A nursery worker is facing 60 hours of treatment so she can have sex, after she was born with a rare condition which means her vagina never developed properly.
Tk Kennedy was 17 when she was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome - meaning she is missing her womb, cervix and part of her vagina.
Now 20, Tk is having to come to terms that her dreams of becoming pregnant will never come true, although as she has ovaries she would be able to have biological children through a surrogate.
The avid dancer claims she smiles and laughs when told she's "lucky" to not have periods but admits it's actually a "kick in the teeth" each time she hears the comment as she'd always dreamed of becoming a mum.
The keen singer is now hoping to start a "painful and uncomfortable" treatment to dilate her vaginal canal, which involves using dilators for 40 minutes twice a day, for at least the next three months.
Tk, from Verwood, Dorset, now wants to raise awareness of MRKH online and said her diagnosis is something she's "learned to embrace" and see as a "strength" given she can support and help other women.
She said: "I have a very short vagina canal and don't have a cervix or a womb. My vaginal canal is not properly developed so it's very very little so I'm unable to have comfortable sex without treatment or surgery.
"With treatment you use dilators and start with a very very tiny one no bigger than the size of your pinky 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."
Tk works 10 hour shifts four days a week, so organising her day around the treatments can be challenging, and the treatment itself is serving as a reminder that she has to go through more than her friends just to have a normal life.
"You can dilate through sex but it’s likely to be very painful because there’s basically no room to be able to have sex," she explained.
"It depends on the person because they might have a long enough vagina canal so they can have sex and it might only be uncomfortable for the first few times.
"All my girlfriends are obviously not doing it so it's just another thing that highlights how different I am and a reminder of this condition because it can be quite upsetting and it's not a nice thing to go through and going to be painful and uncomfortable, but yet it's something that I want to do so that I can have sex."
She added she's feeling ready to start treatment and is hoping to do so next year at the same time as a friend so they can support one another through it.
Tk said she had her first doctor's appointment in April 2019 and had an MRI before she was transferred to a hospital that specialised in MRKH where she was eventually diagnosed that October.
Tk said: "When I was 17 I still hadn't started my period and had gone to the doctors and told them and they said 'oh, you're just a late bloomer', 'it will be fine, you'll start' and kept pushing me away.
"I [later] was like 'look, this is it, I've had enough, don't push me away. Something's up because I still haven't started'.
"They said that they thought I might have polycystic ovary syndrome and sent me for an ultrasound and after an hour he was like 'oh, maybe you just don't have a womb'.
"And I was like 'wait, hold up, what? You can be born without a womb?"
Tk added: "I told my best friend pretty soon after I got diagnosed and she just hugged me and we cried because we talked about being pregnant at the same time and she understood the heart-break it was for me.
"Anyone with MRKH can probably agree and relate that one of the top comments is 'oh, you're so lucky you don't have periods'.
"And then it's like 'yeah but actually I'd take periods any day to be able to have a child'.
"You smile and laugh but behind closed doors it a kick in the teeth because actually I'm not lucky because I'm missing out on something far better than not having periods."
Tk jointly runs MRKH Stars which aims to support young and newly diagnosed women with the condition and she said that she's gained "another family" from her involvement.
She said: "When I met my best friend with MRKH she helped me realise that I didn't need to suffer in silence, I have someone to grieve with and understands where I'm coming from. I can now help others with it by supporting them and spreading awareness, and one day I could have a child of my own through adoption and give them a loving family.
“Now I don't see it as a weakness, I see it as a strength."
