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logic oncologist at Rutgers New
Jersey Medical School. (“You’d
never know how many people
have skin tags removed,” he
explains, “because most doctors
just say, ‘Oh, I’ll numb it up and
take it off for you.’”)
There are other ways to get rid
of suspicious cervical cells,
including freezing them off with
cryotherapy and using a scalpel
to cut them out. But doctors love
L E E P b e c au s e it ’s s o e a s y t o p e r -
for m. It ’s a l s o c on s ide r e d s a fe
with seemingly straightforward
side effects like bleeding and dis-
charge and an increased risk of
pregnancy complications.
Except that Sasha—and hun-
dreds of others—insist that it
carries a devastating risk their
doctors never mentioned. In a
Facebook group called Healing
From LEEP/LLETZ (LLETZ is the
term used overseas), women
share how LEEPs radically
altered their sex lives, how pene-
trative sex is now painful, how
they’ve lost sensation in their
vaginas, how they could now go
the rest of their lives without sex.
“I haven’t reached orgasm since
the operation,” wrote one
woman. “I miss my old self, who
b u r ne d w it h lu s t du r i n g s e x .”
Emily, 25, says she felt
nothing the first time she had
sex after her LEEP last year.
“Normally it’s not difficult for
me to orgasm, but it was like I
wasn’t even having sex,” she
says. “The guy I was dating was
inside me and I couldn’t feel it.”
She could still orgasm from clito-
ral stimulation, but even then,
she experienced “contraction-
like pain” in her lower abdomen.
Months later, some sensation has
returned to her vagina, but she
still feels stabbing pain on her
cervix during penetrative sex.
Gynos would seem like the
most sympathetic allies for
women claiming that their abil-
ity to orgasm has been cut out of
their bodies. Unfortunately, the
mechanics of sexual pleasure are
130
Cosmopolitan October 2019