Help….I had a preventive hysterectomy seven months ago because of a horrible maternal family history of ovarian and uterine cancer. At 53, I had just started into menopause with skipping periods, but hadn’t gone a year. Now, I have had constant pelvic pain….it’s hard to walk sometimes, hard to stand for more than 30-40 minutes and a cystocopy showed that my bladder was inflamed. All these practitioners are telling me I have IC, but I have no frequency, no urgency or burning. When I finally went to a uro/gyn, during the exam she told me several of my pelvic muscles were tight and I the only pain I had was when touched near my bladder. I think this may be a pelvic floor dysfunction along with a hormonal imbalance, but no one listens and just keeps prescribing Uribel and other bladder drugs and now they want to do instillations. Am I completely off base that this is a wrong diagnosis? Any insights would be helpful.
But while “vaginal massage” is a general, nonspecific term, it may be used to treat the musculoskeletal system of the pelvic floor, notes Dr. Huang. Sometimes this may be internally through the vagina or anus, though the target isn’t the vagina itself, but rather the muscles. “Some muscles, like hip rotator and pelvic floor muscles, are better accessed internally,” she says. (Imbalances in other muscles like those found in the abdominal wall or hip girdle are best treated from the outside.)
When your pelvic floor muscles are strong and flexible, you are able to control your bladder and bowels by contracting and relaxing the muscles and tissues in your pelvic floor. You also have better orgasms! When these muscles weaken due to habits, such as sitting too much and not moving your hips through their full range of motion, or from muscle tension due to chronic stress or overdeveloping the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles, you can end up with Pelvic Floor Dysfunction.
I am 61 and was diagnosed last year with pelvic floor tension after months of pain. Let me first recommend an article from prevention magazine 2014 titled “why it hurts down there”. I am healthy, thin, on no medications, I walk 2miles and do lots of gardening. I went to my gynecologist (male) and he prescribed an antibiotic for a urinary tract infection, which upon culture I did not have, but he never told me that. The pain never went away. He prescribed a 2nd round of antibiotic, the pain never went away. He sent me to a urologist( a female) who Did a pelvic exam and diagnosed PFT. She sent me to specialty physical therapy and 4 sessions later I was pain free.
“I would recommend that people call the facility and maybe schedule the first appointment and see how you feel about it. I also think patient support groups tend to have closed Facebook groups and they can recommend people in certain geographical areas. I know people call [our practice] a lot and we try and get them paired up with somebody we trust in their area,” Prendergast says.
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