cottage-cheese-like discharge

Hello ladies.All I had ever heard about yeast infections was that you get “cottage-cheese-like discharge,” which unfortunately didn’t happen in my case. I say, unfortunately, not because I like the idea of cheese coming out of my vagina, but because it would have saved me so much blind terror.On any given day, I think about my crotch area a decent amount of time. But on this particular day, I became nothing BUT a giant, angry crotch solely focused on its next itch.I had to excuse myself from dinner. (And by “excuse” I mean I ran out of the room without saying anything, leaving my slightly picked over the plate on the table, in front of my roommates.) Once in my room, I proceed to scratch my crotch for 20 minutes straight. I wanted to stop, but before the idea of continuing to itch was even conscious, I was already doing it.“What if I burrow myself?” I thought, “Is that something anyone has ever called an ambulance for? If that happened, could I walk outside to meet the EMTs casually enough so that my roommates didn’t think I was insane? Oh, I’m just meeting up with an ambulance for something that isn’t a big deal...”Everything around me was potentially the enemy. I fantasized about lighting all my possessions on fire and starting a new life of crime with my angry crotch.Luckily, I also discovered multi-starred reviews of over-the-counter anti-itch creams designed for crotches, for which I took a 3 am the journey to a 24-hour CVS. (Earlier, I naively thought I could sleep through the night without itching myself awake every few hours.) During the half-mile walk home, I continuous fought the urge to jump behind a parked car and apply the cream immediately.The situation left me wondering: why aren’t more people talking about this? Do I need to hide/lie about why I’ve been so stressed, unproductive, and anxious-looking for the past couple days? Why I contemplated setting my apartment on fire?When a friend asked how I was, I just said “sick.” When she followed up by asking what was wrong with me, I decided to just to be upfront about it. Out of the four female friends I eventually told about my situation, three of them said they also had a yeast infection before. Those few people made me feel infinitely less insane and alone.Thinking about how much mental stress those few days caused me left me contemplating larger issues like education, body shame, and medical access. But it mostly made me feel really f***ing thankful that I live in a time and a place where there are Planned Parenthoods and 24-hour pharmacies.