IUDizzy

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. 

Holls and The Locked Box

The other night I woke up from a night of mixed, weird dreams, sat up straight and asked out loud, "What if my box is locked?!" I mean can that happen? I'm not sure, but what if it can and it has happened to me? What if my vag is as depressed as I am and has just shut down? Given up? This is on my mind, of course, because of the tragedy that was my last gyno visit. 

What a mess. 

If you read my blog even remotely regularly you know what a nightmare my paps are, and this last one was every bit the disaster that I thought it was going to be. I told myself a whole bunch of fluffy, positive stuff like the hippy Yoga ladies do on Youtube for a good outcome but sadly, that didn't help. I won't bore you with the ghastly details. Let's just say that me and my gyno were both visibly shaken by the horror of it all. It was so bad that the exam didn't even happen. Afterward, I sat on the examining table crying as a really compassionate nurse rubbed my back. Once I composed myself and left, I vowed never to try to get an exam again.

"You can't do that!" Bells yelled into the phone. "Papsmears are preventative care!"

Sigh. Bells is all about her preventative care. In undergrad, it was as simple as eating Special K bars for breakfast instead of my traditional stack of pancakes. Now she gets every recommended age and gender appropriate test/screening there is. The woman is going to live to be 206! 

"It hurt!" I yelled, and boy, did it. One crank of that tongy thing in my junk took my breath away. 

"Well it's uncomfortable for sure," she agreed. "But you have to get them done."

I called Savannah in a panic about the whole thing and she met my anxiety with her usual cool, Cali-carefree demenor. 

"Savannah, I am the only woman I have ever heard of that needed emotional support from a nurse after a routine pap!" I cried into the phone. 

"Oh, that's just because you are a little sensitive," she said. 

SENSITIVE?!

"You need to get some toys," Mama Savannah, Savannah's mom, echoed from the passagenger seat. I was on speaker phone. "Or some D."

D?! Everyone is a comedian. 

And then the other night it all came to me after my weird dreams. My vag has locked up, taking with it any hope (all be it small) that I had of ever having a relationship or a normal, grown-up lady life. And I can't say that I am mad at her. I think I would shut down too if I was as un-social as she is. It's time to just stop caring and embrace the hand-me-down thrifted turtle necks and easy-fit gender neutral blue jeans. It's a wrap! 

"Shut up, your junk didn't lock up," one of my medical buddies said in a very annoyed tone. "That's like me saying that my ear has closed up or my eye or something."

Is it? It doesn't sound the same. 

I can't lie, this whole situation makes me a little sad. Oh the whoas of being the only woman alive with a passive peach.