Another Day of Laughs at the Gyno's

Written by Tara Tainton

Saturday, 07 May 2005 00:00

I came home yesterday afternoon amused, delighted, and happily sharing the experience of my annual trip to the gynecologist with my partner and my brother yesterday. It didn't dawn on me until later that this may not quite be normal.

Aside from the fact that I choose to share everything with my partner and my brother and I happen to have this really close relationship that involves swapping stories about everything from our sex lives and life philosophies to my increasing bust size and his need for a little action, I recall that the "annual visit" is usually something causing anxiety-driven dread in women folk and traumatizing them so much that they're oddly silent for days afterwards as if suffering from gyno-caused PTDD or feeling completely invaded. But why? I can't say that I've ever felt that way, and now I'm trying to figure out why...

For one, my very first trip to the gynecologist was a hasty run-in with a strange man who descended from somewhere in the middle east. I grew up on military bases. There was no family doctor, we changed doctors and dentists as often as homes. When I'd decided to get married over my college Christmas break between semesters, the event called for my first trip to that doctor, because having sex for the first time also meant needing birth control asap. I really was such a prude back then...

So, there I was, stuffed away in a white room with my mother in some other part of the clinic and this middle eastern guy with a thick accent poking and probing and refusing to make eye contact while a female nurse looked on. I knew it was just something that was a part of being female and a matter of disassociating with whatever cultural views that deemed that situation odd or invasive.

And I've continued to completely detach from however bad I'm supposed to feel in that spread-eagled situation ever since. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. The whole thing is over and done with in a matter of moments. If you're healthy, there's no real pain involved, just a little odd pressure. Any anguish caused is purely mental....because we're instructed that our private parts are for our own eyes only and sometimes, not even that. Really, what's the harm in some stranger seeing your vagina?? Don't laugh; I'm serious!

It also occurred to me that men folk just don't know what goes on in the office when we women have our usual check-ups on our womanly parts. Again, why are we keeping it all a big secret? Maybe it goes back to the female training involving keeping yourself and your womanly business a secret to just continue that air of mystery around our sex or be able to milk such small parts of our lives for all the sympathy we can get, as if we have been unjustly and horribly wronged in some way simply because it's a good idea to keep an eye on our inward parts.

For the benefit of the men out there who've never gotten a straight story (even if you didn't ever want to) about just what goes on behind that closed door in the gyno's office, here's my own personal account of my trip yesterday, very much like every other trip I've ever had. Then again, there was that time in Australia when I was asked if I minded a young medical trainee looking in on the procedure and there I was, spread open for the world to see, and not one, but two different people poking and prodding and even discussing my different parts and qualities as if I was a textbook...

Yesterday, I was called in from the waiting room and immediately weighed. The nurse's aid asked for my height and continued to disbelieve that I'm only 5' 2" and actually started arguing that I must have measured wrong because I absolutely look at least 5'4". I'm led to the private little room with the big medical chair and asked for an update on my medical history. The aid can't believe I don't recall exactly which grandparent had cancer or why I'm even sitting so calmly. I explain that I need a new prescription for birth control, not a renewal, because the last prescription was issued by an Australian doctor. The aid looks at me as if I've just traveled back from another planet.

When she leaves, I follow the instructions to completely undress, head-to-toe, and put on the little cloth nightie that ties only at the waist and neck and falls open in the back. I plop up on the medical chair only to find myself freezing and waiting for another 20 minutes or so. So, I pop back up and spend the time sending amusing text messages to my brother and thumbing through a fitness magazine after reading every chart in the room about flu symptoms or how a baby grows inside your womb. I stare at the plastic model of a larger than life vulva and wonder how you'd fit all the pieces back together if you dared to take the model apart for a patient's visual benefit.

Finally, nurse Anne with the lovely blonde hair walks in. Amazingly, she remembers me from a year and a half earlier, just before I headed out of the country for my big adventure. She thinks I've gone to Alaska, getting the "A" word confused with Australia. When I mention New Zealand as well, she goes on about a kiwi couple who'd been in the office and are expecting a child; the nurse was fascinated by their accents. Nurse Anne is much more excited than I am, but her exhilaration is infectious. Soon, she's got me spewing off travel tales of all the fun and trouble I'd gotten into and the human souvenir I returned with. Meanwhile, Anne's checking my heartbeat with a stethoscope and taking down my instructions about wanting a prescription for an off-brand of the mini pill rather than the big names because I've found a site for securing cheaper pills online and refuse to pay the $38/month everyone else in this country does.

Anne asks me if I've had any issues over the last year while lying me down and releasing my gown to expose one breast at a time. She lifts my arm in one hand and runs her fingers over my entire breast with the other, doing quite a thorough job. We chat about my dense breasts that continue to grow with the slightest hormone fluctuation, and Anne just laughs, herself having the biggest bosom I've ever seen. I still don't know if she can actually recall or was just playing along when she mentioned noticing my breasts are larger than when she saw me last.

Anne moves on to the other breast while we continue to talk about density, softness, fatty tissue, and what makes breasts large. Soon, my gown's tied around the neck again and my feet are up in stirrups, resting around my ankles. I scoot my butt so that it's hanging down off the end of the chair in front of Anne's face and she covers my bottom half with a paper sheet. Why that's done for my own benefit, I don't know. I think it'd be much more fun to see all the instruments coming directly at me with a little warning.

Diagram Illustration of Female Vagina

Anne warms up the metal speculum under running hot water, asks me to take in a deep breath, and plunges the device in. When she spreads the handles, I'm spread wide as well, all for her visual pleasure. Anne peeks inside, seeing all the way to my cervix, still talking to me incessantly, and she's got me laughing while she sticks the foot long cotton swab inside to clean off and dry an area of my inner wall. She then takes a little brush and scrapes off a few of the inner cells to swipe onto a glass slide to send off to the lab. In one quick movement, the speculum is released, and I'm object-free again. But Anne's not finished until her gloved fingers poke inside for a bit. If only that actually felt good, but in that setting, it's just annoying. And it doesn't feel too comfortable to be poked on the inside while another hand is pressing down on your abdomen in several places to make sure the positioning of your cervix is OK and there's no pain signaling a problem.

In minutes, I'm dressed again and leaving the office with my new prescription in hand. The whole process only took about 15 minutes. Anne and I won't reunite again until next year, if all goes well...