Imogen

Age at interview: 30

Brief Outline:

Imogen has experienced recurrent thrush since childhood. She has visited multiple healthcare professionals including GPs, sexual health professionals, gynaecologists, a dietitian and a psychosexual counsellor. In 2017, she was given a six-month course of antifungal tablets that significantly reduced the frequency of infections. She continues to make sense of how recurrent thrush has influenced her sexuality and relationships with her mum, romantic partners and healthcare professionals.

Background:

Imogen (she/her) works as a civil servant. Her background is white British. 

More about me...

Imogen said she has had recurrent thrush since she was a baby and as a young child, she felt that thrush was just a part of her. Her symptoms included itchiness and inflammation and occurred multiple times a year.

Growing up, Imogen visited general practitioners (GPs) frequently, and found this was difficult. Being examined intimately while young, and by male GPs was traumatic. She recalls begging her mum not to take her and even locking herself in the bathroom once to avoid an appointment. As she grew into her teenage years, the embarrassment intensified, leading her to bear the discomfort silently and treat herself with over-the-counter medications.

Imogen’s mental health was impacted greatly. She recalls her mum telling her as a teenager that if she did not resolve the recurrent thrush it could lead to infertility. Later, Imogen learned that this was not true and her mum had felt she needed to scare her into taking action, as she was concerned. Recurrent thrush impacted Imogen’s relationship with her body and she felt disgusting and full of shame.

Over time, Imogen visited multiple healthcare professionals including GPs, sexual health practitioners, and gynaecologists. She also saw a private dietician who recommended cutting down on sugar and drinking more water.

At a visit to a gynaecologist during her undergraduate degree, Imogen learned that she had a different strain of thrush, Candida glabrata, resistant to the usual treatments like fluconazole. However, after treatment for this strain, she still experienced thrush. Imogen said that healthcare professionals always treated the problem like managing acute episodes and not addressing a larger pattern.

Other difficult appointments included when a gynaecologist took a swab for thrush using a speculum and did not inform Imogen she would be using one, which caused her great pain and emotional distress. Another time, after requesting a female doctor, Imogen was upset to turn up to an appointment at the sexual health clinic for it to be a male doctor, causing her to leave without seeing anyone due to past trauma.

About four years later, in 2017, a locum GP suggested a six-month course of treatment. Imogen felt genuinely listened to by a healthcare professional. However, this GP left the practice shortly after, making Imogen think “I’ve lost the one person who’s actually listened to me on this”.

This six-month course of treatment dramatically reduced her episodes of thrush, a change she describes as "insane because I used to get it like multiple times a year”. For the last six years, she has had thrush around once a year on average. However, she said that it has taken a long time to understand what her body feels like normally, without thrush, as she had become used to a certain level of discomfort.

Reflecting on her journey, she expressed frustration and anger at the delayed effective treatment, saying, "it does make me angry that it took so long for somebody to offer me a longer course”.

Financially, she was able to afford over-the-counter and prescription medications but said it was frustrating to have to spend money on recurrent thrush, saying “it’s something I hate already, and don’t want to talk about, and I have to spend money on it”. She recalled picking up medication from the pharmacist and being embarrassed that they did not have enough tablets stocked for the six-month course and she had to return to get a “giant bag” of over 20 fluconazole.

Her experiences with thrush impacted her sexuality and self-perception. While at university, she struggled with her sexual identity and for most of her twenties she identified as being on the asexual spectrum. She questioned whether this was, in part, due to recurrent thrush. Imogen discussed this in psychosexual therapy after a GP referral as well as with private therapists but she now views these experiences as largely negative. She continues to explore connections between her sexuality and lived experience.

Five months ago, Imogen worried she had thrush again, but after seeing a healthcare professional she learned this episode was down to contact dermatitis, which she is now trying to manage with a steroid ointment. Later, another GP explained that she was likely experiencing an allergic reaction to yeast, and that this was common for people with recurrent thrush and recommended an antihistamine. Imogen had not heard of allergic reactions to yeast before and feels she has been “drip-fed” information all her life. The doctor also encouraged Imogen to research vulvodynia if the issue persisted.

If recurrent thrush were to return, Imogen said she would take another six-month course “in a heartbeat”. She also avoids irritating hygiene products and continues to wash using an emollient as a soap substitute. Imogen says she also feels less shame and stigma around the condition and no longer sees her body as disgusting.

Looking forward, Imogen has followed social media pages that promote the normalisation of vulvas and vaginas and increasing the visibility of conditions like recurrent thrush. She encourages healthcare professionals to recognise that recurrent thrush is not easy to talk about and that people have to overcome a lot to get through the door, so to be compassionate and ask about past experiences.

Imogen felt more informed and less ashamed as she got older.

So, I’d say it’s probably on the last couple of years where I’ve not like stopped feeling disgusting and abnormal, and yeah, like I’m 30, that’s taken a long time and it’s something that, you know, I know everybody has issues and hang-ups, but it could... it didn’t have to be that bad, it really didn’t, and I think probably younger people today are growing up in quite a different time in terms of that.

So yeah, definitely changed in that way and I think just changed in the way I relate to it in terms of... you know, I think, you know, reading feminist literature and like academic literature and, yeah, just all that I believe in in terms of how we’re made to feel about our bodies, and I think that’s been really empowering and just how I relate to it, it’s not like part of me, it’s something that I’m prone to and it’s unfortunate and you can be like ‘why me?’, but also ‘why not me?’, like, lots of people have things to deal with that you don’t see, and this has been one of mine, like... yeah.

Imogen discussed recurrent thrush in psychosexual counselling.

Ouu, we definitely talked about the thrush, and it was like because that was her discipline, it was just immediate like, ‘yeah, this is the cause, OK, well let’s work on how this has impacted you and then everything will be great,’ you know, like which didn’t chime... like it all felt much more sort of deeply rooted and complex than the way she was presenting it. Yeah, so we definitely talked about it and how it had made me feel about my body, and then it was more sort of like practical like, ‘OK well, how can you enjoy your own body?’ and like talking about masturbation and like that sort of thing, so the thrush was a big part of... well, you know, what we started talking about because that was what she was taking as the reason I was experiencing my sexuality in the way that I was.

Imogen said that taking longer-term medication was a “little thing” to do.

Yeah, I... it felt like such a little thing to do in comparison to all I’d been through with this. You know, I think sometimes I didn’t remember to take it on exactly the same day, but I was pretty good at taking it overall, yeah, that was fine.

Imogen was so used to coping with discomfort from recurrent thrush that she didn’t know what would be considered normal.

I didn’t know what my normal was, I didn’t know what my body was like normally without it, and when people would ask like, “Well, is this normal?” I just wouldn’t be able to answer because I think you probably end up coping with a certain amount of discomfort, and also it meant like I had no idea about what normal discharge was because often when I thought I didn’t have it, I would then find out, via a swab test, that I did, and there were also sometimes where I thought I had it, and I didn’t.

Imogen encouraged healthcare professionals to be gentle and consider the long-term impacts.

Being gentle, like kind. Recognising that it’s something that might not be easy to talk about and that someone might have had to overcome a lot, just like in themselves, to even get through the door, so there’s actually quite a lot riding on how this appointment goes. Because if you’re... if you don’t do a good job, it sounds like a lot of pressure, but I don’t think it’s hard to do a good job: if you don’t do a good job, like they might not come back, that might put them off. Like I think it can put you in an extremely vulnerable position, and if an appointment is triggering... or difficult, or unpleasant, like you are not going to want to go back, are you?

Imogen was recommended antihistamine tablets by a healthcare professional.

And when I finally got an appointment to see the GP yeah, she was just like, oh, yeah, you're already inflamed. I think. I think you get like an allergic reaction to the thrush.

And so, she was like, you know, for that and basically, the contact dermatitis, which I started getting last year, she was like, oh, yeah, you should be taking antihistamines when you get that. And obviously, what, like, how am I learning new information now?

It like, makes me feel like I have been drip fed, like gynaecological health care, over 31 years, like, I have never been given a full, you know, amount of information at any one point. Like, it's just tiny, tiny bits. And it makes me really angry, because I don't think I should be like learning new stuff now