The following is a description of what to expect on the first video pelvic health consultation:
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 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. He uses this time to review your questionnaire and listen to your history in great detail, and a large portion of this visit is dedicated to educating you on your body and how pain is processed. Pain research has exploded in the past 20 years and shows the importance of individuals understanding their bodies as much as possible to manage their pain.
We apologize if we cannot schedule you to meet with Dr. Echenberg quickly. Our comprehensive website is meant to provide helpful information in the interim. Please take advantage of this website to learn as much as you can about our overall mission and the types of common diagnoses we have seen for the past 20+ years. These may range from chronic bladder issues to irritable bowel symptoms, irritation, itching, burning or pain in the vaginal and external genitals, difficulty and pain with sitting, groin pain, no longer able to exercise comfortably, chronic fatigue, bloating, and pain in the lower abdomen, chronic low back pain, and sexual discomforts of all descriptions.
After viewing this video, please hit the back page on your browser to get back to our site.
Above all, we want you to know that we listen, believe, and understand pain. We also realize how difficult it is to feel so badly, not to be believed, and still look like you are healthy. We know that so many of our 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 quite young (20s to 50s), but we hope our program will encourage younger girls and women to seek help even earlier than those who have come before them.
The 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 our other resources before you meet for your first visit. We know that our program will educate you greatly about your body, your symptoms, and how you and your body have reacted to various traumas, both past and present, leading 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.