I'd been sitting half-naked on an examination table for about 20 minutes with nothing but a flimsy paper blanket to cover my nether parts when a bright young thing in surgical scrubs poked her head through the door and asked, "Are you ready to get your IUD inserted?" Which would be a neat trick considering I haven't had a uterus since 2009. I don't know where you'd insert an IUD in someone lacking a uterus--or, for that matter, why.
My experience at the gynecologist's office this morning may look like a comedy of errors in retrospect, but it didn't feel particularly funny at the time. I've been suffering from a serious case of IPNBLRSTTBS Syndrome (It's Probably Nothing But Let's Run Some Tests To Be Sure), and this is where you'll want to close your eyes and cover your ears if you're allergic to ick.
There's a bit of scar tissue, see, where my most private regions had endured massive amounts of radiation 16 years ago, and my new gynecologist wanted to do a biopsy on a polyp located there, which looked like a cervical polyp, but no insurance company is going to approve a biopsy on a cervical polyp for a person who lacks a cervix. So when I arrived today I signed a release form allowing removal of an endometrial polyp, but then someone in the chain of command noted that a person lacking a uterus probably doesn't have endometrial tissue either. In the end they had to tear up the signed release form and get me to sign a new one allowing removal of a vaginal polyp, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be two vaginal polyps, which were eventually removed.
But first I had to spend a full 30 minutes waiting (and sweating and breathing deeply to try to keep my blood pressure under control), wondering what kind of wild party was taking place out at the nurses' station and why all the new medical staffers look like they just got out of the seventh grade and why I always carefully fold my clothes at the gynecologist's office so that the person poking around in my most intimate regions won't be exposed to my ratty old granny panties. What else was there to do but think, and fret, and sweat?
I'm not proud of it, but eventually I got tired of waiting (and sweating, and fretting) so I used my cell phone to call the front desk and ask whether I'd been forgotten. What did they want me to do, walk out there in front of everyone and demand satisfaction while wrapped in a flimsy paper blanket? I had sweated so much that the paper was starting to disintegrate anyway, so I made the call.
"Don't worry, she's on the way," they said, and indeed she was, and within moments I was on my back enduring a procedure that was less painful than I'd expected but also more bloody. My longtime gynecologist--the one who did my hysterectomy and found the cancer and got me through all the horrors of treatment--was a dapper gentleman with the kindly gravitas of a modern Marcus Welby, and the new one who replaced him is on maternity leave, so I was dealing with someone I'd only just met who seemed caring and competent despite looking about twelve years old. She spoke like an intimacy coordinator, asking repeatedly, "All right if I touch you here?" Not sure what would have happened if I'd said no. I suspect it would be difficult to remove a vaginal polyp without touching some sensitive parts--er, tissues. Why does the word tissues make everything ickier?
But now it's all over but the waiting. Three to five days for biopsy results, 72 hours with no sex. (During my birthday week! Ah, the humanity!) I wondered about the propriety of writing about all this ick, but the advantage of having entered my Crone Era is that I'm allowed to write about whatever I want, and what I want right now is to wonder what happened to the woman who was expecting to get an IUD. Did some bright young thing poke her head in the door and ask, "Are you ready to get your polyps biopsied?"
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