WASHINGTON: One of the first fears that many who’ve lost their legs confront is the possible loss of their sex life. Thanks to technology though, both neither need be gone entirely.
Lighter manual wheelchairs and increasingly dexterous motorised ones are increasingly helping adults with a wide range of disabilities commute the sidewalks of America, while nerve and tissue stimulating vibrators and erection inspiring medications are helping them with sexual intimacy.
According to Columbia News Service, extreme skier David Bucks was able to orgasm thrice after a half hour of using a powerful vibrator from Denmark’s FertiCare—something he’d been unable to do during the seven years since being paralysed from the chest down as a result of a California avalanche.
So effective was the self-proclaimed fertility aid that Bucks was able to help conceive a child in two months of using the device. Now he’s not just a customer, he imports the vibrators to US.
The medical journal Spinal Cord reported that most of the country’s 250,000 spinal cord injury survivors consider it more important to regain sexual function than to walk—and where many are experimenting with possible solutions.
Currently, most sexual aids for the disabled are marketed towards men, including the FertiCare vibrator, which requires a doctor’s prescription and which Bucks sells for $695.
The news service also reports that vibrators specifically designed for Paraplegic women has been developed by the International Collaboration for Repair Discoveries in British Columbia, and will be on the market within a year.
Those women who don’t want to wait a year can a prescription for the Eros Clitoral Therapy Device clitoral vacuum, which received US Food and Drug Administration approval in 2000.
The FDA approved FertiCare vibrator is a Class 2 device, considered to have the same risk to the user as an oxygen monitor, according to Karen Riley of the US FDA.