The following is a description of what to expect on the first video pelvic and genital educational, coaching, and advocacy consultation:
We are now offering a complimentary 30-minute consultation with Dr. Echenberg to help you decide whether to schedule a full 2+ hour call. Contact us for further information.
Specialized Disclaimer: Chronic Pelvic, Genital, and Sexual Pain Disorders for people inquiring from any location in the world:
Disclaimer: The information provided during these sessions is intended solely for educational and advocacy purposes related to chronic pelvic, genital, and sexual pain disorders. These sessions do not constitute medical care, diagnosis, or treatment, and are not a substitute for consultation with a licensed healthcare provider.
While I am a semi-retired gynecologist licensed in Pennsylvania, I do not practice medicine or offer clinical services for these educational consultations. My role is to help individuals better understand their condition, navigate care options, and identify credentialed providers who specialize in pelvic and sexual pain.
No physical examination, diagnostic interpretation, or prescription will be provided. Participation in these sessions does not establish a physician–patient relationship, and individuals are encouraged to seek care from licensed professionals in their state.
If you are like many of the women and men we see in our program, you likely have seen many other specialists regarding your pelvic, genital, and/or sexual pain symptoms and may have been suffering from these issues for months, years, or even decades.
You may believe you cannot discover anything new that you have not heard before. The first thing you should know is that we will approach your chronic pain symptoms in an entirely different manner than you are probably used to. Dr. Echenberg spends significant time with all new consultations. The entire visit is dedicated to educating about the body and how pain is processed. Pain and neuroscience research has exploded in the past 30 years, highlighting the importance of individuals understanding their bodies as much as possible to manage their symptoms.
Dr. E helps piece together and connect the dots that most people may never have heard of or understood before. He provides a masterclass in pelvic regional pain, which likely contributes to the severity of an individual's symptoms, and explains how this relates to pain processing in the human body and nervous system. Information, validation, and explanation - all are needed to begin your healing process. You will be taught simple explanations of the development of these painful symptoms, which commonly cause persistent challenges to normal daily functioning.
These may range from chronic bladder issues to irritable bowel symptoms, irritation, itching, burning, or pain in the vaginal, rectal, perineal, and external genitals of all genders, difficulty sitting, groin pain, no longer able to exercise comfortably, chronic fatigue, bloating, and pain in the lower abdomen, chronic low back pain, increased anxiety and depression, and sexual discomforts of all descriptions.
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Above all, we want you to know that we understand pain. We also appreciate the difficulty of feeling so badly, not being believed, and still appearing healthy. Many of our previous patients have been led to believe that their symptoms are “in their heads” and often begin to internalize these beliefs. The average age of our patients is relatively young (20s to 50s), but we hope our program will encourage younger people to seek help even earlier than those who have come before them.
The coaching goals are to work at your own pace to increase your ability to maintain daily activities and quality of life, keep you out of the emergency room and/or operating room unless absolutely needed, and ensure that referrals to other modalities, such as physical therapy, counseling, mind/body relaxation, and/or any other referrals, are up to date.
Again, we hope you take advantage of exploring our site and other resources before your first visit. Our program will provide you with extensive education about your body, symptoms, and how past and present traumas have affected your body and led to your current symptomatic experience. As you will learn, both pain and inflammation are essential for our survival, but when either or both of those bodily protective mechanisms get out of control, we begin to see chronic illnesses that are very common and yet remain “invisible” to a large part of the health care community.
Our entire team welcomes you to our program.