A vaginal canal that does not fit a penis

"When you say 'Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome' (MRKH) they think you're talking about a rare disease; when you explain what it consists of, they assume it is. When you mention that one in five thousand girls are born with this, it's not so funny anymore". Ana is a rokitansky woman, women who are born with an incomplete uterus, sometimes without it. This is accompanied by a vaginal canal that is also not like the one we conceived. "This one doesn't fit a penis." Ana went through the whole process of finding out, assimilating it and trying to act. But with total misinformation. Nobody knows what causes it. There are no studies that say why it happens. And the treatment is anything but comfortable. "Something that happens to one in five thousand girls born does not seem like a rare disease to me," he stresses.

The first sign that something is wrong occurs in adolescence. The same pattern is repeated in all of them: The rule does not arrive. That is usually the reason for the first visit to the gynecologist. "I grew up with my grandmother in Cuba," explains Dana, "I suffered from menstrual pain, like all my classmates, and we always thought that my period was coming. I always carried underwear in my backpack (tampons, in Cuba) because we really hoped, to happen." When they saw that it never happened, they went to a gynecologist who gave them the news. Another thing is that they understood it.

"In my first scan," says Carolina, they thought my vagina was six centimeters. But they hadn't measured the vaginal canal, but the urethra." His real odyssey began when, at the age of 18, he tried to have sex with his partner. They never could. No matter how hard they tried, the penis wouldn't go in. "He got to contracture penis. That's when I found out that I have a 'vaginal septum', that is, an imperforable hymen. I was born without a cavity. She only had a centimeter of vagina." The medical journey they wanted to subject her to included grafts made with the intestine, buttock, or thigh. I refused. That was total carnage." The other option they gave her was to have anal sex. Carolina's head exploded.

"Women with this syndrome do develop secondary sexual characteristics, they grow pubic hair, have breasts, but They don't bleed because they don't have a uterus or have a rudimentary one," explains Cristina Redondo, a gynecologist at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation. "They can have menstrual cramps. And in their sexuality penetration is barely existent, because their vaginal canal is a cul-de-sac," she adds. They will never be able to gestate a baby, unless womb transplants prosper. The Hospital Clinic has done the first successfully. Rokitansky mothers are adoptive. And it is believed that most of the celebrities who have opted for surrogacy are women with this problem, but this disease is not lucky enough to be visible to cute ladies. They would give too many clues about their actual intimacy.

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Our education stipulates that sexuality occurs between a man and a woman and, of course, the penis has a specific function. That is why Carolina, when she refused to undergo the operation, was given the option of having anal sex with her partner. Dana underwent surgery in Cuba, which made it easier for a humble family to resort to the intervention, very innovative 30 years ago, which is when the surgery was performed. "So you can get married," the doctor told him. They used skin from her abdomen to reconstruct a vagina for her. But the recovery was horrible: three months of pain, cures and vaginal dilations. Every day they inserted a condom full of gauze into her vagina, trying to make it adapt to what some believe it was designed for: to house a penis. Every day they pushed a little more, a little more, a little more. "Put it like that, it sounds easy, but it's terrible," says Dana. "I don't remember it being traumatic, but it was very painful." Other women who have been through the same thing have told me that I have been lucky. That for them it was even more horrible." Dana, like all Rokitansky women who undergo surgery, was recommended to have sex with men as soon as possible "so that 'that' would take shape."

The gynecologist, Cristina Redondo, certifies that a reconstruction only makes sense to receive penetrations. "At the Jiménez Díaz Foundation, we don't do reconstructions. In any case, I work with dilators." In reality, not all Rokitansky women undergo the operation. They don't even all go through the dilators. Ana is a lesbian, a Rokitansky woman. She never considered the obligation to have a vaginal canal, thanks to the fact that her family wanted her to choose with her in mind. Some Rokitansky perceive pleasure after the reconstruction. But not all. It is studied whether the clitoris, the absolute organ of pleasure, suffers in these operations. "The truth is that I was lucky not to miss that they fit me. I have never had sex with men, so when I didn't get my period and my gynecologist informed me of everything I thought, 'okay, when I need it' At that time I thought that I would have sex with men anyway. I have never had it. And, right now, if I did, I think I have many other possibilities to have a good time without the need for me to have a hole in my vagina so that enjoy it. It's not necessary, I assure you."

For Ana, the first woman we met with the syndrome, what is really necessary is to make this situation visible, since so many women are going to suffer from it: one in every five thousand girls born. "We do not know how to have sex without intercourse. We do not consider sex based on male pleasure. We do not know that our daughters can be born like this. 16-year-old girls have the right to know how to act if, at that age, they are diagnosed It can't be that we don't know anything about anything." Misinformation, as always, is the worst option, but today, Rokitansky women are not on the agenda of any teaching, not even those related to pregnancy. Shall we talk about them?

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