Thursday, November 30, 2006

#589: IN WANT OF A COLPOSCOPE

GO VOTE FOR ME RIGHT NOW.

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I had an appointment with a doctor on Tuesday. This appointment was but one stop in a series of cervix-probing experiences, so here is the brief timeline of what lead up to it:

In September, I had a physical for the first time in six years. I know that I should have had about six physicals in that time, but better late than never, right? Right. I urge everyone to go in and have a physical if you have not in the last twelve months, because

a month later in mid-October, when I got the results from my physical, they were not what I was hoping for. Apparently, the tests showed that my cervix needs some work, so I was referred to a gynecologist for more tests and a colposcopy.

Today, I went to see that gynecologist.

I really thought that I was going to get biopsied and scraped and completely felt over on Tuesday morning, because my test results from my pap smear with my regular doctor came back saying that my cervical cells were highly abnormal. I had been eagerly awaiting some minor surgical operations for days. The gynecologist's name was Dr. Jabs, for fuck's sake. Dr. Jabs is not a name that leaves you with serene feelings while you sit in the waiting room with three other women, envisioning your sensitive cervix under the instruments of someone who may or may not be jabby. With a Dr. Jabs on your agenda, you expect some show-stopping action.

After I had stripped from the waist down and waited under a paper sheet for far too long, the gynecologist came in and had me rest my heels in a pair of oven mitts (the stirrups actually sported floral-patterned oven mitts), plunged the most pinchy and over-sized speculum I have ever had the joy of accommodating inside me, swabbed my cervix, and told me to get dressed. That was it. No miniature knives, no vinegar wash, no cauterizing agents. Feeling a bit deflated after all the worry and apocalyptic dreamscapes I had conjured up over the preceding days, I put my pants back on. She handed me a couple of pamphlets on colposcopy and the human papilloma virus (HPV) and ushered me out to the front desk with the assurance that my own colposcopy would be happening in February. FEBRUARY. I had a physical in September, results in October, a gynecological appointment in November, and now nothing else is going to happen until February.

I think my cervix needs another advocate, because I am obviously falling down on the job.

Before heading home, I stopped off at a medical lab and made the following deposit, as requested by Dr. Jabs:

Yes, I made that specimen. If that bottle came with a magnet, I could have hung it on our refrigerator. I am quite proud of the fact that I managed to aim straight and true and delivered twice as much as they needed even though I had thoughtlessly emptied my bladder not fifteen minutes before. (Were you aware that there is a Flickr tag for urine? I didn't think so.)

After leaving my sample, I didn't know what to do with myself. With what do you follow up a disappointing visit with your gynecologist? As I was feeling dazed and spent, I chose to take a brief tour through the nearest mall, which turned out to be the most depressing mall I had ever been inside. Half of the outlets in the food court were empty but for signs advertising their availability for lease. Several clumps of the over seventy crowd, padded with coats they'd neglected to remove, stooped over paper cups filled with coffee from the souvlaki counter. Not one, not two, but three stores bore names like Liquidation World and Buck-or-Two, their merchandise buried in a cacophony of brightly printed cardboard and shiny plastic packaging.

It felt like the inside of an old sneaker abandoned in an intersection by someone too drunk to feel ownership. I decided to that it was in my best interests to avoid the souvlaki counter and make a run for it before I inhaled to much of the building's air of resignation, and I boarded the next bus that would take me away. I needed to shuffle off the mall's overwhelming weight of palpable lassitude.

At least on the bus there were windows to look through and winter to watch.

I never really wanted this body I inhabit. Before I even went to kindergarten, I felt it wasn't properly mine, and so this thing with having an errant cervix is bothersome. I would prefer it if it would simply skulk away, but if that were possible, my emotional neglect would have driven it out long ago.

Coming to terms with the fact that I am here and that this is indeed my body is numbing rather than enlivening. Corporeality is a nasty truth. It fucks shit up. I preferred a body that I could drag along like a sack of potatoes, but now we're stapled together. There's no more floating through life under a lead balloon. I'm in it for good.

The bus took a long, circuitous route through once-suburbs, areas that have been surrounded and resurrounded like the interior of an onion by newer suburbs with larger houses and smaller yards and salmon stucco exteriors. About half-way along its route, the bus turned down a street that was lined on one side with industrial-looking buildings and on the other by the open prairie, its snowy distances defined only by the pencil-thin intrusions of a metal fence and lampposts meting out the rhythm of the cars.

We landed downtown twenty minutes later, and I decided that if I had to be connected to this meat machine, I would treat it to an open-faced steak sandwich. I even ate the pallid side vegetables and the iceberg lettuce with grated carrots. I read In Touch magazine and learned all the picayune details of celebrity weddings and weight dilemmas. The long wait for February's colposcopy became more manageable with the application of comfort food and thought-relieving literature, and while I browsed through pictures of famous hair, I worked out an equitable living arrangement with my cervix that I think we can both handle. It has promised to hover below my radar for the next few months, and I, in turn, have promised not to commit any grievous harm against it before it is colposcoped. After the colposcopy, though, it's open season on the sick little fucker.

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I would like to extend special thanks to those promoting the Schmutzie vote: The Cheeseblog, Citizen of the Month, Fracas, Harper Valley, Lala Land, No Show Mo, Palinode's Palace, Sweetney, and Whaling Season.


This is Day 30, which concludes the first annual (Inter)National Blog Posting Month 2006. Surf with the NaBloPoMo Randomizer. Shop at the NaBloPoMo store.

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23 comments:  Anonymous Photos of your own urine will win you the blog awards for sure. That's how I got to be homecoming king.    schmutzie In lieu of boobs, I went with urine. Should I have gone with something else?    greeneggsandtam i sat for a few moments quietly sounding out 'picayune' and i will tell you, i dont like it schmutz, not one bit. it don't like the way it sounds. i want to go to the keg and order the picayune with a side caesar. which of course would be the apex of irony. why is everything i write so damnedably not funny...back to my complaint - i hate that word. i think i read it in a h.g. wells book and i had to look it up. if i hadnt all ready voted for you - i wouldn't because i hate that word sooooo much.okaaaay, of course i would vote for you. i just hate the drivers in this city and the weather and all kids between 14 and 16 yrs. should be shipped away to some remote island, and i have no kitchen, and i want new boots and i cant afford them and i lost my debit card and i want lunch. maybe ill just email you later    pepektheassassin O my gosh, I just laughed and laughed, out loud even, at your terrible and disturbing news, and then, the guilt, the guilt.... Dr. JABS???? O well. We've all been there, feet up. Done that. This was GREAT. Keep us posted.    pepektheassassin How embarrassing. I voted for you, again. They said 'You have already voted. Your last vote did not count.' Will they now come to my door with handcuffs? hm. Might be interesting....    Heather & Helen I am in New Zealand right now, telling everyone how much I love the weather here (19degrees today) and you pictures really made me miss the snow. Can you believe it, I miss winter Heather    fenny http://static.flickr.com/103/308864686_ddd7eabeed_o.jpg that is a lovely picture.    Pioneer Woman Sorry, Schmutzie. It's bad enough having cervical problems, let alone with a cervix you're not even sure you want. I've voted for you a lot over the past week. On lots 'o computers. My dad's a doctor, and get this: one of his fellow practitioners, a surgeon, was named Dr. Hatchett. The other, a surgeon, was named Dr. Carver. I kid you not. Good luck!    My Head Is Too Big If you missed out on Tim's Souvlaki I feel sorry for you. Bad location, best goldurn souvlaki on a bun in the known universe. You can taste the love. I suggest that you go right back there and get right with Tim. soooooo good.    Jennifer I voted for you, too. But honestly? I'm more proud - and jealous - of your hitting all 30 days of the NaBloPoMo innaugural (sp? too tired to check) event. Being one who blogs nearly every day anyway, I thought it would be a breeze. Silly me. Bah. Good luck! On all counts!    Anonymous Oh how you made me relive my experience with Dr. Hackit and a suspicious spot on my inner thigh. Nobody needs evil thrusting or slicing monikered folks down there. Hope come February (fighting to not type 'urine') you're in better shape. A PS I went and voted for you in this, the eleventh hour.    Knuckle_toes You're dehydrated? How can I tell? You ask. Well, I know alot about pee. The yellower, and the stinkier, the more water you should drink! Also, you should not have avoided the souvlaki stand, they make really really good fries there.    Sue How does knuckle toes know your pee stinks anyway? I sniffed and all I smell is the old coffee on my keyboard. OK backing up, I had you blogrolled and then you mysteriously disappeared off my bloglines when I was reorganizing. I thought you just weren't posting but then your hubs posted about the nomination, and I got him to stop linking his pitch for you to himself. Maybe he told you about that. I found him--than you-- via finslippy and have become a fan, but not a stalker. Or a fan who would be a stalker if 20 years younger and still drinking. Now. You have my utmost sympathy regarding your errant cervix. I had an abnormal pap last year. I was told to wait four months and repeat. It came back normal. Thanks for the anxiety papologists! But it gets a little worse--during the physical the doctor felt that my uterus was shaped funny, which bought me a vaginal ultrasound. Those are first done by pressing the wand on your tummy after telling you to overfill your bladder, then you pee and then they stick a nother wand up your twat. The only fun part is the peeing. They found a cyst and fibroids that I have to have checked yearly. I just had one yesterday and must now await the results and wonder. And my last mammogram requires a re-exam of my right boob. I can't get in for that until December. They won't say why they want fresh pictures of my right boob. It could be a technical malfunction (ala Janet Jackson). I refuse to entertain any other possibilities. I have very similar relationship with my body, in particular my uterus which I have never required and been tortured by monthly since I was 13. I have recently begun to imagine that there is a perverted vampire sucking my life force out of my mid-section. It really would be fine with me if the vampire just took it home with him and made it his toy, and leave me alone. Seriously. Those photos, and your vulnerability as you ponder these things are very touching. I am totally voting for you early and often. (Sorry I spilled so much. I am a bit stressed out right now and I don't feel my stress when I am yapping in peoples' comments. Thanks for the space.)    Miss Syl I don't understand why, if your results were highly abnormal, they are waiting so long to do the colposcopy. Is there another doctor you could see who could get you in sooner? It's ridiculous they're leaving you hanging like that, if your results were that signficant. I guess I also don't understand if she WASN'T doing a colposcopy, what procedure the doctor *was* doing on Tuesday, if severe dysplasia had already been diagnosed. It all sounds very strange. I am concerned.    sumo One of my friends just went through the highly abnormal numbers related to the cervix thing. She did have to have some work done, but further testing revealed that she did not have the real bad stuff and that she'll be fine, which was a huge relief. Good luck with all of this.    kilowatthour oh, canada. so right, and so wrong. healthcare for all! next year! i'm thinking admonishments at your cervix.    doahleigh I just scheduled my annual checkup, which I dread for 12 months every year. Hate it! And your description of the "most pinchy and over-sized speculum" did not help. I hope things go well for you in February!    Saskboy Add me to the list of people that think you should ask your Dr. then TELL him to get you an appointment sooner than February. January is even waiting a while. Get them to fax you the test results of the last swab so you can either take it to another Dr., or look up online if it's normal enough to wait longer.    savia I'm with Mr. Head - it's too bad you didn't get a chance to buy your cervix some souvlaki and greek fries. Not that the damn cervix deserved it or anything - stupid cervix - all abnormal and crap. Mumble mumble. But you deserve it.    TB I promise to try my best to distract you until February. Would you prefer photos of my cats in various poses such as in an armchair with the remote control, or an itemized list of maladies that I find somewhat humorous that apparently accompany growing a human in one's uterus?    Anonymous Not sure how I came across this particular post of yours.. seeing it's a week or so old now! But I am rather relieved to find someone else blogs about visiting the gynaecologist. I had a culposcopy thingy done in August to remove a very large polyp. I can't believe you have to wait till FEBRUARY... I am also chuckling that you actually took the photo of the urine sample in the first place!! Classic.    Anonymous you're rad. good luck with your sick cervix. is that wait from now til february the reason my american law professors keep telling me our american health care system ("healthcare for the wealthy or the lucky") is better than the canadian system? i still think they're wrong, but what do i know?    Anonymous Hmm. I went searching for Tim's Souvlaki to see if they had an online website... i come across some comments about it and get linked to this page. Honestly, didn't read the post. Just skimmed to you insulting one of my favourite restaurants! Hell, half the food there isn't worthy of a "fast food" tag as it's all cooked fresh. To each their own, but for me? Tim's all the way.   blog comment guidelines post a comment ~ Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] ~ main page