WARNING: the following post is somewhere from upsetting to gruesome depending on your standards, and is not related in any way to happy fun music games or political theory. It discusses gynaecology. Read at your own risk.
When I came to Seattle, I began working through all the doctors’ appointments that I hadn’t had while in school. I saw a doctor, a dentist, maybe some others I’m forgetting. I also heard that even if you’ve never been sexually active, you’re “supposed” to get pap smears starting at 21. So, despite my new GP telling me the medical types claiming this didn’t really know what they were talking about, I faithfully scheduled a pap smear for the week after I turned 22.
This has since come to be regarded as a very bad move.
The exam, particularly the speculum and scraping, was the most painful experience I have ever had. Forget getting my toe sliced down to the bone, the spinal tap and stitches without anesthetic. This made me understand for the first time how pain can be a motivating force in people’s lives.
Afterwards, the nurse practicioner decided that maybe I had a yeast infection, so she put me on Fluconazole. I had some pretty odd reactions to the fluconazole - because these included abdomenal pain, and because I was still having stabbing pains in the vagina a week after the horrible pap smear, I went back in for another exam. She decided to test me for STDs, kept me on the fluconazole, assured me that the tears and cuts in my vaginal wall “would heal up very well,” and pooh-poohed my concerns about possible liver damage from the meds: “That only happens to people who’ve been taking high doses for months.”
I found another gynaecologist. This one actually concurred that the vagina should heal very well, but told me I had no signs of any yeast infection, nor were there any signs noted on the paperwork from the previous gyn (!). She told me that I should be just fine, but that I “probably” had PCOD because of my long (6-week) menstrual cycles & the painfulness of the pap smear, and that if I was concerned about serious damage or possible other causes for the abdomenal pain, she would refer me for an abdomenal ultrasound. I decided this was probably a good idea, and went in for it next week.
The ultrasound wound up taking me away from work for the entire day, mostly because I took (well, surely must have taken) down the wrong building to show up to and had to be postponed by five hours since I would have been 15 minutes late. When I did get in, though, I was glad I had, because the ultrasound tech was very helpful, and told me:
1) Her first pap smear had also been very, very painful, and it had gotten better after she had become sexually active and had them a few times.
2) There were no visible signs of PCOD, save for a single “larger-than-usual-for-this-point-in-menstrual-cycle” ovarian cyst.
3) The liver seemed like it might have suffered a little trauma (unusual blood flow, apparently?), but that it was seemingly fine. It’s interesting to note that I didn’t even mention to them that I’d been placed on a liver-damaging medication - they spontaneously decided my liver was worth looking it.
Fast forward to today, half a week later. I was in training from 9:00-4:30, and by the time I got home about 5:15, there was a message on my voicemail from the gynaecologist. “We need you to call us back to discuss your test results.” Unfortunately, they close at 5:00. On the up side, the on-call doctor was kind enough to call me back within a couple of minutes of my paging him; on the down side, he couldn’t actually help me, I would “just have to call back tomorrow morning.”
Unfortunately, you don’t get “the call” if your test results are *good.* I’ve narrowed it down to the following options:
- PCOD or interstitial cystitis
- Endometriosis
- Worms
- Positive STD result from one or more of the tests
- HPV (? - did they test for HPV?)
- Pelvic damage from exam (or preexisting)
- Intestinal defect
Probably the *best* possibility is that I somehow managed to contract intestinal worms, maybe by failing to wash my hands after using a public restroom - because we all know how fond I am of public restrooms. 
The best plausible possibiliy is that there was a false positive on one of the STD tests. This would probably require further testing and perhaps disclosing the names of my past sexual partners so they can be harassed (all 1 of them).
Next best is endometriosis. Even if I don’t actually have it, I’ll need to go in for a vaginal ultrasound, which will involve more shoving large devices into my vagina. It just goes downhill from there.
And thus, the fact that I am sleepless and anxious enough to try to kill time by writing obscenely mundane, detail-focused blog posts should make perfect sense to you now. I was hoping I might be able to sleep because I’m fairly sick (cold? flu? mono? MSNMessengerItis?), but no such luck for now.
The final irony: the trainer ended today’s session by exhorting us to “get plenty of sleep tonight,” because tomorrow’s session was going to be “exhausting.” I just pray I manage to reach them in the morning *before* class starts, or I’ll not only be clinging to consciousness, I’ll be clinging to sanity.