The Gynaecologist
Trigger warning: Blood, probing without warning and cancer scares
The first time I ever went to a gynaecologist, I was around 21-22 years old. My friends were shocked that I had never been before and due to their surprise, the fear that something might be wrong without realising started creeping up on me. Only once before had I done an std test at my doctor’s office. After receiving the email with my test results, stating that I had chlamydia, I cried in a supermarket in my boyfriend’s arms and thought I was going to die. Needless to say I did not know what chlamydia was.
Awkward enough as it was that first time, I now had to do this and more, in another language as I’ve moved away from my homecountry.
The gynaecologist that was available at the earliest convenience, was in her late sixties and not happy to see me. I told her all bubbly and naive that it was my first time, that I had no idea what to expect and that I was honestly a bit scared. She did not care in the slightest. She seemed to be bothered by my inexperience, my faulty spanish and my overall existence. She ordered me to change in the little dressing room and lay down on the chair.
I wobble over in a paper dress and lay down. Agitated that I hadn’t figured out yet that I had to put my legs up and present her my bare cooch, she orders me to do so.
(At a different visit later with another doctor, I thought he told me to lift up my legs as well. After observing the reaction on his face I realised that was not what he told me. I was mortified.)
Without any word of warning she shoves a bird beak like clamp inside of me that I have never seen before in my life (a speculum that is). Click click click and I open up like a flower bud far ahead of its bloom.
‘Relax!’ She snarls at me. ‘If you’re not going to relax I can’t do my job, come on.’
With a lump in my throat I try my best to stay calm even though I have absolutely no clue what is happening down there. It hurts a bit, probably because I feel like a tied down animal in panic, resulting in a gorilla grip vagina. She scoops some samples and takes out the torture tool.
I dared to think that was it, it was over. Little did I know I was still to be probed with a lubed up scan dildo. I would like to remind you that there were no warnings whatsoever for any of her actions and she was continuously sighing as a reaction to my distress.
I visit her a few more times for results and because she was always available. Better the devil you know I guess? I decide to take the piss with her. Reclaim the experience. With the same bored to death expression she asks me the usual questions you get during a visit. ‘Are you sexually active?’ I am. ‘Is there a chance that you are pregnant?’ Nope. ‘What birth control do you use?’ She asks looking up from her paper.
‘Only sleeping with women has proven to work rather well.’ I tell her. She never laughs. Never. I smile at her and get no reaction. ‘You know you can still get std’s when you have sex with women’ She says and I guiltily nod.
Fast forward to the present. I haven’t gone for a visit in some time, but I suffer heavily from my period for a while now. Far more than I used to. I wonder if I may have developed something, what it can be. They are so unbearable that I can’t function, this isn’t normal.
Again, I go to a gynaecologist, a new one. I ask her if it can be endometriosis. ‘It is not endometriosis’. She tells me, annoyed. As if it was offensive to even suggest. ‘I don’t know what I have but this can’t be normal’ I beg her. Then she asks me if I’ve had covid recently. ‘About a year, year and a half ago and it was hell, I got very sick’ I tell her. ‘Then it’s probably that. I bet your uterus is inflamed, lots of women have your symptoms since they’ve had covid.’ She tells me. ‘There’s not really much research on it, the only thing I can offer you is hormones but we don’t know yet if that works.’ She offers. ‘No proof whatsoever that it can be helpful?’ I ask. ‘No.’
As I’m there, why not do another lovely check up. This time I know the drill. The beak and the scan dildo are less intimidating and I know to take deep breaths. The more I relax my muscles down there the faster it will be done. I am told to come back for the test results.
‘You have HPV, and it can give you cancer’ she tells me a few weeks later. I am confused. I barely know what it is, and I remember getting the vaccine for HPV as a young teen. It was a rite of passage to complain to your fellow students about your sore arm. I get visibly upset but the doctor and her assistant assure me that there’s nothing to worry about. I should be totally fine they tell me. ‘So it is safe? I don’t have to worry?’ I ask. She looks at me and says ‘No? I just told you you could have or get cancer.’ She sighs.
I have barely processed that covid inflated my uterus giving me torture periods, and now this. They made an appointment for me to get it checked by someone who is specialised in ‘that’, maybe he had to take a biopsy, they tell me. I had to wait for a month. At the hospital he explains the procedure. ‘I’m going to insert a liquid that will show us any irregularities, like swellings or precancerous lesions.’ I nod. ‘If I find something, we will have to take a biopsy to get it checked’. I lay in the chair and at this point, opening my legs in front of a stranger doesn’t faze me anymore (gynaecologist strangers*!). ‘You have two swellings that I would like to take a closer look at. Take a deep breath, this may feel uncomfortable.’ He tells me and grabs a tool. ‘What? Now?! You are taking a biopsy now?!’ I panic. ‘Yes, just take a deep breath.’
A fire wells up through my lower stomach, burning me like my worst period cramps. I feel him chipping parts of me as I hear the clicking of the tool. My uterus screams and I can’t comfort myself by rolling into a ball with my legs up. The intense pain lasts for a good 10 seconds and then ebbs away slowly. ‘Now I’ll take the other one’ He tells me. ’There’s another one?!’ I look besides me and I see the doctor tossing bandages soaked in blood in the bin. I can’t hold the tears back anymore and they stream down my face while I brace myself for the second hit.
The assistant hands me a tissue to dry my tears. ‘Why are you crying?’ She asks me. ‘Because he just cut into my uterus and I can have cancer.’ I sob softly.
‘But you don’t know yet if it’s cancer, so cry when you know.’ After telling me when I’ll get the results and having to promise them I won’t faint, they give me a huge pad for the bleeding and send me out into the world again. I go home and feel numb. My belly hurts like I’m having my period, but it’s different. Clear red blood comes out of me and it turns darker as the week progresses.
Two weeks later I receive an email with lots of words that I have never even heard of. I google every single one of them, together and separate. Translating them to English just in case and keeping my eye open for the word cancerous. I find nothing. A follow up appointment with the gynaecologist confirms this. ‘It’s very normal, the swellings that you have. Your inner lining is turning into outer lining and this changes the structure.’ He explains to me as he proudly draws a uterus upside down on a post it. ‘So.. the HPV..’ I ask ‘Is it ok for now? Can I do anything to heal it?’ He tells me that it can heal by itself. There is not much I can do. I just have to check it regularly and be careful with others.
Relieved I exit the medical centre. I’m glad I’m alright. I’m grateful. My body that has always been fairly healthy is still healthy and I am incredibly lucky. But this was scary, and I feel more vulnerable. Aware that something bad can happen inside of me and I wouldn’t even know it.
Unfortunately my menstruation symptoms have barely improved, they’ve even gotten worse. Recently I’ve had the worst pain I’ve ever had, as if my insides were crawling and scratching their way out of me. The only thing that helped me was lots of ibuprofen and sitting in the Spiderman position on the floor while crying. I am still in search of a solution and naively in the hope that my symptoms will subside, like the doctor said. The misery ends for a few weeks and I get the luxury to forget about it. When it comes back around I’m in too much pain to think straight. Having had bad experiences with hormones and birth control in the past, I’m not taking a leap of faith taking the hormones she mentioned in our consult, without any proof of them actually working.
It has become a cliché to not be taken serious as someone with a vagina and periods who reaches out to a doctor because of pain. It’s not this or that, so you should just suffer through it or take the pill. And it is most likely not as bad as you make it out to be, according to the doctors. There are countless stories out there similar to mine or far far worse. People with vaginas have grown substantially thick skin in their experiences in healthcare on top of the pain we monthly have to endure. We can’t stop challenging what we are being told if it means we are being dismissed and told to just ‘suck it up’.
A book that has helped me learn more about my body and mostly the psychological turmoil that we experience every month is Period Power by Maisie Hill. Every person who menstruates needs this book and it is full of information on our hormonal fluctuations and for example fertility. It has made the changes of my body more liveable and it is a book I often turn to when I need a reminder of what I am going through. This book is a must and you should get it too.
A book that I haven’t read yet but would like to read in the near future is Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn. ‘A journey through medicine and myth in a man-made world’. This book covers the history of female medicine from ancient Greece to the present and all the wrongdoings we had to suffer through for generations. Highly praised by many, I’m expecting this book to be a great tool to further educate myself on the subject.
I feel the need to end this essay on a lighter note, downplaying my symptoms. I know that I am incredibly lucky that the results of my biopsy came out clean, and I know that other people have it so much worse, even with their period symptoms alone. But doesn’t this devaluing of my experience just prove how I am conditioned as a woman to not create too much commotion?
Don’t hold back from going to the doctor. Doctors are people and might suck, but we need them. If they don’t respect your symptoms, go to another one. Something I will do too. Suffering shouldn’t be normalised and we’ve already have to deal with enough shit.