Words You Don't Want To Hear

I had to go to the gynecologist yesterday. Again. It seems my pap smear came back with "atypical cells" which could mean many things. I don't have HPV, which is good news. But they needed to do a colposcopy. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember that term. I kept wanting to say "colonoscopy." Uh, wrong hole in the "down there."

Here's the thing: No one wants to get a call where the words "pre-cancerous cells" are uttered. Even the most stable and calm individual would flinch and possibly panic upon hearing that. I tried to remain calm in the weeks between appointment 1 and appointment 2. "It's probably nothing. No need for undue worry or stress. Just think positively, Sizzle." It kinda worked. But not really.

So I arrive there for my 12:15pm appointment yesterday a bit frazzled from the morning I had at work. After being ignored for a good 15 minutes, a nurse finally brought me into the exam room and unveiled a microscope that had a warning tag on it that said, "This is not a toy. It could cause serious injury if mishandled." That made me feel safe. Yeah, sort of like having a crazy person wave a gun at you but promise that the safety is on. She explained that the procedure takes longer than an average pap smear so I would be lying on the exam table with the speculum in for an uncomfortable period of time. Uncomfortable became the word of the day.

(You are probably wishing you hadn't started reading, right? It's like a car accident you can't look away from.)

So I get undressed from the waist down and sit with a paper drape over my lap, waiting. I wait for about 10 minutes and the nurse pops in to apologize for the delay. Waiting in a doctor's office feels endless, even if it is only 10 minutes. Waiting with no pants and a paper drape over your lap feels like eternity. There is no comfy position. No easy way to appear relaxed when you are half-naked and awaiting the stirrups. No pose you can strike that says, "No, I am not nervous at all that you are going to take pieces of my cervix."

The doctor was nice and during the procedure, she chatted on about non-vagina related things. We talked about AIDS in America. A light topic to distract me. As I lie there, my legs spread, the speculum inserted, the swabs going in and out, the samples being taken . . . there was discomfort and a few pangs of brief pain but for the most part, it was completely survivable. I'll be honest, I wouldn't sign up for another go round but I am sure there are worse procedures to go through.

The nurse handed me a pad to wear because, as she put it, "there will be a brown discharge." Uh, I don't want to hear that phrase, ever, let alone experience it. Discharge is an ugly word but "brown" and "discharge" should never be in the same sentence. And a pad?! I haven't worn one of those since the 8th grade.

If I get a call before my next appointment on the 28th, it will be bad news. For now, the doctor assures me she doesn't think it is anything to worry about. Of course, I will still worry. It's what I do.

This post is totally TMI and I apologize for oversharing. I really needed to purge this experience from my psyche so I could move on. Emotional discharge is ok with me, the other kind? Not so much.