Essays

Back in the Saddle

2019 First Prize Award, Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, Humor Category

This isn’t my first rodeo. I know the drill; get your head in the game; put your feet in the stirrups; scoot your butt down just a little more. The speculum might be a little cold. You might feel some pressure. You might have some cramping and bleeding later. You might have cancer; try to relax.

It’s hard for me to relax on a good day, when everything’s going my way. So the chances of me relaxing in a doctor’s office just before a small piece of my uterus is going to be removed, are zero.

I’m flat on my back, looking at the poster of redwoods on the ceiling directly above me. Standard procedure in every gynecologist’s office. The sun is shining through the trees in rays of light. It’s pretty and perhaps it’s helpful for some women to imagine they are having an invasive procedure in the middle of a forest rather than a doctor’s office. As much as I don’t want to be here, the forest option is less appealing. I wonder about the kind of woman who falls for this poster trick. I wish I had a brain like that.

“Your going to feel a little pinch.” The doctor says. “Try not to tense up. Take some nice deep breaths for me.”

The deep breaths aren’t for her and “a little pinch” doesn’t begin to cover it.

She told me to take two Tylenol before my appointment but I did the math, and took one Valium. Some people go for sedation dentistry. I go for sedation gynecology. And really, why isn’t that a thing? No one expects you to relax your way through a root canal. No one will make you feel deep shame for checking out of your teeth cleaning with a little laughing gas.

The Valium doesn’t take away the pain it just helps me not care as much about what is happening to me. This seems like a reasonable approach to the situation. But this drug also tends to have a slightly depressive affect on me which I don’t remember until I start crying.

When the doctor notices my tears she embarks on her annual campaign to get me to try another antidepressant. When I resist she says, “Well, I’m only bringing this up because I have a patient with stage-four metastatic breast cancer who is happier than you are.”

I might not have a shit ton of serotonin but I have plenty of common sense which my gynecologist clearly lacks. I used to think she was just socially awkward, but this seems- I don’t know- boarder-line completely inappropriate. I don’t know how she does at a dinner party, but she definitely needs to work on her vagina monologue.

I am speechless; still flat on my back, legs spread, feet in stirrups. I am in no position to defend myself. So I don’t. Instead I do my best silver lining thinking. All I come up with is that maybe if the biopsy comes back positive for cancer I’ll be as happy as that other lady is.