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It's hard to pinpoint the moment I became a boring lay. Maybe it was the night my husband reached for me and I realized it would be more work to turn him down again than to have sex.

"Okay," I said, "but don't expect me to move."

I am 49, married nearly 16 years to the guy who once freed me from my blouse during a steamy make-out session in the back of a taxi. What happened since we took that ride? Let's start with four kids, ages 13, 11, 9, and 6. Throw in a move from New York City to a steadily disintegrating 1870 house in New England, add a growing pile of bills, and give my husband a job that takes him far from home. We were still having sex once, sometimes twice a week. It just wasn't very sexy:

Husband: I think we should have sex.

Me: I don't know--I'm really tired and stressed out.

Husband: That's why we should have sex!

Me: Sex gets me aroused enough that I can't fall asleep.

Husband: Aroused enough?

(Hurt silence)

Me: All right--just don't be too exciting.

Husband: Okay!

My last orgasm was like my last pedicure--I knew I had one at some point, but I couldn't remember when, and didn't expect to have another one anytime soon. My husband was eager to fix this, but my head was too crowded with the many other things we needed to fix first: our credit card debt, the black mold growing in the bathroom, my lack of sleep. Then one day it hit me that I was treating my own libido as a luxury item I couldn't afford. Why? Something had to change.

THERE'S A PRECRIPTION FOR THAT?

I called my gynecologist, wondering if she would tell me the problem was in my head, or prescribe scented candles and new lingerie. No, she told me about testosterone. Women produce testosterone just like men, she explained--it's what fuels our libido, makes us want sex. But as a woman gets older, her testosterone level drops. By her 40s, she has half the testosterone she did in her 20s. And stress triggers the release of cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands that drives testosterone even lower. Given my lackluster libido, age, and general state of aggravation, my doctor thought it safe to assume that my testosterone had plummeted, dragging my libido down with it.

Okay--I needed testosterone. "It definitely helps," she said. But to get it, I would have to venture into uncharted waters. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved any testosterone-based therapies for women. FDA-approved testosterone gels, such as Testim and AndroGel, were developed for men only. Rubbed into the skin, the gels are designed to be quickly absorbed into the circulatory system, delivering steady, man-size doses of the hormone.

There are concerns that too much testosterone may put a woman at risk for heart disease and female cancers. But recent medical research has offered encouraging indications that these worries are overblown. LibiGel, a testosterone gel for women, is now in clinical trials. In the meantime, some doctors are prescribing testosterone off-label for their female patients. But since there is no official protocol to follow, every doctor ends up doing things differently.

Mine was confident that a localized testosterone treatment would be safe for me. She wasn't a fan of the FDA-approved gels for men, which a woman typically rubs into her leg each night in a very small dose. "The gels really work to help get testosterone in the bloodstream, but you can get hair growth and acne," my doctor said. Possibly, they could make me even more irritable than I already was.

Instead, she prescribed something customized: a compound of powdered testosterone and petroleum jelly, blended to order. It sounded almost artisanal! To maximize the testosterone's effect without mainlining it into my bloodstream, my doctor instructed me to dab the ointment right on the spot that needed it the most: my apathetic vagina. "Apply it twice a day for the first two weeks, then see how you feel."

A two-second horror movie flashed through my mind, of me ramming another minivan on the school pick-up line in a fit of testosterone-fueled road rage, man-hairs bristling on my legs. But in its nondescript little white jar, my sexy-time ointment looked as harmless as Vaseline. My doctor told me to keep it in the refrigerator. I found a spot way in the back, behind some cans of frosting, which I hoped would distract any child from trying to eat it.

Eager to help out, my husband ferried the jar to and from the fridge for me all week long. By Saturday morning, he wanted to take a test-drive. I obliged--one eye on the clock so I wouldn't miss yoga, one ear out for any child about to burst through the door. Then I became aware of something stirring down below. It was as if someone were placing a call to my sexual response system and I could hear the phone ring. The next day, we woke up early and tried again. "I think it's working," my husband declared. "You moved."

OH, RIGHT, THAT'S WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WANT SEX

Over the following weeks, a warm, thrumming sensation began to build, even when I wasn't fooling around with my husband, or even in the same room with him. Suddenly, I was thinking about sex, wanting it. I was at the mall one afternoon buying a cake-pop maker when I was flooded with desire. And I hate going to the mall.

To my husband's delight, his weekly intercourse allowance doubled, then tripled. Once, I even sent him a sext. And yet: While I now wanted sex enough to have it on a school night, my desire wasn't translating into the five-star romps I'd been hoping for. Despite my husband's increasingly inspired maneuvers, orgasm was still elusive.

Was my body really just trying to tell me it didn't want sex so much anymore? I decided to ask an expert: Bat Sheva Marcus, Ph.D., the clinical director of the Medical Center for Female Sexuality in Purchase, NY. "Is your eyesight worse than it used to be?" she countered. "Do you think it's your body's way of saying it doesn't want to see anymore?"

I told Marcus about my artisanal testosterone. She was dubious: Her center prescribes only the FDA-approved male gels for women patients, but even then, she explained, testosterone can't fix everything by itself.

"Desire, arousal, and orgasm--they're three different problems," Marcus said. An empathetic, fast-talking Orthodox Jewish mother of three who wrote her dissertation on vibrators, she spent over an hour quizzing me about every aspect of my erotic history before coming to a conclusion. "Your desire is not so terrible," she said. "I think what's really important is to make you have orgasms easily."

Testosterone had revived my desire, she said, priming me for sex like a layer of base-coat paint. But for me, like a lot of women, reaching climax gets harder over time: "As you get older, your nerve endings don't work as well as they used to," she said. In the future, we could talk about therapies such as the antidepressant Wellbutrin, which raises dopamine levels in the brain ("very closely linked to arousal and orgasm"), and, yes, vibrators ("a really important sex tool that's completely undervalued").

Melissa Ferrara, a nurse practitioner, gave me a pelvic exam and drew blood to analyze my hormone levels. Until the results came back, my homework was simple: Use the testosterone and change the routine. My husband and I were to schedule time for sex one morning a week when there would be no kids around. "And this one is the no-brainer: If you don't have an orgasm with your husband, then just use your hand," Marcus said. "Your hand's right there--you're good at it!"

AM I TURNING INTO A TEENAGE BOY?

As I always tell my children, it's best to do your homework right away. My husband was home the next day; after seeing the kids off to school, we headed for bed. Once we were deep in the groove, I beat back my inhibitions and did as Marcus instructed. Bingo! At last, it all came together: desire, arousal, and orgasm.

Now I was on a roll, thanks to a blend of off-label hormones and some frank advice. In fact, I was getting a little too much of a good thing. After a month of testosterone, I felt constantly aroused, engorged even. So this is what it's like to be a teenage boy, I thought.

Then my lab results came back. My testosterone levels had skyrocketed above the normal range for women. "Am I going to grow a penis over the weekend?" I asked Michael A. Werner, M.D., the center's medical director.

"You couldn't have hurt yourself," he reassured me. Maybe the ointment was too strong. Maybe my body had absorbed it too efficiently. Either way, the excess testosterone would quickly break down once I stopped taking it. But regular blood tests are essential for any woman using testosterone, to prevent possible long-term side effects such as hair loss and high cholesterol. (At the center, patients are tested every three months.)

My little white jar went straight into lockdown in the farthest reaches of the fridge. If my libido ever needed another pick-me-up, my doctor said, she would give me a less powerful dose, titrating it down as soon as I showed a response. "You're the poster child for this working well," she said, noting that some of her patients don't respond at all. "Tell your husband to send me roses."

Testosterone plugged me back in to my sex life. My libido isn't on hyper-drive now that I'm off it, but it's a lot better to feel like a satisfied woman than a horny teenager. Craving my husband has made me feel more tender toward him, and I'm even yelling less at my kids. Who knows? I may send those roses myself.

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