I FEEL SO DIFFERENT

Because Tk has a tiny vagina she can’t have babies or pain-free sex – but there is hope

- KIM ABRAHAMS & ROBYN LUCAS

SHE was well into her teens and her period hadn’t yet arrived – but she was told she was just a late bloomer.

But by the time she was 17, Tk Kennedy learnt the truth: she has a condition that means she’ll never have children and sex would always be painful unless she underwent a gruelling treatment.

Tk (20) was diagnosed with Mayer-RokitanskyKüster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome – a condition that leaves the vagina and uterus underdeveloped or absent.

She doesn’t have a womb and a cervix and part of her vagina is missing.

“My vaginal canal isn’t properly developed,” says Tk, who’s from Dorset, England.

“It’s very, very little so I’m unable to have comfortable sex without treatment or surgery.”

The condition can also cause uncomfortable pain, which sometimes causes her to “curl up in a ball on the floor”.

But there’s a glimmer of hope. She’ll soon undergo a painful 60-hour treatment that involves having to dilate her vagina twice a day for at least three months. The goal is to allow her to have pain-free sex.

“With treatment, you use dilators and start with a very, very tiny one, no bigger than the size of your pinkie, and stretch to make your vagina canal bigger so that when it comes to sex it’s comfortable and you’re stretched big enough to be able to have sex without it being painful,” says Tk, who works at a nursery.

“You have to do treatment for 20 minutes twice a day which is a lot. I work 10hour days four days a week, so trying to fit it either side of that can be quite challenging.”

Treatment varies depending on the length of a person’s vaginal canal, she explains.