) if you aren't going to pursue any of the treatments anyway? There were quite a few options given -- some of them pretty drastic with limited success rates (surgery), others less drastic, less invasive, more able to be done on a trial version. She didn't want to do ANY of them--and then whined that nothing got better. Yes, it sucks to have the pain. But it's not going to just magically go away (probably not, at least, though admittedly no one knows why it's there in the first place), and I have a hard time sympathizing with someone who appears to primarily want to shake her fist at the world and yell "Not fair!".
It's also very hard to accept as "normal" the ability to discuss her vagina with hordes of friends, many of which happen to be assorted medical professionals. Great for her, but very different from what a normal woman would go through.
I can't say I'd recommend this book. It starts out so well, and it's a book I think needs to be written. But not by her. By someone with more normal friends, by someone with less of an instant-gratification-demand of life and the medical profession. By someone who is less of a whiner.
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