I hadn’t realized how heavy things have felt until yesterday when Brad said “We have really had a rough couple of months.” And then I remembered, yes, we have. Maybe him more than me, but yeah… lately, things have been difficult.
So now, I’m going to tell you about one of the difficult things that in hindsight, feels fine now. If you work with me/have worked with me/are related to me, maybe skip this one.
Over the last few years, I have had an aching feeling in my pelvis. A family member told me maybe it was the feeling of ovulation, but the thing is… I started to feel it all the time.
I asked a gynecologist about it and she ordered an ultrasound. If you’ve never had an ultrasound in your reproductive organs before, it is like getting prodded with a metal dildo attached to a machine. As it turned out, my IUD was lying low. And so maybe, that could be what was causing the pain, but there’s no way to know for sure. The position it was at could also make the IUD ineffective at preventing pregnancy. In short, I needed to get it removed and have a new one put in.
The gynecologist took some hefty-looking pliers and pulled out the IUD and showed it to me: “Look!”
This was disgusting. Why would she want me to look?
”It’s missing a piece.”
I took a beat. “Is that normal?”
“Noooo,” she said. “This has only happened once. And we never found it.”
The doctor began to spiral. She said something like, “Oh my god I feel so bad I told you to get this out… because now we don’t know where it is!”
One solution she came up with is that I could take the abortion pill and see if it falls out...
Another solution was go get another ultrasound and then maybe have it surgically removed if they couldn’t find it. After getting violated by another ultrasound, the piece was located… which was a relief.
And then I had to go see a specialist. When I arrived to the specialist’s office, there was an enormous needle, a camera, a giant plastic bag and a bunch of prodding tools.
Honestly, I think I went into it very naive. She said, “We’re going to dilate you and then we’re going to take it out.”
I was like “Okay, fabulous.”
I did not consider what any of that meant or what it would take to dilate me or retrieve the piece. So I lay down and a giant plastic bag was placed underneath me. Not a good sign. Then she stuck the ducklips in and started cranking.
“Okay you’re very dilated now. Let’s go.”
She stuck the camera in and then said “Oh! We forgot the anesthetic. You will feel some rushing.”
No clue what that meant.
Getting stabbed in your cervix with a needle is a lot different than in the arm. I was overtaken by cramps and then my whole body started shaking and my heart felt like it was beating out of my chest. Oh, this was rushing. She started yelling at me (didn’t know why) “Are you okay? Are you okay?” and then she said “Oh that was a close one! You were very pale.”
The technician began pumping water from the side of the room, and then I could feel it going in and out, in and out. The doctor was moving the camera around a lot, but at this point, I was used to people digging around inside of me and looking at a screen. After five minutes went by, I got nervous. She was making a crazy face and then she told me she couldn’t find it. So then she put the screen next to my head and I watched her dig around, calling the stuff inside of my tubes… gunk.
”There’s just so much gunk but nothing is coming out,” she said.
My body was still shaking, my lower half was completely exposed, water (and gunk) was pouring out of me, and I was being forced to not care what people think of me. I asked myself, after all this is over, did I really want another IUD put in? Did I really want to risk this happening again? And then I thought about what it would be like to be a mother and how giving birth would be like this experience times 10,000 and I realized that yes, I did.
“We’re not finding it,” she said. “Let’s just give up and put in the new one.”
Where was this thing? What if it lodged into another one of my organs? But I took a breath and just accepted what was happening. And the moment I accepted defeat, the doctor shouted “Aha! It was here all along. In your VAGINA! It came out with the gunk.”