Aunt Vadge: my BV medicaid fell through – what can I do?

Hi Aunt Vadge, 

I went to the doctor with my aunt to get birth control, my parents are uncool with sex and all of that stuff. While there they tested me and they called back and said I had BV.

They put me on Medicare because my parents would freak if I went to the gyno. Medicare never came through with the medicine because of a whole mix-up.

What do I do to fix my BV? I got diagnosed a couple of months ago but I honestly think I have had it for years. I remember having a fishy odor for years.

Yours,
Mix-up
______

Hi Mix-up,

Thanks for writing. It is true that parents aren’t usually the greatest fans of their kids having sex! It can also be really difficult to talk to your parents about your vagina and discuss any problems you’re having. You are lucky to have a good aunt to help you sort out birth control and get your vaginal and reproductive health under control. It’s important.

In terms of medicine, the treatment you would normally be given for BV is oral or vaginal metronidazole, an antibiotic. These antibiotics have a success rate of about half, so in fact it could be argued that it is worth trying, however half the time it’ll just come back, so … It’s hard to say.

In my view, it is worth trying, because other treatments can fail just as many times. Repeated antibiotic treatments aren’t very good for your body though, since they destroy your natural immunity, the very thing that usually saves you from this in the first place. A better way of at least attempting to solve the problem is to run the bad bacteria out of town, particularly when it comes to normal flora like G. vaginalis and yeast infections. These are normally present in our bodies a lot of the time, they just need to be kept in check. Sometimes they overgrow.

Treating BV is tricky, so you have a process ahead of you. You have no doubt seen our whole section on BV, but on top of that, we have written a book on the subject, with a treatment plan included.

You have a steep learning curve ahead of you in terms of how your vagina works and how to manipulate it into doing your bidding. In a nutshell, recurrent BV is caused because the bacteria form a biofilm with other bacteria joining forces, and this biofilm is sticky and resistant to treatment. It changes the environment of your vagina, making survival of your good bacteria very difficult or impossible. This is what causes the smell and discharge, if there is dicharge. Fishy vag isn’t normal.

To simplify your understanding, I would recommend the Killing BV ebook and trawl through our website. The treatment program requires a couple of ingredients, but perhaps you could talk to your aunt about buying them for you if you don’t have money. They are inexpensive. She will no doubt understand the importance of treating your condition.

It is important in future that you get proper reproductive tract care, so see if there is a local sexual health clinic around with cheap or free services, and get regular check-ups, pap smears and examinations. There are too many things that can go wrong not to know what’s happening with your vagina.

BV can really impair your ability to use your vagina in a fun (or functional) way, so don’t wait to treat it. If we can help with anything else, write back anytime.

Warmest regards,
Aunt Vadge