The Gynecological Picnic

Oh, fun! A post about my lady-parts! Men blog-watchers, you may want to go back and read about my sign again, or go play in the archives for a little while until the next post. This is not the kind of lady-part blog entry that's any fun, trust me.

All righty then! So today I had to go for the first in a set of tests I have to have to take a "closer look" at stuff. And like most women, the OB/Gyn office is one of my least favorite places to go. I have tried in vain for years to find a gynecologist who's not also an obstetrician, but they are apparently a dying breed. Literally - like, they're all 90 years old. They're also all male with incomprehensible accents. Not that there's anything wrong with a male gynecologist (my first one, in fact, was a man and I adored him), but when it comes to my most precious body parts, I'd prefer someone I can understand and who does not resemble an Indian Montgomery Burns.

So, yeah. The OB/Gyn office sucks. Not only is it an all-around unpleasant experience, but it is exacerbated by the fact that I'm surrounded by pregnant woman all talking about their kicking fetuses and their swollen feet and their newfound aversion to orange juice because it makes their morning sickness go on all day. Oooh, so THAT's what Florence Henderson was talking about with that whole"Orange Juice - It's not just for breakfast anymore!" commercial campaign. Well anyhow, not only am I surrounded by women with whom I have nothing in common, but I am also surrounded by nothing to read except magazines geared toward the breeding crowd. Did you know there is actually a magazine called "Conceive" that features articles - among other things - on how to make your bedroom more pleasant for baby-making activities? Yowza. As if the sperm is going to come out and look around at the wallpaper and candles and think, "yeah, this is very tastefully decorated, nice ambiance...betcha there's some good eggs in HERE!" or conversely, take one look at the piles of dirty laundry and torn comforter and go, "Oh, hell no, I'm not swimming any further in this dump!" Whatever. Shouldn't there be a Cosmo around here somewhere? Or at least a Reader's Digest? Good God.

Luckily I didn't have to wait too long (and for this I was especially grateful since my bladder was extremely full, as it has to be when you go for one of these things) and after only a few minutes of reading how a $1,100 bed from Crate and Barrel would be more conducive to getting it on with your baby's daddy, I was whisked into the ultrasound room. Here's where the surreality begins. I'm told to drop trou and hop on the table. Warm jelly stuff is smeared all over my abdomen and the technician moves what looks like a wide roll-on bottle with a cord over the slime. She is silent. I crack jokes. She doesn't smile. I say, "Do you see anything?" She says, "I see your uterus. I see your ovaries."

I say, "But do you see anything IN any of those things?" She says, "I'm not allowed to tell you."

Um...this is MY uterus we're looking at, no? So why can't she tell me anything? Apparently because she's not a doctor, she's not qualified to tell me if there's a baseball-sized cyst on my ovary or some foreign object growing in my fallopian tube. I say, "Well, you would tell me if you saw anything bad, right?" Her answer, "I can't tell you anything either way, good or bad."

She finishes and tells me to go empty my bladder and come back for the second part of the test, and this is where things get a little more intimate. There is this wand with a sensor on the end of it, and the whole thing is covered with what looks like a giant condom, and ... oh hell, you're all adults; you can figure out what happens next, crikey. So while she's poking around in there and pressing on my stomach, I'm watching her face, which is watching the screen (which I cannot see, and even if I did wouldn't be able to tell what everything was anyway). She looks serious. I ask again, "Do you see anything?" and she says, "The radiologist will be able to tell you about anything we find." I lay back on the table and watch her some more. Her mouth is turned downward, her eyes are boring into the monitor. I can't tell if she's concerned or just concentrating. In any case, it's fucking annoying and scaring me.

This is going to be one really long week.