Once we pass the age of fifty, it is pretty common to experience two or more health conditions simultaneously. Disease comorbidity can really muddy the waters of healthcare and selfcare. Pelvic organ prolapse alone can create diverse physical, emotional, social, sexual, fitness, and employment difficulties to navigate. Women with pelvic organ prolapse plus additional vaginal or pelvic health issues struggle even more with magnified confusion and frustration.

Tissues bulging out of the vagina, chronic constipation, and incontinence are not exactly a delight to experience once, must less navigate every single day. Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) typically invades women’s lives for months, sometimes years. For most women embedded in the navigation, it can feel like a lifetime. When co-existing health conditions increase POP symptoms, frustration, angst, anger, and sometimes depression compound as well. One of those co-existing conditions is a chronic, inflammatory, rarely known ahead-of-the-curve skin condition called lichen sclerosus (LS).

Prior to the 1970’s, you could not say the word breast out loud in casual conversation, on television, or on the radio without eliciting a shocked vocal or facial expression. You could not insert the word breast into print magazine or news articles. Today no one bats an eyelash at saying the word breast, reading the word breast, hearing the word breast, or seeing an image of a breast. We eradicated breast stigma by creating a comfort zone, talking aloud about breast health.

How is it possible society still struggles with the vagina, and what can we do to overcome that barrier in 2022? By what means can women become aware of vaginal health conditions if we will not talk about them openly?

Although progress has occurred regarding comprehensive and coordinated women’s healthcare, a significant practice gap remains.

As women, our collective health depends on our willingness to talk openly and comfortably about vaginal health with our healthcare practitioners, but also among ourselves as a female culture. The evolution of women’s communal health rests heavily on what we are comfortable sharing with our mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and of course our intimate partners. Social acceptance is a marker of women’s health empowerment. Somehow vaginal health remains the pariah in women’s wellness.