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Out of the box

 

I promised that I would write about this topic, and NOW here it is….SEX and MS.  That’s right, everyone’s favorite topic, right?  Although, I KNOW that Shawn has been a bit nervous about this post:)  And dad, you might want to skip today’s read:)  But there is just NO way that I am NOT going to talk about it, because I KNOW that when I was first diagnosed, I would have LOVED to have found something like this to read, to give me hope, to ensure me that I might NOT become an old spinster that hadn’t had a good orgasm in FOREVER.   But, there wasn’t anything, or if there WAS, I missed it.   I had more to be concerned about then some, because prior to getting this super nifty disease, I was already experiencing “issues” in the SEX department; and by “issues” I mean I wasn’t getting any.  NONE, nada.  I was in a loveless, sexless marriage.

If you have spent ANY time here on my blog, you might be wanting to scream BULLSHIT right now.  You may want to point out that I have three kids, and I have already mentioned that they all came out of MY vagina (MRI Scan – A hole in my head) so I must have had sex with my EX at some point.  You would be correct, we did make whoopee on occasion.  As most couples that have done “the nasty” and created little ones as a result, can attest too, having little people living with you, certainly puts a damper on the number of “horizontal dances” that occur on a daily, weekly, monthly and dare I say yearly basis (https://www.facebook.com/ShitMyKidsRuined.)  That was certainly a part of it in the beginning.  But as time went on, it was no longer because of the kids (or the fact that there wasn’t a fucking DOOR to our bedroom, but that will have to be a rant for another day( it came down to the fact that he didn’t love me (and as I learned in counseling toward the end, wasn’t attracted to me, and didn’t even LIKE me.)

Yup, there it is, for all the world to know.  I didn’t “get it” (not even once) for over four years!  In that four years, what I DID get, was MS.  Although I didn’t do a whole lot of research about all the great things that come with having Multiple Sclerosis I did know that sexual dysfunction was a SUPER common “side-effect.”  I would go to the doctor  and be handed the clipboard with paperwork to be completed and there at the bottom was the question that I grew to hate:

Problems with sexual function?  Including interest in sex, sensation, arousal, erection, ejaculation, lubrication, orgasm?

 

The reason for my animosity wasn’t because I was embarrassed by the question but rather that I was embarrassed by my answer.  “I Don’t Know.”  Every time I went to the doctor, there was the paperwork and on that paperwork was the question, and every time, I had to put “I Don’t Know.”  Eventually, my doctor asked me about my response.  He apparently didn’t KNOW what “I Don’t Know” meant.  I then had to explain to him about the loveless/sexless life I was living.  I had to talk about the fact that those two things had left me feeling so not sexy, that even masturbation, my toys that had never let me down, were failing to do the trick.  So I DIDN’T KNOW.  Was my inability to reach climax because of the disease or was it because I felt unattractive and about as sexy as the tanorexic mom.

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My divorce and all that came with it is a whole other story (maybe even another book) BUT the important part to THIS story is that I did get a divorce and found myself confronted with the idea of DATING again after 16 years!   Yup, there is a HOT ticket, a DDD out on the prowl; DISEASED, DIVORCED and DESPERATE….AND I then made a BOOTY CALL (a whole different post on that one:)  I joined the world of on-line dating (some good stories there, promise I will share) and I met Shawn.  I could FINALLY answer the questions relating to sexual dysfunction; no, no, no and no.  To be honest (as if I haven’t been up to this point)  not only was there NOT dysfunction, things were “functioning” better than they had ever “functioned” before, and really I enjoyed “functioning” a LOT!  This is the point in the post that Shawn has been dreading: me extolling the virtues of having a boyfriend that “rocks my world” in bed.  But I don’t think I need to say much more than that, don’t need to get specific (or graphic:)  but just wanted to tell anyone that cares (probably not many) that one area that I did get “lucky” with the MS is when it come to my sex life.

But for a relationship to really matter and last, there is a lot more than sex that has to be good.  Over the past 2 1/2 years I have learned

  1. What it is like to be in love with your best friend
  2. What it feels like too have someone that truly and deeply cares about you
  3. To know that someone really DOES have your back
  4. How it feels to be loved for being you, NO MATTER WHAT
  5. To ask for help and know that I will get it
  6. What it’s like to be with someone that isn’t embarrassed when you pee your pants in middle of the pub (OR Shit all over his room:)

But there is something else that I love about this man.  He has figured out the CURE FOR MY MS symptoms – or at least some of MY MS PAIN.  And it is…..V.S.

VAGINAL STIMULATION.

No REALLY! I am being serious – this is not a joke!  To all the men out there with MS, sorry, I don’t know if PS (PENIS STIMULATION) would have the same results, as I don’t have a penis, but  for all the women, all I can tell you is that I can be having THE WORST DAY (you know the one that the pain is at a 12 on a scale of 1-10) and 20 minutes of Shawn and his “magic” fingers and I am back down to a 5 – which is MY normal (and sometimes even lower for a little bit afterwards. )  I know that everyone is thinking that I am writing this to be funny and entertaining and it IS funny and entertaining, but it is also true!  You should know that my mom and dad, along with countless others that I wouldn’t choose to talk to about this topic with are reading my blog faithfully.  So WHY would I put my loving and supportive family through this if it wasn’t true?  I am not THAT inappropriate.  But as I have said, I am writing this blog to  get people to laugh and smile, but to also put another someone’s story out there, in the hopes that it might help others.  So I feel I am obligated (it is my DUTY) to tell the whole wide world about V.S..  One of the BEST “perks” is it is the FIRST thing I have found that helps, with no negative side-effects.  BONUS!

The irony that I had hit the age that was supposed to be a woman’s sexual prime and was in a loveless/sexless MS ridden hell did not go unnoticed.  Not much in my life was supporting or embracing that peak in my life.  I am not sure I even believed it; feeling sex-less rather than sex-y it was hard to imagine that I would be wanting sex, let alone craving or desiring it.  Shawn should be feeling pretty good about himself…as a redneck, blue-collar, high-school educated pipe-fitter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OwCSRuw1Lw) he has managed to do what doctors and researchers all over the world have failed to do.   I suppose that one could argue that it is NOT actually a CURE, my lesions are still there, but I do look at the results of my most recent MRI (The results are in…First MRI scan for MS in three years) and the fact that I was not on any disease modifying drugs (DMDs.) MAYBE I can credit my regular regimen of V.S..  Whether it is stopping, slowing, or curing, it DOES something, it makes me feel better, and not just in the porn movie soundtrack AAHHH…. OOOOOO….AAAAAHHHH way but honestly does make the pain that I experience ALL over -from my hands and arms, to my shoulders and back to my legs and feet – BETTER.  A LOT better.  Manageable.  Liveable and do-able.

I had come up with an idea: I was going to take a weekend that we don’t have the kids (which would mean that we would have 4 nights together) and I was going to have V.S. on the first and third morning, and not on the 2nd and 4th, to see if the overall day and the pain was noticeably improved on days 1 and 3 as opposed to 2 and 4 (my own self induced medical experiment.)  But then I realized, if having V.S. feels as good as it does AND leads to a better pain day, why the hell would I choose to NOT have it any chance I can get?