Who would have thought that me, who's about as sexually active as dry toast, would have to go on birth control? Sadly, it's not because I decided to have some type of a Hot Girl Winter as I skid on the banana peel toward middle age. Long story short, I have a condition and getting an IUD was the best way to treat it. Sigh. As if Frank, my ever-so-loving name for my vagina, hasn't been through enough. Now I have some contraption inside of me to keep things under control. And yes, my vagina has a man's name, obviously because it has given me nothing but trouble. Not to mention the bad haircut.
Over the years, I have heard my fair share of birth control nightmare stories. You know the greatest hits. "Birth control gave me blood clots." "Birth control made me fat." "The morning-after pill didn't work for me." "My IUD dislodged and I got pregnant anyway." "The pill gave me a beard." "I missed one Depo-Provera shot and woke up with a penis."
When I expressed my concern about getting an IUD to my gyno team, they shut me down pretty quickly.
"No, no, we are doing this," the main doctor said.
"But I have done online research-" I began.
"Every doctor on my team has an IUD. I had one when I was young enough to have children."
"What if Donald Trump makes birth control illegal and comes to get it?" I cried. My anxiety was sky high, and I had heard rumblings about how The Donald was coming for contraception since that whole abortion thing was such a slam dunk.
"He can't," they all said in unison. But I was not convinced.
"Listen, there are a bunch of women happy with their IUDs that are not writing Yelp reviews," one of the student doctors said. Maybe so.
About a month later, I have to say that it is clear that there is something inside of me. It's uncomfortable sometimes. I just move pretty slowly. I don't want to piss it off.
At night, I imagine that it pops out of place and does a soft shoe on my stomach. Then it moonwalks across my kidneys and does the cabbage patch on my liver. I wake up right before it goes to my heart to poke holes in it.
I guess I am not that great of a patient. I don't even know how long I am supposed to keep this thing in. I am assuming it is somewhere between three months and forever. Or until it gets carried away in my sleep, doing the Wobble in my throat before I wake up and throw it up. Honestly, I am preparing for things to go either way.
