Some stories are deeply personal.
One of our patients has chosen to share hers — her journey with painful intercourse, the emotional impact it had, and her experience with a muscle-relaxing injection used as part of her treatment plan.
We are grateful for her courage in allowing us to publish this, because too many women believe they are the only ones struggling.
If this is something you’re quietly dealing with, this piece is for you:
“The thing I wish I could have read about the botox procedure…
When I was trying to decide whether or not to have the botox procedure as a treatment for painful sex, after reading all sorts of descriptions and FAQs on medical websites, what I really wanted was to hear firsthand about someone’s experience of it.
But… it’s not exactly the type of thing you leave a Google review about.
After scouring the internet, the only thing I managed to find was an old Cosmo article about two women who had had the treatment for quite different reasons. One, because sex had always been painful for her, right from the start. And the other, because it became painful for her after the birth of her child. Both of them spoke about their disbelief afterwards – they were absolutely blown away by the fact that suddenly, sex was pain-free. And it stayed that way, even after the botox wore off, because, by having had sex while the botox was in action, relaxing their internal muscles, new neural pathways had been formed, telling the body that this physical experience was not something that was going to hurt them.
It was what all the medical journals said. It was the same thing that Dr Badenhorst had explained to me so clearly and kindly.
It still sounded too good to be true.
It also sounded pretty terrifying. Partly because of the (admittedly very unlikely) side effects. But mostly because the loss of control during conscious sedation for a procedure focused on the most vulnerable part of myself brought the reason I needed it in the first place screaming to the surface of my body and mind.
I realised, as I searched online, that these were actually the kind of stories I was looking for: women who had had this confronting medical intervention because sex was painful as a result of past sexual trauma.
When I was 18, I was sexually assaulted. I struggle to use the word “rape”, but in a court of law, that is what they would term it.
Sex had almost always been painful for me, and over the two decades that followed, it became worse – a result of the reaffirmation of the pain my body and mind would anticipate each time, even in the most loving, safe relationship.
I wanted to read about someone who had experienced what I had, made the choice to have the botox procedure, facing the fear of giving up control (terrifying, even in a non-threatening medical setting) to submit to a treatment targeting that same part of them that had been targeted with such different intent so long ago.
I wanted to read about someone who had done it and been ok.
I wanted to read about someone who had faced up to the depth and breadth of that fear and moved through it, coming out the other side glad that they had done it. I wanted to read about someone who said it had been worth it.
That article didn’t exist when I decided to hold my fear in one hand and determination in the other… and do it.
But it exists now. Because I decided to write it.
If you are considering the procedure – for whatever reason has led you down this path – I want to tell you that it is worth it.
I want to tell you that you could not be in safer hands than Dr Badenhorst, who is so understanding and supportive at every step.
I want to tell you that if you mention to the anesthetist that you are scared – and why – she will hold your hand and tell you that she is right there with you. And that she’s sorry that that happened to you.
I want to tell you that the conscious sedation will make it feel like you’re floating through the procedure, aware but (almost) untouchable.
I want to tell you that it won’t take as long as you think it might. That you will remember some but not all of it (although I hear that this varies from person to person).
I don’t want to tell you that it will be ok.
Because it is more than ok.
It is a reclaiming.
The first time that I had sex a few days after the procedure (following all the post-care guidelines), I was full of trepidation. I couldn’t quite believe that it would be pain-free.
But it was. Completely.
I thought that I would feel an overwhelming sense of joy. And I did – for about two seconds. And then I felt complete and utter rage.
Rage that this had been taken from me. That other people experience this all the time, and I hadn’t for the past 20 years because someone took it from me.
Sitting in my car after a therapy session quite a while afterwards, I sent a voice note to one of my best friends, in tears. We had recently reconnected fairly deeply, in part over a budding realisation that we were, at the age of almost 40, new Swifties.
“This should have been mine the whole damn time but it wasn’t!” I said. (Also – I did not use the word “damn”.)
Her reply shifted something for me.
“Girl, send those lyrics to Taylor!” she said.
Something about this framing made me look away from what had been taken from me, and focus instead on what I had taken back for myself. What I had reclaimed as my own.
I felt the power of it course through me, making my skin hot and my scalp prickle.
I had taken back a part of myself, rediscovered who I was – who I could be – in this aspect of my life. And I felt proud.
(Side note: Was it coincidental that I fell headfirst into books like Fourth Wing on this journey? I don’t think so – and I highly recommend some spicy reading material as a supplementary prescription to the botox procedure.)
It’s taken me a year and a half to write this article. Partly, I think, because I was still too close to the epicentre of the reclaiming journey to write about it. But mostly because I was afraid that if I wrote about it being a resounding success I would somehow jinx it. That the pain would return.
It has not. Or, if it does sometimes surface, it’s only a whisper of what it once was.
This reclaiming is an ongoing journey, but the botox procedure was so pivotal to it that I feel compelled to tell you about my experience. About what a powerful tool this is.
As I write this at my desk, I’m looking at a painting that my Swiftie friend did for my 40th birthday. In the background, in the middle of a watercolour picture wall in a lounge setting sits a
wallhanging that says: “Should’ve been MINE the whole damn time”.
And now it is.