SparkrLabs.com ad: My Best Self

Gyno: "You have the smallest vagina I've ever seen." Me: "What?" Gyno: "That's 3 attempts with the smallest speculum I own." Gyno, to my husband: "You're a lucky man." Husband: [laughs, the nervous kind] Me: [says nothing] Gyno: "Have you tried a lubricant?" Me: "I've got 7 tubes at home." Gyno: "Some dryness is normal at your age." ======= After the appointment, my husband and I said nothing on the way home. I'm 52 years old, and a stranger with a speculum had made me the punchline in my own appointment. It would have been funny, except my husband isn't lucky. He ain't getting lucky no more. And she wasn't wrong. My vagina IS smaller. It went bone dry 3 years ago. Then it started getting tighter and smaller. Like it was closing up. 5 doctors, and not a single one told me why. ======== Meanwhile, my husband's looks and sex drive haven't faded one bit. Annoyingly he's aged like a Clooney while I've aged like a satsuma left in the fruit bowl. He tries to be understanding. He stops the second I flinch. But I've started wondering how many more nights he can handle "not tonight, honey." Now he plays pickleball 3 times a week, with a woman called Samantha. She's 32 and is a pilates instructor. I've started stalking her Instagram. Looking for signs she has a man so she won't steal mine. I can't deal with yet another betrayal. My vagina has already turned against me. ======== Betrayal 1: Grandma dry at 52 Bone dry. Not "could do with a bit of lube" dry, but sandpaper dry. I have 7 tubes of lubricant, moisturizer and "intimate serum" in my bedside drawer. They all do the same thing, sit on top like oil on water while I'm as dry as the Sahara underneath. Because the dryness is IN you. Like a riverbed cracking open in the Texas sun. ======== Betrayal 2: The UTIs On the rare occasions we did manage sex, I'd pay for it 48 hours later. Peeing razor blades. 3 UTIs in 5 months. Antibiotics cleared it every time, and every time it came back a few weeks later. By the third round my doctor was saying the word "recurrent" like it was a personality trait. So sex came with a 48 hour tax, and I stopped being willing to pay it. ======== Betrayal 3: Shrinking vagina Then it got smaller. First I thought I imagined this. But then my gyno confirmed: smallest vagina she'd ever seen. Getting narrower and tighter like the end of a cave. Sex stopped feeling like sex and started feeling like a procedure. It tears, it bleeds, and I'm sore for 3 days afterwards. We went from twice a week, to once a month, to 7 months ago. And now I turn him down before he's even asked, to save me the guilt and him the rejection. ======== Betrayal 4: My FLAPS have disappeared After my vagina's size was insulted, I got the hand mirror out. Imagine my horror when I noticed that my inner flaps had disappeared too. I asked my husband when was the last time he'd seen them. Like I'd lost my keys. Said he couldn't remember. Maybe a few years. Checks out. This is around the time menopause showed up. The dryness I was prepared for. The shrinking vagina was a surprise. But disappearing flaps? Well, I'm FLAPPER-GASTED. ======== 5 doctors. 5 versions of lower your expectations. Doctor 1 said use more lube. Shrugged when I said I had 7. Doctor 2 told me to buy a good vibrator, use more lube and try to relax. Doctor 3 suggested a glass of wine beforehand. A doctor was recommending something that causes MORE dehydration. I wanted to recommend returning to medical school. Doctor 4 sent me to pelvic floor therapy to relax the muscles. Helped for the tension, did nothing for the lubrication. Doctor 5 told me it was normal at my age and said sex wasn't everything. Dismissed. Gaslit. Told to relax, lubricate and lower my expectations. Total cost of being told to lower my expectations: $3,000. ======== Back at Bev's, once we'd stopped laughing about her massive vagina and my tiny one, she went quiet on me. "You've seen 5 doctors. Not one of them told you why." "Mine helped me in one single appointment." Then she texted me a number. "Dr. Hammond. She's different. She actually listens." ======== The first doctor who actually explained anything Dr. Hammond didn't look at her computer once. She listened for 10 whole minutes, which is longer than the other 5 managed between them. Then she pulled out a marker and drew 3 circles on the exam table paper. "Your vagina has dried out from the inside. When the tissue loses its moisture it thins, and thin tissue tightens up and stops stretching." "Picture your vagina as a rainforest turning into a desert, and you're experiencing 3 droughts happening at once." Drought 1. The Moisture Dry Out "Hyaluronic acid acts like millions of tiny water balloons inside the vaginal tissue. They hold the water and pull blood in. After menopause they pop and disappear, and your ceramides go with them, which is the barrier that keeps whatever moisture is left from evaporating." "That's why all 7 tubes failed. They were sitting on the outside of a problem that lives on the inside." Drought 2. The Collagen Collapse "Collagen is the scaffolding underneath. After 40 you lose 2.1% of it every year, and half of it is gone by 50." "Dry tissue with no scaffolding left goes thin, tight and fragile. That's why sex tears you. And that's why your vagina and labia minora appear to have shrunk." Drought 3. The Bacterial Wipeout "Your good bacteria, the ones that keep you at the perfect pH of 4.5, are dying off faster than your body can replace them. What's left is the bad bacteria that cause infections, which is where those UTIs of yours are coming from." She circled where all 3 overlapped. "This is where you live now. Dry, thin and inflamed at the same time." "Of course it hurts. There's no moisture, no cushion and nothing left to stretch." ======== The handwritten ingredient list "So prescribe me something," I said in desperation. "There's nothing to prescribe for this. Your body has stopped producing its own moisture. You have to replace what your body used to produce from the inside." She wrote on her pad. Not a prescription, an ingredient list. Hyaluronic acid, minimum 30mg clinical dose, for moisture from the inside Ceramides, to repair the moisture barrier so it stays there Multi-collagen complex, must include Type V for vaginal tissue Vaginal specific probiotic strains, to hold your pH between 3.8 and 4.5 "Find all of it in one bottle. Most supplements contain 1 ingredient. Almost none combine the lot." "The women who come back to me saying sex doesn't hurt anymore are the ones who found something with all 3." ======== 3 hours of ingredient labels at midnight 3 hours of very expensive nonsense in very beautiful bottles. Collagen powders with Types I and III only, which is wonderful news for my hair and no news whatsoever for my vagina. Then I found an anonymous forum. The kind where women tell the raw truth. The same product name over and over. SparkV. "Sex felt like grinding glass. Now I'm wetter than I was at 30" "2 weeks in and the soreness after sex was completely gone" "No more lube at 58. I did not think that was possible" I checked the label against Dr. Hammond's list. ✅ 30mg hyaluronic acid, the exact clinical dose she'd written. ✅ Ceramides for the moisture barrier. ✅ 2,000mg multi-collagen blend, Types I, II, III, V, X, including the Type V she'd underlined. ✅ 3 vaginal specific probiotic strains for pH. Every box ticked. And it was hormone free. ======== ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Before SparkV, due to my age and menopause, I was noticing serious dryness when trying to get intimate with my husband. Things are a lot better now, no more need for a lubricant gel." - Candice, verified customer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "This.Works. After a radical hysterectomy, being thrown straight into the depths of menopause, and having my body feel more like a prison than anything else. 2 weeks and I'm so much better! Sex is great, no more sandpaper feeling and no more bleeding. Actually enjoyable again! I can actually 'get there' again." - ErinT, verified customer Even the doctors love SparkV 👇 "This is what I recommend for my own patients. I'm Dr. Daniel Gomez, and I believe that SparkV can change your life." ======== $39, against the $3,000 I'd already burned. $39 is 2 of the tubes currently rotting in my bedside drawer. 2 capsules a day. Figured I had nothing to lose. Unlike my shrinking vagina. ======== I kept my own vagina monologues Day 5 Nothing. Of course it was too good to be true. Was about to send a snarky message to customer service when I remembered they said it could take up to 90 days. Told myself to chill and stalked Samantha's Insta instead. Day 10 Listened to some erotica about a Scottish Highlander, trying to seduce my dead vagina back to life. I went to the toilet and felt moisture when I wiped. Real moisture. Mine. Not lube sitting on top of me. Day 16 Listened to more erotica. Got my pelvic wand out. Squirted some lube on top. It went all the way in. I could barely fit a finger in 2 weeks ago. I spent the next 30 minutes with my wand thinking about that Scottish Highlander. I didn't need to re-apply lube once. Day 22 We were cuddling in bed on a Sunday morning. His hand went between my legs. Then under my panties. Suddenly his face looked shocked. "Omg, you're so wet!" We made love slowly, and I got emotional halfway through (or maybe I'd just been listening to too much erotica). No lube, no tearing, no blood. And 48 hours later, no razor blades and no antibiotics. Day 30 I initiated. Me. On a random Wednesday morning. He missed pickleball with Samantha. ======== 8 weeks later, back in Dr. Hammond's office. "Your moisture is back to normal. The tissue looks far less fragile than it did. pH is 4.2. And for the record, your vagina isn't abnormally small." I bought another 3 bottles in the parking lot. ======== There are 37 ways to make a d*ck hard. But we're told to try lube and relax. A man only has to mention once that things aren't working, and walks out the same afternoon with a prescription for the little blue pill and 7 brands to choose from. A woman says her vagina has dried out, tightened and started tearing during sex, and gets dismissed and told "it's normal for your age." The system doesn't want to help women. It doesn't care about our pleasure. It only wants to keep us as patients forever. ======== Here's what every woman over 45 needs to know. If you're bone dry no matter how much lube you use If sex has started tearing you and it feels like your vagina is closing up If sex comes with a UTI 48 hours later If you're avoiding sex with your husband while simultaneously being terrified he'll cheat You're not broken and your sex life isn't over. Menopause has stripped your vagina of 3 essential things: - Hyaluronic acid and ceramides for moisture - Collagen that kept the tissue thick and stretchy - Good bacteria to hold your pH and protect you against infections SparkV supports all 3 things. Not with hormones, and not with another tube that sits on top of the problem. But with the ingredients your body used to make on its own, before menopause turned the taps off. SparkV worked for me (the woman with the world's smallest vagina). It worked for the women in that forum thread. It could work for you too. 👉 Try SparkV Risk-Free For 90 Days https://www.sparkrlabs.com/products/bring-back-spark 💝 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee, use every capsule, then decide 🌿 Doctor Recommended Formula, Hormone-Free 📍 Made in the USA in an FDA-Registered Facility 🧬 A Formula That Supports All 3 Vaginal Health Systems ⭐ Trusted by Over 3 Million Women Worldwide 🔓 No subscriptions unless you choose one ======== P.S. 3 glasses of wine deep on a Tuesday, I typed a 500-word complaint to the gynecologist who congratulated my husband on my shrivelled vagina. I called it unprofessional. At one point I used the word "sommelier" and I still don't know why. I never sent it. I did leave her a 1-star review though. Unlike SparkV, which I gave 5 stars. 👉 Try SparkV Risk-Free For 90 Days https://www.sparkrlabs.com/products/bring-back-spark