Game of Thrush

I'm rushing down to the Wellington Sexual Health Clinic on a freezing Winter day. My whole life feels weighed down, carrying the burden of the now intimately familiar feeling of sandpaper between my legs. After so long, I've forgotten what it's like to move freely anymore.   

This was penultimate day of my 11-month long journey with mateīhi, also known as vaginal thrush. The day I went to my fifth doctor.   

For the uninitiated (aka the absurdly lucky), He Puna Waiora Healthify NZ defines mateīhi as an overgrowth of a yeast known as candida albicans in the vagina. It's a fairly common problem, characterised by irritation, redness, itching, thick discharge, pain while peeing and during sex. It's usually easy to get rid of in a few days with anti-fungal medication. 

Unless you're like me and have chronic vaginal dermatitis.  

Julie Avery, director of Nursing at Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa, tells me that most of the young people she sees with mateīhi don't know what they have, thinking it must be a sexually transmitted infection. "STIs are talked about but I think the more common things like thrush isn't talked about as part of education in schools. So often young people don’t know."  

What brings it on can be really trivial. I fell victim to my bikini trimmer. A week later I could hardly walk. But Julie says they’re plenty of other ways I could have gotten it. "If you're wearing tight active-wear clothing and not allowing that area to breathe very well." She says another cause is when people over wash, “They get a little bit of discharge, or a little bit of an itch and they uses soaps more often and that can actually make things worse."  

Eleven months and four doctors later, and I still struggled to walk for longer than 10 minutes. Weight gain and stretch marks had tanked my self-esteem, sex was just off the table, and I was starting to give up hope of ever finding a solution. I was part of the 5 to 10% of AFAB people with what He Puna Waiora calls reoccurring thrush.  

So, there I was, shivering outside the clinic, heart beating out of my chest, barely daring to hope. I consider that Winter day as the day I got my life back. Not ten minutes with Doctor Five and she figured out I had chronic vaginal dermatitis. Basically, my skin had been in a state of inflammation for so long, that had become its default.  

My road to recovery has been one-step-forward-two-steps-back. A year later and I am still a patient there, having relapsed mateīhi twice and an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection once. Each new infection comes with several weeks of that sandpaper feeling, long after the mateīhi has cleared.  

I never really talked to anyone about how hard every day was. It just felt embarrassing and hard to explain. But Julie thinks that mateīhi needs to be talked about more when learning about sexual health. "You don't want to tell your friends that you've got a discharge and an itch and it's really uncomfortable. I think that should be thought about more often that it's okay, its normal, it happens.”  

 "Knowing about it then takes the fear out of it.”  

I will never fully be free of my chronic dermatitis. I can still feel it in certain clothes, or after sitting for too long, or going to the gym. A little itch, sometimes a burn, or tenderness. But I will never take my health for granted ever again. Walking to campus, dancing with my friends, or just having sex free of discomfort — these are all blessings.