In Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, the main character goes to the hospital after having sex for the first time, because her hymen hemorrhaged and she almost bled to death. The doctor there told her that it happens to one in a million girls.
I know that a lot of the events in this book actually occured, but not all. Can a girl really bleed to death from her first time? Not only does it hurt, but it can kill you!?! :eek:
Can I become a nun if I’m not religious?
I can imagine this would be possible for a hemophiliac.
I was under the impression that hemophilia occurs almost exclusively in males. Is the prevalence of hemophilia in women as large as “one in a million”?
It’s not that hemophilia’s less common in women; it’s that female hemophiliacs tend not to live past 12 or so.
I found that quite amusing, though I know I shouldn’t have.
Twice in my career as an ob/gyn I had emergency patients who were pale and almost in shock.from a ruptured and pumping small artery torn as a result of a ruptured hymen. Had these patients not been seen by a physician each good have easily bled to death if they did not attempt to put packing in the vicinity of the bleeding…Admittedly death would be an extremely rare occurence from a ruptured hymen.
Wrong. It’s much less common in women because the gene for hemophilia is on the X chromosome. So women are much more likely to be carriers than to suffer from it - the father would have to have it and the mother would have to at least be a carrier.
Hemophilia info. Says you can find more women with it these days because there are treatments for hemophilia. There’s no reason a period should kill a woman with hemophilia if she’s being treated.
I have some questions, doc.
Did either of these patients have symptoms of hemophilia or another bleeding disorder? If not, the whole question about hemophilia and its prevalence in women seems to be tangential to this issue.
How many separate patients have you seen in your career? I’m assuming that’s it’s considerably less than two million, which would make me think that the claim of an incidence rate of “one in a million” for severe bleeding after a ruptured hymen is probably an underestimate
It would certainly make life easier.
Can you die from losing your virginity?
If you lose it to a pit bull, yes. 
Yep, this happened to someone I know. The morning after her first time she realised she was bleeding, loads, so she wore sanitary towels and asked her best friend if this was usual. Meanwhile the guy she spent the night with got up to find his sleeping bag was full of blood. He asked his best friend if this was normal. The two best friends then spoke, luckily cos the protagonists were too embarrassed to mention it to each other, concluded it was not at all normal and got her to casualty. AFAIK, without treatment, blood transfusions and so on, she could have died. And no, she wasn’t hemophiliac.
:eek:
This would be a good thing to teach in middle school health classes.
Totally hypothetical question: Do you think a gynecologist would cleanly and safely take care of this if one requested?
Yes, history shows scare tactics are totally effective with kids. :smack:
I don’t think that’s what MRirian meant. Excessive post-coital bleeding can be fatal, unless the person seeks medical attention within a relatively short amount of time. It’s better to know what is and is not normal than to risk dying because you were too embarassed to get some help.
I think perhaps the best thing would be to teach girls what constitutes excessive blood loss under any circumstances, and that should excessive bleeding occur, they need to call a doctor/get to the emergency room PDQ, regardless what activities led to said bleeding. Such a lesson wouldn’t need to be made into a horrorific story about losing your virginity.
Now that I think abbout it, I can’t believe there aren’t some horrible urban legends about this. It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes a good urban legend.
Yes, that’s true. That’s not how I took the post, but you could be right.
MandaJO
Maybe it’s time to start one. I bet we could get federal funding for a high school educational program:
Warning, Sexual Intercourse Can Kill You.
It’s called a hymenotomy, and while it’s usually done in the case of a hymen that’s solid or extraordinarily thick or rigid, I imagine if someone were determined to have it done, she could easily find a gynecologist to perform one. She would probably not, however, be able to get her insurance to pay for it unless the procedure was medically indicated.
Of course, wouldn’t an unusually thick hymen be more likely to bleed excessively, too? I would expect that a thicker hymen would have more or larger diameter blood vessels serving it. If that’s the case, then the women who do get hymenotomies are the same ones who would have to worry about excessive bleeding otherwise.
Honestly, that’s a truthful statement. I’d venture to say that the parents of all persons born before 1900 are dead. The parents of many people born since 1900 are dead also, showing that it takes sex longer to kill some than others.
Me, I’m still cheating the odds.