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Hi Aunt Vadge,
I had some genital warts, so I had them operated on, and now I’m left with a lot of pain inside my vagina – I can feel it when I make love, and it scares me. What can I do or apply to heal the pain? I also have scars outside the vagina.
Yours,
Scarred
Dear Scarred,
The warts are gone, but your body is still sore, and there are a few usual reasons for that after a wart removal. The most common one is that the muscles of your pelvic floor have learned to tense up and guard after a painful procedure – and that guarding is itself what hurts during sex, which then makes the muscles clench harder next time. It’s a loop, and the good part is that it’s very treatable. There can also be tight scar tissue, or nerves that were left a bit irritated and oversensitive. Before you put anything on it, get a post-op check so nothing important is missed – then we can work on both the pain and the reason the warts turned up in the first place.
Why it still hurts
- Pelvic-floor guarding – the muscles clench protectively after the procedure, and that tension causes pain on penetration. Very common, very fixable.
- Tight scar tissue – cutting, laser, cautery and freezing all heal by scarring, and scar tissue is less stretchy, so it can tug and sting.
- Irritated nerves – a procedure can leave the area oversensitive for a while, with burning or stinging out of proportion to what you’d expect.
- A wound that keeps re-opening – going back to sex before it has fully healed can split it again and keep it inflamed.
What actually helps
First, stop having penetrative sex until you know what’s going on, because you may be re-opening the wound each time. Keep the area clean and dry, and use a plain barrier like pawpaw ointment on any raw outside skin rather than an antibiotic ointment – neomycin (as in Neosporin) is a common vulval sensitiser and often makes things worse. Our guide to caring for a healing vulval wound covers the basics.
For the guarding loop, a pelvic-floor physiotherapist is the person to see. They can teach the muscles to let go, which is often the single biggest thing for this kind of pain. That’s hands-on work we don’t do ourselves, so it’s a real referral. Once everything has fully healed, gentle scar massage can soften tight tissue – but only with the all-clear from whoever treated you.
The root cause worth treating – HPV
Here’s the part conventional care often skips: the warts were caused by HPV, and getting on top of the underlying virus is what stops them coming back. Natural medicine has real, measured results here. The strongest trial evidence is in high-risk HPV – a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of the mushroom-derived supplement AHCC cleared persistent high-risk HPV in about 59% of women versus placebo, by supporting the immune system to do the clearing. Genital warts are usually caused by lower-risk HPV types, but the same principle applies: a well-supported immune system and a protective, Lactobacillus crispatus-dominant vaginal microbiome are both strongly linked to the body clearing HPV, while a disrupted microbiome is linked to the virus hanging around.
So supporting your immune system and your vaginal microbiome is real, evidence-backed root-cause work, not a fringe add-on. Read more about HPV, and if you’d like help putting together an immune and microbiome plan to clear the virus and keep the warts from returning, that’s exactly the kind of thing we do – book in and we’ll map it out.
Get checked first
Because I can’t see what was done or where, don’t apply anything inside the vagina yet. Go back to the clinic that removed the warts for a post-op check first, so a recurrence, an unhealed wound or an infection can be ruled out. Then the healing and the root-cause work have a clear run.
You’re not stuck with this. Get the check, see a pelvic-floor physio for the muscle side, and treat the HPV underneath – that’s the whole picture. Write again any time.
Warmest regards,
Aunt Vadge
This is general information, not a substitute for personalised medical advice. Pain after a procedure should be reviewed by the clinic that treated you.
- Smith J, et al. AHCC® supplementation to support immune function to clear persistent human papillomavirus infections. Frontiers in Oncology. 2022;12:881902.
- Bautista et al. The vaginal microbiome in HPV persistence and cervical cancer progression. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. 2025;15:1634251.
