Secret Suffering: How Women's Sexual and Pelvic Pain Affects Their Relationships (Sex, Love, and Psychology)
• Shares the insights of a CPP sufferer and a doctor who has developed a successful CPP treatment model for a condition that is all-too-often endured in silence• Includes research gathered at sites ranging from Stanford University to the International Pelvic Pain Society is included• Features first-person interviews• 4 figures". . . Susan has been a driving force in creating this book and, partnered with Dr. Robert Echenberg, now offers hope andencouragement to the millions of women struggling with this condition.Secret Suffering: Understanding Women's Sexual Pain and How That Affects RelationshipS≪/i> has it all. Patient stories, a husband's point of view, a same sex couples experience with pelvic pain, the dilemma confronting single women with chronic pain, faith and the poignant story of two men who experience sexual pain. They talk about the difficulties working with the medical community but the great hope promised by a new, far more accepting medical paradigm of chronic pelvic and sexual pain. The appendix offers 64 tips to relieve sexual and pelvic pain! I can't say enough about this book. It's now at the very top of books I will be recommending to patients struggling with IC and intimacy. This will, beyond any other book I can suggest, break your isolation and show you that you are not alone and that there is hope! It's truly a must read."-Interstitial Cystitis Network"Drawing on responses to an Internet survey, this book treats Chronic Pelvic Pain (CPP), a 'silent epidemic' said to affect some 15 million American women—and their male/same sex partners. Emphasizing that patients need to be heard and that doctors need to ask the right questions, Bilheimer (a freelance writer who shares her struggles with CPP) and Dr. Echenberg (a CPP expert in private practice in Bethlehem, PA) discuss CPP's physiological and emotional aspects and treatment options. The book includes tips to relieve such pain, self-assessment questionnaires, methodological notes, information on running a CPP pain management practice, and a glossary."-SciTech Book News". . . the book's honesty and directness break open awareness of a critically important issue. With the Internet site (http://www.secretsuffering.com) and book release, one expects that Bilheimer and Echenberg have launched a much longer term project. With the conversation out on the table, the work of affecting policy, research, and access to care should begin to move. And many women and men will realize that their suffering does not need to be secret anymore."-PsycCRITIQUES