Healing Painful Sex: A Woman's Guide to Confronting, Diagnosing, and Treating Sexual Pain

Millions of women suffer from sexual and pelvic pain in America today, yet it is frequently misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.

In Healing Painful Sex, Deborah Coady, MD and Nancy Fish use their combined professional expertise as a doctor and therapist who specialize in sexual pain to provide readers with an understanding of its many causes and how to treat them, from both a physical and psychological standpoint. Organized into three parts: naming the problem, getting a diagnosis, and overcoming pain, Healing Painful Sex includes medical checklists, illustrations, vignettes based on interviews with women and their healthcare professionals, treatment options, and guidance for moving forward after healing.

Coady and Fish speak honestly and directly to sexual pain sufferers’ experiences, helping them address the problem of chronic pain, understand and prevent misdiagnoses, define medical terms and conditions, and regain sexual joy.

Comprehensive, multi-dimensional, and deeply insightful, Healing Painful Sex offers women the tools to successfully take on the many challenges of sexual pain and move toward a healthy, happy future. 

Deborah Coady, MD, is a board certified obstetrician-gynecologist in private practice, with the major portion of her practice since the early 1990’s devoted to caring for women with chronic sexual, vulvar, and pelvic pain. She is a clinical assistant professor at NYU-Langone Medical Center, a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and a member of the International Pelvic Pain Society.

Dr. Coady has repeatedly been named by Castle Connolly as one of the best doctors in New York; she was granted a prestigious fellowship in September 2009 in the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disease after presenting her clinical research on vulvodynia; and she was selected as a New York Super Doctor in 2008 and 2009, an award based on peer recognition and professional achievement that is given to the top 5% of New York City doctors. Her professional goal is to help expand and improve care for all women suffering from chronic pelvic pain syndromes.

Nancy Fish, MSW, MPH, began her career as a psychotherapist in 1984. She worked at a Catholic Charities mental health clinic in New York City for two years, at which point she left to work in medical public relations at Porter/Novelli in New York City. She eventually made the decision to return to work full-time as a psychotherapist, and since 1998 she has had a private practice in Bergen County, New Jersey. Fish also works part-time at Dr. Coady’s medical practice, where she leads a monthly support group and counsels women with sexual pain.

After developing sexual pain issues in 2006 and being successfully treated by Dr. Coady, Fish felt it was her mission to help women suffering from these horrendous and debilitating conditions. She provides a unique insight and perspective into her patients’ issues, and, due to her successful recovery, can offer women hope and insight in how to cope with the overwhelming task of recovering from sexual pain conditions.