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- [00:05]
A
Hello friends. This episode contains a story of incredible resilience in the face of hardship. There are discussions of cancer and mortality, as well as some pretty graphic descriptions of medical and body stuff. So please do take care when you listen. Some names and locations have been changed. This podcast was made with the support of New Zealand On Air.
- [00:30]
B
Hello friends, It's Melody, host of the Good Sex Project. Welcome to this Love Bite. If you're just arriving, A Love Bite is a short standalone story from the Good Sex Project. We're sharing these weekly in the lead up to the full series release very, very soon. I'm so excited to share that with you. This Love Bite is a really special one. It's a story of rupture and resilience that's pretty full on at times, but, but also incredibly inspiring and really important. Plus we get to spend time with this lovely human.
- [01:03]
C
Hi, I'm Jasmine. I'm 36.
- [01:06]
B
Jasmine is actually a pseudonym which she chose for her favourite Disney princess.
- [01:11]
C
I live in the South Island. I've been married to my husband for 14 years and we've been together since we were 17. So now more than half our lives.
- [01:23]
B
Even after years of talking with people about sex and love, I'm still surprised when couples meet that young and stay together.
- [01:30]
C
We've actually known each other since we were 12. We were in the same class in year eight. I had a little bit of a crush on him. He played the drums in a band and they sang a cover of Kiss Me by six Months none the Richer. And I was real jealous of the girl that got to be the singer we've got.
- [01:50]
B
She's all that in Dawson's Creek to thank for that late 90s super hit, Jasmine. And this drummer who we're gonna call Chris lost touch after year nine. But then when they were 16 they reconnected platonically.
- [02:02]
C
It was one of those situations where I really valued his friendship and was kind of like, don't want to ruin it, but also really like you.
- [02:12]
B
By their next birthdays, these two had given up trying to keep things platonic and were officially a couple. Chris and Jasmine are both Christian and church has been a big part of their lives since they were young. But, and this is really refreshing to me, the religious environments that they grew up in weren't overly sex negative. For example, when Jasmine was 10, their church got a new minister who'd been a staunch atheist before converting.
- [02:35]
C
So there was really nothing you could have ever done to shock him. And he had like, yeah, just that perspective on life that actually you know, you can do all the things. It's not gonna send you to hell.
- [02:49]
B
And. And Chris's family, who were more devout than Jasmine's, were still really accepting and open.
- [02:54]
C
They were never gonna judge him or turn him away for anything that he did. And he knew that.
- [02:59]
B
All of that said, of course, there were still moments when Purity Culture messaging made an appearance in their lives.
- [03:05]
C
We had, like, a home group where you meet in someone's house and do, like, a Bible study or whatever. And at one of those was the first time I heard one of my friends say, yeah, I think that girls do have a responsibility not to, like, dress too provocatively.
- [03:22]
B
This was news to Jasmine.
- [03:24]
C
Sopres was the height of fashion. My best going out top was from there. There was a lot of bob, very short skirts. Definitely that was something in my wardrobe.
- [03:35]
B
After that comment from her church bestie, Jasmin didn't spiral or try to change herself, but she did learn to keep certain information close.
- [03:43]
C
I guess I just felt that I shouldn't share all the parts of myself that I would share with other friends,
- [03:50]
B
like the fact that her and Chris had already broken the no sex before marriage rule.
- [03:54]
C
We didn't go all the way until we were 18, but, yeah, that was something that I never felt like I should or could share with my church friends.
- [04:03]
B
How old are you at this point?
- [04:05]
C
Maybe like, 20. Yeah.
- [04:09]
B
Hence the marriage a year later. No, I'm just joking.
- [04:11]
C
Yeah, no, we did get married at 22.
- [04:19]
B
By the time Jasmine was 30, her and Chris had two beautiful children. They had the procreation side of sex down. But then, as it tends to, life got in the way. There was parenting, which is enough to put a spanner in the works of any sex life. But also Jasmine started birth control, which led to recurring thrush and a decrease in her libido. Their sexual connection began to suffer, and neither of them had any idea how to even bring it up in conversation.
- [04:46]
C
I wasn't mature enough and didn't have the skills to be like, this actually isn't working for me, and I think we should change it. So probably that brings us to Bang.
- [04:54]
B
If you didn't already know, Bang was my first sex podcast.
- [04:58]
C
Chris had been listening to Bang, and he was like, look, I've been listening to this. Do you want to listen to it together? You know, like, it's really helped me to work through heaps of stuff, and I think that we could get a lot out of it. And yeah, so we did that. We sat here on this couch and listened to Bang. The first word that comes to mind is shagging.
- [05:14]
B
Bonk.
- [05:15]
C
Rooting. Procreation. The ins and outs of sex. Okay. Bang. Bang. What? Bang. It's called bang. Yeah, yeah, bang. And loved it. Like, I loved it and it was really funny. And it gave us the opportunity to have conversations that we literally never had before about our upbringing and how that affected us and, like, what we felt shame about and whether we should feel shame about it and about, like, even kind of about consent and saying no and feeling okay about the other person saying no. Because that had been something. I guess it's always something that's a little bit.
- [05:53]
B
It's a negotiation.
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C
Tricky to feel your feelings about that and not feel rejected. But, yeah. So thank you for being. Because it honestly was pretty life changing for us.
- [06:06]
B
So what changed?
- [06:07]
C
Yeah, I think for me, just feeling more comfortable to talk about it and just giving it the lens of that. You can have a sense of humour. Like, it always just felt real serious. So for us to be able to have those conversations and laugh about it and talk about the sex that we had most enjoyed with each other, I think we sat down and said our top five encounters.
- [06:33]
B
Can you tell me one of your top five?
- [06:34]
C
No, I'd love to. When we were like, 17, we would be at a party and we'd go for a walk and we'd end up at a primary school. And that was my first experience of someone else's hands pleasuring me. And honestly, that's a joyful memory for me, just being that really horny teenager
- [06:59]
B
on a school playground or something.
- [07:01]
C
Yeah. Like, it was actually in a little porch because it was raining. Another one was when we were camping at a lake and we just got amongst it on the stones on the lakeshore and the thorny matagari bushes. And another one was at a wedding, which was incredible. It was on this beautiful homestead, beautiful house, beautiful garden, and they had these. I think it might have been a photo booth. Technically, it was like an old horse carriage and it was pouring with rain and we escaped the festivities for a bit and ended up having some sex in the carriage.
- [07:47]
B
That's brave.
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C
It was hot. And that's a memory I treasure.
- [07:53]
B
Did you identify things that were the kind of common elements that were clearly,
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C
for me, it was being outside.
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B
Love a walk.
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C
Just getting really back to nature.
- [08:05]
B
Yeah, yeah. By the time Jasmine and Chris discovered Bang, their kids were 1 and 4 years old, which is properly in the trenches. And then to make matters more stressful, a series of major events happened all in a row.
- [08:22]
C
One of our children had a serious kind of medical event that ended with us being helicoptered to another centre for a major surgery when he was almost two.
- [08:32]
B
Terrifying. But thankfully he was alright. Then 2020 hit, we had lockdown.
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C
And then in June of 2020, I was diagnosed with cancer. And that was a massive rug pull. You know, just everything feels upside down.
- [08:51]
B
Jasmine points to a photo on her wall. It's of her and Chris and the kids in the family garden. They're all laughing and looking like they're living the dream.
- [09:01]
C
But this photo here was taken three days after I found out I had cancer. And I genuinely didn't know if I was going to see those kids in the next year.
- [09:14]
B
Jasmine had been experiencing concerning symptoms for a couple of years. She'd been to see doctors and specialists, but she'd been brushed off. Apparently there was nothing wrong with her. By the time she finally got a diagnosis, she had stage three rectal cancer. Stage three meant the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes but not to her organs. It's a really serious diagnosis, but for someone who's under 50, like Jasmine, there is a reasonable expectation of long term survival with the right treatment. Jasmine got her diagnosis the same week that her eldest child was starting school. But there wasn't much time to sit with that. Almost immediately she was swept into a whirlwind of appointments. Radiation and chemotherapy were booked in straight away with surgery to follow.
- [10:00]
C
You suddenly are in this world where you're a patient and I don't want to say anything bad about my doctors because they obviously saved my life and I'm eternally grateful for that. But even as a privileged, educated white woman, I encountered ignorance and just a kind of unwillingness from medical professionals, male medical professionals, to see or understand or believe what I was going through.
- [10:38]
B
Here's one example of that from an appointment that Jasmine had with a radiation oncologist.
- [10:43]
C
Turns out that radiation therapy really fucks you up, particularly in the pelvic region. So he's telling me about what's gonna happen and he's like. So you're like, sex hormones live in your pelvis and they're really sensitive, so this radiation is going to kill your ovaries, basically, and you'll be in early menopause. And I was like, say what now? Obviously I know menopause is when your period stops, but what? And he was like, well, surely your mum talked to you about that, about menopause. Yeah, I wish that I had said, well, actually I was 10 when my mum went through menopause so, no. And in any case, I'm 32. Like, this is not my area.
- [11:34]
B
Menopause comes with a whole lot of potential symptoms and side effects, like anxiety, night sweats, vaginal dryness, insomnia, plus, of course, your period stops, which for Jasmine and Chris meant an end to the are we going to have another baby? Conversations.
- [11:49]
C
The menopause thing has been one of the hardest parts. And that might sound really dumb because, like, well, you had cancer and you could have died. But it made me feel untethered from myself. Like, in my early 30s, I was starting to understand myself and the way my hormones fluctuated ovulation and all that stuff, and suddenly it was gone, and it was isolating, because there's just not that many people in their early 30s who have to go through that.
- [12:29]
B
And the radiation oncologist had more bad news for Jasmine.
- [12:32]
C
He explained that radiation just kind of kills everything. So you have to use, like, vaginal dilators so that your vagina still works.
- [12:42]
B
Pelvic radiation can damage healthy vaginal tissue and reduce blood flow. As it heals, scar tissue can form, and the vagina can narrow or stiffen over time. Dilators can help to reduce these side effects. Or as Jasmine puts it, they can help to make sure your vagina doesn't
- [12:58]
C
shrink, can travel up and die, essentially, which is what every woman wants to hear when they're in their early 30s. So I had five weeks of radiation every weekday. And during that time, I was also taking oral chemotherapy. And then I had surgery. I'd never had a surgery before. It was very terrifying. I can remember just looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, I can't. Like, you know, I was in tears. I just couldn't fathom. Was pretty gnarly. Having surgery on your guts is no joke because you just feel real sick. It makes you feel really terrible.
- [13:41]
B
As part of her surgery, Jasmin had an ileostomy, which means her surgeon created a stoma, or an opening on her abdomen to allow waste to exit the body there, avoiding the bowel or bladder.
- [13:52]
C
And so you have to wear it like a bag and empty it.
- [13:55]
B
This procedure was temporary, just for while her intestine healed. So a few months later, she went in for another surgery to reverse it,
- [14:03]
C
and it all went to plan. But something that's kind of been a little bit of a theme in my cancer journey is that we all think it's going to be fine, and then it isn't.
- [14:21]
B
The first thing that went wrong is that Jasmine got C. Difficolitis which is a serious bacterial infection, which basically means
- [14:28]
C
you have non stop diarrhoea and a really, really sore tummy in your colon expands to really humongous and you could die.
- [14:37]
B
As it turns out, Jasmine went back to hospital and while she was there, something else happened which is really full on, so you might want to brace yourself.
- [14:46]
C
I felt my poo come out the wrong way out of my vagina. This was like the middle of the night. My surgeons came to see me in the morning and I was freaking out and they were like, oh, that shouldn't have happened, but we'll get someone to have a look. So they got their gynae registrars to have a look and they couldn't find it. And I was like, well, I'm not making this up. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not wrong.
- [15:22]
B
Jasmine insisted that they send for another expert, but he couldn't see anything either.
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C
And I was like, okay, I want another opinion and I want it from a woman.
- [15:31]
B
Yes, Jasmine.
- [15:32]
C
So I got to go and see a lovely woman gynaecologist, and guess what? She found it. My surgeons were like, yikes, we need to fix this, but we have to wait because your guts have just been real sick, so we can't do anything for a little while. Sorry. Yeah, so I'm just like, I don't want to go anywhere because your vagina does not have a sphincter. There's no way of stopping this. Can't leak. Yeah. So I got discharged from hospital and was just like, what is my life now?
- [16:08]
B
Jasmine had to wait a month not leaving the house because she was terrified of leaking. And then eventually she went back to hospital and they did an investigation under anesthesia and they were like, yeah, cool.
- [16:19]
C
Look, we found the hole, now we can fix it.
- [16:23]
B
Well, maybe they were like about a
- [16:28]
C
60% chance this will work. It worked for like a day, and then it didn't. And then I was back in hospital and then it was way worse because to fix the hole, they have to make the hole bigger. I just, I was like, I. I can't live like this. I don't know what to do.
- [16:56]
B
At this point, Jasmine was over it. The chances of fixing the leak were low to start with, and now they were even lower. She knew that if none of this worked, her only option was a permanent colostomy, which at the beginning had felt like the worst possible outcome. But it didn't feel like that anymore.
- [17:13]
C
I was just like, there's no way I'm going through all that shit. Again, I'm going for the permanent one. Yeah. So that was the next surgery. This might be too much information, and I'm sorry if it is. When you get a permanent colostomy, they generally remove your rectum and anus and give you what they like to call a Barbie butt.
- [17:36]
B
What is a Barbie butt?
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C
So there's no butt hole anymore? They just stitch it up?
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B
There's no opening?
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C
No.
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B
Wow.
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C
I have this great little messenger group of people who have looked after me and prayed for me and sent me their good vibes, and I keep them updated on the dramas of my health. I was like, guess what, guys? No one can ever look up my bum again. And that is good news, cuz I am over it.
- [18:07]
B
That's a silver lining.
- [18:08]
C
That is the silver lining that we're holding on to in that situation. Yeah.
- [18:12]
B
Yeah. Okay. Far out.
- [18:15]
C
Yeah.
- [18:16]
B
Six months passed and life started getting a bit easier for Jasmine and her family. She started work again, just a little bit, enough to make her feel like she was getting back on track. And then in 2022, I went for
- [18:29]
C
my routine surveillance scan and I was pretty confident, like, I thought, this is going to be fine. And it wasn't fine.
- [18:39]
B
There was a tumour in one of her lungs.
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C
So it was kind of like, oh, here we go again.
- [18:47]
B
Fucking hell.
- [18:48]
C
Yeah.
- [18:50]
B
So that was another surgery in 2023. Doctors found another growth, this one in a lymph node, which meant another surgery.
- [18:59]
C
Yeah. Less than a year later.
- [19:00]
B
Jesus. Sorry.
- [19:02]
C
No, it's fine. Yep, I agree.
- [19:05]
B
At the time that I spoke with her, that was Jasmine's final surgery. But there actually has been another one since then, a more minor surgery to remove a melanoma. Heartbreakingly, this pattern of everyone thinking it's gonna be fine, only to find out that it's not fine continues.
- [19:21]
C
For Jasmine, I think it's just become a new normal. I found my journal the other day, from the day that I found out I had cancer. And I was reading it and, you know, it was raw and awful, you know, like, I was freaking out about my children and everyone that I love and all of that stuff. Like, why is this happening to me? Like, all of these things are still true, but it's just that they're not a shock anymore. And everyone wants to tell you how brave you are and how they don't know how you're doing it. And you're like, well, what choice is there? There isn't one. There's still, like, lunches that need to be made and fights that need to be broken. Up and.
- [20:02]
B
Yeah, it doesn't feel brave. It just feels like one step in front of the other.
- [20:05]
C
Yeah. That's all it is. That's all any of us are.
- [20:13]
B
What Jasmine's been through is one of the cruelest and most harrowing trials that life has to offer. But it's not just her that's gone through it. Her kids have watched their mama become profoundly unwell and frightened. Though of course, Mum and Dad have done their best to protect them from the worst of it. And dad, Chris has had to hold himself together, all the while wondering if he's going to lose his wife.
- [20:37]
C
I don't know how he gets through it. Mm. And there's a lot of guilt as the sick person for putting the other person through it. You're like, this isn't what you signed up for. Even though, you know, we did say in sickness and in hell.
- [20:55]
B
Literally did.
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C
Yeah, literally did. You just didn't think that it would happen like this. Yeah.
- [21:04]
B
If I asked you to list the ingredients you thought contributed to an amazing sex life, I'm guessing guilt wouldn't be on there. Or menopause or life threatening illness and treatment for that illness which causes your
- [21:16]
C
vagina to shrivel up and die, essentially.
- [21:19]
B
But you might mention communication, empathy and vulnerability, which are all things that Chris and Jasmine had started practising before her diagnosis. Sitting on the same couch that Jasmine and I are chatting on now after listening to Bang, he had times when
- [21:35]
C
he would have wondered, like, when is it ever gonna happen and what is it gonna look like and will we enjoy ourselves? But you are. Yeah, we are.
- [21:49]
B
Are there things related to sexual intimacy? Practical things. When you're dealing with a colostomy bag that, like, you've had to work through,
- [21:58]
C
sometimes it gets in the way. But my husband has never, ever made me feel like I gross him out by having a poo bag. I mean, obviously he shouldn't make me feel that way, but I can understand how it could be hard for you to kind of contend with. It's hard for me to contend with, but.
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B
And this is the important part, so listen up.
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C
Having a stoma as a life giver, it doesn't take anything away from you. You know, you think, oh, that sounds awful, what a gross thing to have to deal with. But actually, it's given me back my freedom of life. It's a life giver and it doesn't stop you from doing anything, especially sex. Accepting that what you enjoy is what you enjoy and there's no prescription for it and there's no, like, well, you haven't fully had sex if you haven't done this. All of those ideas have really helped me to process my experience and what constitutes pleasure for me now. Like, I do still enjoy some full on penetrative sex, but it's not always what works for me. Obviously there needs to be a bit of preparation. You can't just jump on a dick.
- [23:26]
B
Every now and then someone says something that I want to turn into a
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C
T shirt, and that is one.
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B
You can't just jump on a dick. But now you have an understanding that there is a wider buffet of pleasure to choose from.
- [23:40]
C
Yeah. And actually recently, for the first time in my life, I had two orgasms in a row. And I was like, that's never happened before. Good work. I feel like right now we are in a pretty nice place where we kind of have devoted a little bit of time and resources to each other in enjoying ourselves together, which, you know, feels pretty hard won. Yeah. So I'm proud of us for that.
- [24:19]
B
For the Good Sex Project, we finish every interview by asking our guest to finish a simple prompt.
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C
Good sex is being unashamed of what you like, even if it's like really vanilla and basic. And good sex is having reverse cowgirl sex at a wedding in a photo booth carriage.
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B
I'm so glad we got that extra detail. Did you get photos?
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C
No, it wasn't an actual photo booth. It was just like you posed in it and got your photo taken.
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B
I see.
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C
Okay.
- [24:56]
B
It wasn't. I did imagine that you might have been like, ching, ching, ching, ching. You know, like.
- [25:00]
A
No,
- [25:02]
B
same Jasmine, same. Thank you so much for sharing your story, Jasmine. You are incredible and you deserve all the happiness in the world. Later in the season, we're actually going to have a catch up with Jasmine as well as a bunch of favorite beautiful weirdos from seasons past. That was a love bite from the Good Sex Project. We have one more to go. Featuring a gorgeous Pacifica honey whose journey takes them from uncertain people. Pleaser. I have been nothing but nice to people and my whole damn life and this is how I get treated to kick ass. Non monogamous superbabe. I just decided to throw all of that in the bin. That's Charlie for the fourth and final episode of Love Bites. See you then. Thank you so much for listening to the Good Sex Project made with the support of New Zealand on Air. If you love the show, please subscribe, rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform and tell your friends and people you're messaging on the dating apps and strangers on the dance floor and in club bathrooms. If you want to get in touch with me or the team, you can send us a message on Instagram oodsexproject or you can email goodsexprojectmail.com we love to hear from you. The Good Sex Project was made by PopSoc Media. It was written and developed by me, Melody Thomas. Our Producer and Audio editor is Kirsten Johnstone. Co producers are Kei Heke and Elena Bates. Phil Brownlee recorded and mixed these episodes and Paddy Fred did the music. Thanks.