Halle Berry Talks Herpes Misdiagnois, Had ‘Dry Vagina Syndrome’
recently opened up about a medical issue she had, which was originally incorrectly diagnosed as herpes.
During a recent appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show (via Independent), Berry recalled an incident where, one morning, she was having trouble urinating, and said it “took 10 minutes” to fully empty her bladder.
“One morning I tried to go to the bathroom and I couldn’t go, it was so painful. When I tried to let a little bit out, I couldn’t go. I had to squeeze it … It took me almost 10 minutes to just empty my bladder,” Berry said.
After a trip to the doctor with her partner, she was surprised to find out that the doctor told her she had herpes, something that caused her and her partner to play the “blame game” over the next 72 hours.
“We were trying to figure out who gave it to me, who gave it to him,” Berry said. “And then a couple hours after that, my doctor called me and said: ‘You do not have herpes.’”
However, after three days, Berry’s doctor called to say that she didn’t have herpes, but the doctor was unsure of what she had, forcing her to look into the issue on her own.
“This was a defining moment for me. I’m like, ‘What is this?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, that’s what it looked like,’” said Berry. “That sent me on my own reconnaissance, my own researching. And that’s when I came up with dry vagina syndrome that women have when they’re in perimenopause. And I realized, ‘Oh I’m 54-years-old. I learned that perimenopause can start in your late 30s even and early 40s. I thought, ‘Clearly I’m 54, but at that point nobody had really had a serious conversation.”
In the end, Berry said she’s hoping to use the experience as a way to teach other women who might be just as unprepared for things like she was.
“My doctor had no knowledge and didn’t prepare me,” said Berry. “That’s when I knew, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got to use my platform, I have to use all of who I am and I have to start making a change and a difference for other women.”
(Source: The Independent)
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