The 23-year-old has finally had sex for the first time, after becoming one of the first women in the world to have the pioneering operation.
Jucilene Marinho, from Brazil, was given the crushing news that she had no vagina when she was 15 years old.
Jucilene Marinho
To doctors’ surprise, she developed normally throughout puberty and even experienced period pains yet never had a period.
Medics then found nothing but connective tissue behind the skin covering what should have been Jucilene’s vagina and diagnosed her with the rare congenital condition, Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH).
But now, after surgeons created a vagina and lined it with the skin of a tilapia fish, the 23-year-old said she now enjoys a healthy sex life – after three months recuperating.
“Doctors gave me the all clear to have sex in October last year,” Jucilene said.
“At first I was very scared to do it because I thought it would hurt and I was worried it might damage the opening. “But it was a wonderful moment because everything worked perfectly.
With her boyfriend
“There was no pain just a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction. “I didn’t feel any discomfort and there was no bleeding. “Everything felt sensitive in what I’m told is the right and normal way.
“It was perfectly natural like the opening had always been there.”
The pioneering operation called neovaginoplasty, and was performed by a team at the Federal University of Ceara, led by gynaecologist, Dr. Leonardo Bezerra in April last year.
The revolutionary treatment involved medics opening a space between the vagina and anus, before inserting a tubular mould lined with the fish skin.
Once in contact with the patient’s body, tilapia skin acts like stem cells and is absorbed and transformed into cellular tissue forming the walls of the canal, similar to an actual vagina.
Before it’s used, the fish skin is cleaned and sterilized in the lab, before irradiation to kill viruses.
The process also removes all the scales and fishy smell.
Jucilene Marinho
Jucilene said the operation has changed her life and has left her feeling like a “proper woman”.
The student was a teenager when she was diagnosed with MRKH, which affects around 5,000 newborn girls and results in the absence of some or all of the female reproductive organs.
