Vaginismus

My apologies for an absence! There were finals, work, a brief foray at an ivy league university, and two family emergencies–and my birthday was a week ago. Time marches on. Now I am back to talk about a subject I know quite a bit about–vaginismus.
Vaginismus is a disorder of the muscles in [...]

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Health Information Online

As you all may know, I am a master’s student in bioethics.  Our curriculum covers a wide array of subjects and I am currently in a public health class learning about health communication campaigns (really quite an interesting subject!).  One of the major questions asked by public health communicators now is how reliable is the [...]

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Rare Ectopic Pregnancy

Last night The Learning Channel replayed a program that I originally saw about a year ago entitled “Extraordinary Pregnancies.” It told the story of two women and their ‘extraordinary pregnancies’: Zahra in Morocco and Jane in England. The program is the repackaging of two other British programs that aired several years ago. [...]

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The First Oophorectomy

Having had an oophorectomy, I am incredibly interested in the surgical removal of ovaries.  Removal of one ovary is called a unilateral oophorectomy; removal of both is bilateral.  Usually, when an ovary is removed, the fallopian tube associated with it is also removed.  This is called a salpingo-oophorectomy.  My interest usually lies in new surgical [...]

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Vaginal Rejuvenation

While there are a myriad of possible gynecological surgeries, which ones do women elect to have performed?  In the past tubal ligation and varying degrees of hysterectomy have been the most popular elective gynecological surgeries.  In the 1990s, though, elective c-sections began to boom.  Recently, however, a growing movement has developed in backlash to the [...]

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Crabs: What Are They?

In school growing up there were numerous crab jokes made by my classmates.  If we wanted to give the ultimate insult we would say, “S/he’s got crabs.”  Of course, we didn’t really know what crabs were.  We knew vaguely they were something one acquired in the genital region generally from a sexual encounter and are [...]

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Introduction to the Cervix

The word cervix has only recently come to refer almost exclusively to the portion of the uterus that narrows between the vagina and the body of the uterus (corpus uteri). Cervix is from the Latin for “neck” and uterus is from the Latin for “womb.” Thus, the cervix is the neck [...]

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Oncofertility: A Budding Field

So, another topic brought up by my time at the bioethics conference in Cleveland:  oncofertility.  I had often thought about this very idea, but didn’t realize there was a field, the name coined of 2006, addressing just this.  Basically, it is what its name indicates–fertility options for persons with cancer.  De facto, it addresses women’s [...]

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