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TAKE A LOOK AT THIS CREAM. TAKE A GOOD LONG LOOK. 

MEMORIZE THE PACKAGING SO YOU MAKE SURE YOU NEVER BUY THIS CREAM FOR YOURSELF OR ANYONE YOU LOVE.

This post is about vaginas. My vagina in particular. I get yeast infections pretty regularly, and until recently I was able to afford to see a doctor who could prescribe me fluconazole.

Fluconazole, a drug also known by the brand name Diflucan, is a small pink pill. You take two pills a few days apart from each other to restore balance and harmony to your bountiful folds. I’ve never ever had a bad side effect from taking this pill.

Cut to November 2016. I’m a recent college grad without reliable health care coverage in the process of finding a job. And I’m dealing with a yeast infection. Before I moved out of state, my previous doctor told me about Miconazole. She said it was as effective as the pill and hallelujah, it’s over the counter! I decided to purchase the cream pictured above. This treatment only lasted 3 days, a convenient time frame for my schedule.

The application process was a little messy, and some of the cream came in contact with my vulva and labia. Within 5 minutes every piece of skin that had come in contact with the cream, excluding my hands, was on fire. I wanted to scream it was so painful. I began frantically searching for what I should do online. 

I found a whole forum of people on drugs.com who had experienced something similar. These comments saved me, and these were just on the first page. There were 33 pages total, the earliest dated July 2009.

I was writhing in pain at 2AM when I found this forum (which I found by searching “my vagina burn itch hurts after miconazole” on Google). As soon as I read these comments I threw the devil cream directly into the trash and jumped in the shower. I didn’t feel any actual relief until I reached in and scraped the cream out of me. I paid $17 plus tax on this bullshit, but I could have just as easily ripped up my money or paid someone to not hurt me. 

The moral of the story is that vaginal health care is is completely fucked up because we don’t have access to an over the counter cure for yeast infections that is safe for our bodies and also YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY THIS CREAM EVER.

AND THEN I LEARNED THAT IT’S BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE A YEAST INFECTION. I had a bacterial infection, which is honestly pretty much identical to a yeast infection depending on the severity. The only difference is that IF YOU HAVE A BACTERIAL INFECTION AND TRY TO USE YEAST INFECTION MEDICATION IT WILL HURT

But it’s not actually the medication’s fault. The medication DOES do what it’s supposed to do, provided you’re actually suffering from a yeast infection. Chances are though that you and every one who commented on this did, in fact, have bacterial infections instead.

FORTUNATELY they also make over the counter tests so you can know if you need to call your doctor or just grab some yeast medicine off the shelf. Next time if you aren’t sure, pee on a stick and save yourself a world of fucking pain

New article from Vice. Written by Veronique Mistiaen. Excerpted: 

Yegna (pronounced “Yen-ya”) means “ours” in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. The band was created in 2013 as part of a program to try to reframe the place of girls in a country where discrimination and violence against girls and women are common.

With their distinctive personalities and nicknames, the five band members (one was absent at the Bahir Dar concert) were quickly dubbed “Ethiopia’s Spice Girls ” by the British right-wing press. It was not meant as a compliment. For years, the Daily Mail waged a campaign against Yegna—which was co-funded by the UK Department for International Development (DIFD)—calling it “the most wasteful, ludicrous and patronizing” aid project in Africa.

Oh would you look at that I easily found the unedited original