Anna

Age at interview: 34

Brief Outline:

Anna had recurrent thrush for nearly a decade in her 20s. She recalls having flare-ups eight or nine times a year, greatly impacting her life. Anna visited multiple GPs but felt dismissed. Her symptoms began to subside in her late 20s, and now Anna sees recurrent thrush as her body telling her to slow down.

Background:

Anna (she/her) is a bisexual woman who is currently single. She is an actor and singer. Her background is mixed race. Interview read by an actor.

More about me...

Anna had recurrent thrush from age 19 to age 28. Her first flare-up occurred while studying abroad. She remembers calling her mum and getting instructions to visit the pharmacy and apply yoghurt to the affected area. From then, Anna had recurrent thrush eight or nine times a year.

Anna’s symptoms include feeling sore, dry, uncomfortable, and having a change in discharge. She noticed a pattern where her symptoms flared up before her period.

Initially, recurrent thrush led Anna to feel “gross” and depressed. Her symptoms began when she first became sexually active and then returned every three weeks. This affected her relationships as she could not have sex and sometimes passed symptoms to sexual partners. Anna felt “at war” with her vagina and “defective” as a woman. Recurrent thrush felt like a part of Anna’s life that would never go away.

Anna visited the GP about five times a year and saw multiple clinicians as she moved frequently. She felt the doctors were “fairly dismissive” and approached thrush as a one-off occurrence, continually sending her off with the same medication. She remembers another clinician saying thrush wasn’t “life or death” and to go on with her life. However, at 26 years old, Anna was referred to a specialist who she said listened and told her, “this is really serious, I’m so glad you’ve ended up here”.

Anna remembers that physical exams were rarely performed and that swabs were taken inconsistently and sometimes lost. Anna recalls thrush being a problem at other healthcare appointments, such as a smear exam, STI test, or coil ultrasound.

After becoming frustrated with the GP, Anna looked online and felt that “the people with the answers” were all in private clinics that she could not afford, but desperately wanted to visit. She reflected that if she was wealthier, she might have been able to “fix it faster”.

In terms of treatment, Anna was given antifungal cream, pessaries, pills, and then a six-month dose of fluconazole. Anna recalls a financial impact as she paid for her prescriptions. The GP also said that her vaginal pH was off and recommended baths in bicarbonate of soda twice a week. Anna had seen online a correlation between the contraceptive pill and thrush, but her doctor dismissed this and said to keep taking contraception unless she wanted to be pregnant.

Anna also self-treated and remembers lying to the pharmacist when asked if she had taken the antifungal medication in the last six months. She knew the pharmacist would refuse to sell the medication and recommend seeing a doctor if she were honest.

To self-manage, Anna tried to cut out sugar and gluten but found this difficult while working various hours and earning a lower income. She opted only to wear cotton underwear, never wear tight trousers, and not to use any soaps on her vulva. As an actor, she has to insist on cotton underwear and looser bottoms during costume fittings.

At 28 years old, Anna’s symptoms started clearing up. Her mum also had recurrent thrush in her 20s until she had her first child at 27. Despite Anna’s symptoms improving, she would still call herself a “more thrushy-person” and knows that stress or antibiotics will continue to trigger thrush. Yet, as Anna’s life has slowed down, she feels able to listen to her body more and be mindful about taking care of herself.

As she got older, Anna gained confidence in asking for help from healthcare professionals. However, she acknowledges that feeling dismissed by GPs has had a lasting impact. For instance, as a singer and actress, when she has vocal problems, she avoids the GP and sees specialists instead.

Anna advises others to advocate for themselves at the doctor's, not be ashamed, and stop self-treating without proper answers.

Anna found her symptoms occurred after ovulation (read by an actor)

I think it’s right to say that slowly I've started to realise that it was flaring up before my period. I think when it started, I was so... I was an undergraduate and at university and I was paying absolutely no attention to my body and I was just like, ‘oh, this is happening,’ and then by the time I was like 23 I was like, ‘oh, this is happening when... right after I'm ovulating.’

Anna said physical exams were rarely performed over the years, the doctor just prescribed based on her description (read by an actor)

Early on there were a couple of physical exams. But then from quite... quite quickly I was coming in saying, “I've got thrush, I know I've got thrush,” and no one looked, it was very... very rare, yeah, I mean barely any physical exams, if I think about it like maybe one at the beginning and then just a conversation with me sat on a chair describing my symptoms, and then prescribing me the same stuff. No one looked. I think I asked a couple of times for people to look, and so they did.

When she was in her mid 20s Anna’s GP referred her to a specialist; she feels that she missed out on a diagnosis because samples were lost and she moved out of area (read by an actor)

When I was like 26, 27: they did a load of samples, then the next time I went back they’d lost all my samples, then they did all the samples again, then I didn’t hear from them for like three months, I moved house and then they were like, “You’re no longer in the catchment area,” [chuckles] and I was like, “Please, fix my vagina.”

And did they ever give you a label of like recurrent thrush or explain the recurrence, or how was that dealt with?

The referral to the specialist when I was 26, 27, came because a doctor went, “You’ve had this for seven years,” and I was like, “Correct,” and he was like, “That’s not normal,” and I was like, “Yeah, it doesn’t feel normal,” and he was like, “Let’s send you somewhere to figure out what’s going on.” Before then, no, they just treated it each time... each time I went to the doctor they were like, “Oh, you’ve got thrush now, here’s the medication for thrush.”

Anna reflected on how her thinking about her body and identity in relation to thrush has changed over time (read by an actor)

I think it probably impacted... I mean this is mental health, I think it probably impacted my sense of self in terms of just feeling defective as a woman, and... and I... I also find it really... I find it really interesting, my relationship with being a woman has changed, and I imagine it will continue to change... but when I think about that period of time, I really think that I was like at war with my vagina, and I just wanted to have a different one; whereas I think now, when I get thrush, antibiotics are a separate event, but like if I get thrush naturally, I normally go, ‘oh hang on, let me just figure out what’s going on: am I stressed? Am I eating properly? Am I tired? Have I been drinking too much?’ And like I view it more as like... I mean it’s very uncomfortable, but it... it’s far rarer now, but if I get it now, I think my experience of my body is quite different and so I view it more as my vagina talking to me; whereas I used to view it as my vagina trying to ruin my life.

Anna talked about passing thrush on to male partners and them then using topical treatments (read by an actor)

I was on the pill so we weren’t using condoms and I think what was probably happening is that he was passing it back to me all of the time, and I was normally... and then that sort of set it up and that was the feature of every relationship that I had until I was about 27, where I would have to explain to the men I was with quite early on, “Oh, actually it’s really painful and I have thrush,” and then I would just continually have thrush, and then occasionally they would have... visibly have thrush, so a lot of my boyfriends had moments where their penis was like sore or dry or a bit flaky, and I’ve taught a lot of men about Canesten.

Anna realises now that thrush is nothing to be ashamed of, but thinks that 20-year-old women are under pressure to appear ‘perfect’ (read by an actor)

Now I'm old enough that I'd really see the gamut of wild and wonderful things that women’s bodies do and I think there’s a huge amount of... I mean it’s hard though, I think just think being a 20-year-old woman in a... a 20-year-old person in a... particularly in a cis-female body, I don't know how you do it without being full of shame because there’s so much oddness that happens; whereas now like all my friends have like pushed babies out of their vaginas and ripped themselves open and had fibroids and had miscarriages and you're like, ‘oh right, these are just like wild vessels,’ but I think we don't know [laughs] that when we're 20 and we think they're supposed to be these perfect beautiful things for people to look at, but that’s not what they are [laughs]. So yeah, I would be like you know there’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s just bodily... it’s literally just bodily fluids and like bacteria, but I probably wouldn't listen to it when I was 21.

Anna thought that money played a “pretty big part” in her experience and wondered if more money would have led to quicker answers (read by an actor)

When I Google it, it looks like the people who have the answers are on Harley Street, and there’s all these testimonies that like these women went to this clinic and it fixed their body and now they've never had thrush again, and then I would Google it and all of these clinics were like the consultation is like £500 and then your follow-up consultation is another £500 and... and I was... and like I'm trying to be a fucking musician and an actress on like 10p a year, and I couldn't go, and I was desperately wanted to go to the posh clinics where all the testimonials were like, ‘I'm cured,’ but I never went because I never had the money to, and by the time I had started to get anything near the money to, it was better, ish, but... but yeah, I think money was a huge... I definitely... I definitely got the sense that if I was richer, I would have been able to fix it faster.

So yeah, I think money played a huge part, well, yeah, I think money played a pretty big part. I wonder if I would have... but equally, I don't know, I see people now pour money down the drains of people who say they going to cure their problems on Harley Street and then you're like, ‘I don't know if that’s actually fixed it any faster than the NHS’; so, who can say.

Anna felt she “slipped through the net” by buying over the counter medication (read by an actor)

I also think I slipped through the net because it’s so easy to buy over-the-counter treatment, and I wonder... I mean I’m... I’m pleased it’s easy to buy over-the-counter treatment but I am you know genuinely slightly horrified by the amount of over-the-counter treatment I’ve taken, because also the check is like... I lied constantly to people in Boots who were like, “Oh, have you taken this pill in the last six months?” “No.” I would have taken it like three weeks before, I just wanted to have it again, and I think I’ve probably [chuckles] taken that pill like way too many times, and that cream, and I’m not a doctor and I don’t understand what’s in those and I put those in my body probably upwards of thousands of times, so I wonder if there could be a way to catch... I mean I don’t know how you’d do this and you’d get into big brother territory, but like it would be great if somebody had noticed that a 23‑year‑old woman was going into Boots and spending all her money on... on thrush medication and like arguably taking way too [laughs] much of it. So yeah, I think there are definitely structures that could be built-in to help catch it sooner.

Anna says they have gained confidence and can be more “pushy” (read by an actor)

I think I was probably... you know I was taught to respect authority and I was a very well-behaved sort of docile young woman, and I wasn't particularly pushy and so I think... I think there’s another factor which is that as I grew up, I became more like cognisant of... of systems of power but also of like... I think I gained confidence, and so I think there’s probably another reason that I got referred is that I went, ‘this is not OK, this has to stop;’ whereas I reckon when I was 22, I just went, ‘oh OK, well, the doctor said this, and this is what the doctor said.’

Anna found cutting sugar and starch from her diet helpful, but difficult to maintain (read by an actor)

I cut out sugar and it did get better, but I couldn’t stick to it. I cut out sugar multiple times for like a few weeks or a month and I would start... if I was like busy, I would just cut out like actual sugar, well, what I would call like real sugar, like chocolate cake, biscuits, fun stuff, but a couple of times I cut out like fruit, bread, there was some sort of vague idea that I should cut out gluten, so I tried that, I don’t know how much...  I tried to cut out sort of all... like all sort of refined sugar and... but then that was wild, I got this terrible headache, I lost a shit ton [of weight].

I live... I've always lived quite a changeable life: I go from project to project, I work like... I go from working 15 hours a day to not working at all, like currently I'm working six days a week and then in three weeks I'll be unemployed, and so like planning meals in that... and especially in my 20s when I was like climbing up the career ladder and I was also on like 23K a year, someone saying, “Oh, you can't eat potatoes, pasta and rice,” I was like, “Well, what the fuck am I going to eat then because I get home at 11pm and I leave the house at 8am and I just want the a bowl of pasta.

Anna would have appreciated a discussion about alternative therapies with her doctor (read by an actor)

I think it felt to me quite quickly that alternative therapies might carry more of an answer than the doctors I was going to, based on all the Googling, because all the things that you would find on Google were people who were like, ‘my GP was useless, and then I found this,’ and alternative therapies: accessing that was expensive, whereas I was going to the free healthcare and that was all that I could get to.

Anna was hesitant when a doctor told her to try bicarbonate of soda baths (read by an actor)

Then the doctor was great and he was like, “Your pH balance in your vagina is just off by, like, quite a way, and I think that it’s like a breeding ground for bacterial nonsense because you're not set at the right level,” and then he told me to start doing these baths with like bicarbonate of soda twice a week, or three times a week, and so I was running these like warm baths and it did really clear up the thrush, although it felt like it... it was the Victorian era [laughs], and also was like, ‘why did no one tell me this 10 years ago?’ because I've been whacking loads of chemicals on my vagina and I could have just been sitting in bicarbonate of soda, and that really cleared it up.

Anna suggested pushing for a referral to a specialist (read by an actor)

But also, I would say to young women who... to me from 10 years ago I would say push harder at the doctor and say ‘something is wrong, I need to see someone who knows more about this than you.’ The GP is not the person who knows how to deal with your recurrent thrush, but there probably is some sort of gynaecological expert somewhere in a 100-mile radius from where you live who knows more about it than these people and you're being held at the barrier point, and like get past it. And I would also say stop going to the fucking pharmacy and buying over-the-counter stuff and lying about it because you don't know what you're putting into your body, and also it’s... that’s not the answer, I think.