JACQUI Beck had no idea she didn't have a vagina until she was 17.
Then on a routine trip to see her doctor about lower back pain, she happened to mention that she still hadn't had her first period.
The doctor ran tests which revealed that Jacqui has Müllerian agenesis, better known as MRKH, a rare syndrome where a woman is born with no cervix, womb or vagina.
She had what looked like a 'dimple' where her vagina should have been, and could never have sex or give birth to her own child.
"I felt like a freak", Beck told the Daily Mail. "I was sure the doctor had got it wrong."
"I left the doctors in tears...I would never know what it was like to give birth, be pregnant, have a period," she said.
"All the things I had imagined doing suddenly got erased from my future. I was really angry and felt like I wasn't a real woman any more."
Jacqui hadn't discovered the condition before, because until that point she had never had a sexual relationship.
"It wasn't really a conscious decision not to have a boyfriend," Jacqui said. "I just didn't really fancy any of the boys in my area, which is lucky, considering what I know now."
Jacqui struggled to cope with shame and the stigma attached to her condition, but it was through receiving specialist treatment at the Queen Charlotte and Chelsea hospital London, that she began to see hope in the situation and meet others like herself.
"At the hospital, they referred me to a network of other women who have the same condition, she told the Daily Mail. "It was great to speak to other girls who felt like me."
Jacqui also received treatment to stretch her vaginal canal, and hopefully enable her to one day have sex.
"The first time the nurse showed me how to use a dilator I nearly died of embarrassment," she admitted. "But now I've got used to it, I see it as any other form of treatment."
Thanks to medical treatment, Jacqui will now be able to have intercourse when she chooses.
So who will the lucky man be?
Jacqui tries to see her condition as beneficial for weeding out the men that aren't genuine, and eventually finding the man of her dreams.
"If he has a problem with it, then he's not the kind of guy I want to go out with," she said.
"I'm a hopeless romantic and I see it as a great test of someone's character. Instead of focusing on it putting off men, I actually think it will help me find, 'the one'."
WATCH THE VIDEO:
Source: Newscom Australia