Mapquest Vagina

Not all vaginas are created equal.

When I was in junior high, I wanted to make the switch from pads to tampons -- but I was a little worried (despite the illustrated instruction pamphlet in the box) about doing it right. You see, I wanted to be able to go swimming despite the time of the month. My BFF took me aside and gave me some advice:

Tampons don't work all that well, she said, there is always a little trickle. But, if you really want to use one, then all you do is push it all the way in on either side of the little divider wall. You can just push the wall to one side.

I can't tell you how long I looked for that wall. I felt around for it. I squatted over my mother's hand mirror and looked for it. I'm deformed, I thought. I'll never get married. I'll never have babies. Because I don't have a wall! I told no one of my deformity. A few years later, when my BFF went to her first gynecological visit, she was told that she had two uteri with one divided vagina. (Probably a bifurcated uterus)

Recently, I had a patient with a vaginal septum -- a little median dividing her vagina into two channels. It made checking her cervix sort of strange. You know what made it even stranger? When her husband started describing the location of the septum (it wasn't exactly in the middle.) Dude, please stop giving me directions inside your wife's vagina! It tore while we were pushing and that was pretty much the end of it -- it bled quite a bit for about 30 seconds and then stopped. Because it wasn't bleeding, the doc didn't suture it.