Once upon a time, I had health insurance that actually, like, covered things. After attending a yoga-related workshop on the pelvic floor, I learned there was such a thing as pelvic floor physical therapy that could sometimes help with chronic pelvic pain of various origins. I also learned that there was then a pelvic floor physical therapist relatively local to me. I wasn’t really sure if it could help with endometriosis, but I decided mentioning it couldn’t hurt — and so brought it to the attention of both my primary care provider and my gynecologist.
They agreed. Particularly, I think, as an alternative to prescribing pain medication and as a way to foist me and my chronic problems off on someone else. (Note: These are not my current providers. When I finally got someone to listen to my dysmenorrhea complaints, my former GP referred me to his golf buddy, the gynecologist. The gynecologist performed a lap, found endo he couldn’t remove, declared “everything okay for now” since there was no visible obstruction to my fertility, and was perturbed when I continued to complain about pain. So, yeah. Exes.)
Anyway, while only a couple of people have asked me in real life — and maybe 10 or so people have on the Internet — I get a fair amount of blog traffic from search engine queries related to the pelvic floor and to pelvic floor dysfunction. This makes me wonder: 1) if this is a topic that interests some people but that people might be hesitant to ask about directly; 2) if there is a lack of satisfying resources available about pelvic floor dysfunction.
So, in the interest of providing more pelvic floor sharing, I’m going to write about my experience with pelvic floor physical therapy. It was a few years ago; I went for a total of 5 visits, and then my physical therapist moved out of town. I debated trying to adjust to a new person, and in doing so discovered that my insurance only wants to pay for a total of 6 visits for a single issue ever. Sort of like if my pelvic floor had been injured in a fall, rather than having been fucked up by years of multiple chronic issues. There were insurance appeals; they were denied; I didn’t go back.
Which is a shame. I don’t know for sure that additional sessions of PT would have produced continual improvement for me — there’s always the possibility that it had already done what it could do — but that should have been a decision between my health care professionals and me, not one dictated by my insurance company.
Okay, and I will write more about the actual details of my experience. But that is going to get long, and this seems as good a place as any for stopping the intro.
