This is my second post about the chapter of my life where I am on the other side. If you missed the last post, start here.
The wind whipped against my bedroom window.
The wind chimes were ringing like crazy, as if carrying a message they wanted me to hear.
It wasn’t something that could be conveyed just through the whispers of the wind. It felt like something bigger was coming.
I tossed from side to side in bed, trying to drown out the destructive thoughts swirling in my head.
“It’s terrible. How did this happen? What if it’s terrible? Will I be able to get through this?”
On election night, like the rest of this country glued to their phones, I stayed awake with anticipation.
However, I was more preoccupied with the next day’s schedule.
I had been waiting for a reservation for two weeks.
This is a test to determine whether you have cervical cancer.
2 week wait
The same question had been looping in my head for two weeks leading up to this moment. “How did you get HPV?”
It was an unanswered question, but I continued to pursue it. With enough overanalysis and pressure, maybe something will finally crack open and reveal a hidden message hidden deep in my subconscious.
Two weeks to force a positive mindset, a mindset of invincible strength that will give you the resilience to cope with the worst news…
As the C word entered my brain again, a wave of nausea hit me and an overwhelming urge to stick my head in the toilet and throw it.
The next morning, the wind howled, I woke up in a daze, my brain not fully conscious enough to process the fact that the two week wait was over.
Even though my head was half asleep, my body felt the weight of the air. Something was wrong.
I checked my phone and discovered that this country would not have its first female president.
It was too much to think about things falling apart in my little world, and in other parts of this country as well.
Once the surgery is over, I don’t think you need to worry about that.
Colposcopy
I drove to my colposcopy appointment with the mindset that I just had to get this thing over with. I wanted to be on the other side of this process. So that I don’t have to think about this anymore.
That’s always been my mindset. It was like, “Let’s just get this over with and then we can breathe.”
On the other hand, I was very nervous about such a procedure, which involved removing tissue samples from my internal organs and administering just three ibuprofen tablets.
Before the appointment began, the nurse took my blood pressure twice and the results were surprising. I was able to hide my nerves from the outside world, but my body revealed the truth.
In the exam room, I sat in a large padded chair with blue paper draped over my knees, my back completely exposed.
I clutched my sweaty fingertips inside the large pocket of my sweatshirt, like a child who wanted his mother to hold his hand. I kicked my legs up, trying to dispel the tense energy inside my body.
The doctor entered the room with piercing blue eyes, a chic gray bob, and braces. I noticed that around her wrist was a beaded bracelet with the message “We will never go back.” Before we started she asked if I had any questions.
test
I was wondering if I could talk about the pelvic pain I’ve been experiencing for the past two weeks, pain that radiates from the crease around my pelvis on the inside of my leg.
I flicked my eyes around, studying the doctor’s face to see if she was really in the room with me. Did she see me or was I just a patient?
Her braces reminded me that she is a human being just like me.
She looked warm…so why was I worried about bothering her?
Maybe if she listened to me, she might realize something was terribly wrong. You could walk out of this office with two diagnoses.
My heart started racing. “Can I have a look?” I asked.
The next thing I knew, she was performing in a way that felt like she was excavating my inner realm. I gasped when she pressed her entire weight against my pelvis.
Through gritted teeth, I talked about the ultrasound from years ago that had pointed to a corpus luteum cyst. She dismissed the idea, saying she couldn’t feel that way for me. My cheeks turned red with embarrassment and I wished I hadn’t talked about it.
After some more poking and prodding, she casually threw out the idea that it might be my lymph nodes. As I hid her comment for a later Google session, I felt the blood pulse in my body, but I was too scared to ask what she meant in that moment.
biopsy
Before I could panic that something was wrong with my lymph nodes, the doctor inserted a speculum. The device was going where it didn’t want to go, but instead of sliding due to friction, it was being dragged.
She reminded me to relax.
I felt stuck, as if there was no way out at all. I was pinned down with this object inside me and forced to remain completely still.
She brought a wheeled microscope that looked like it came straight out of a middle school science fair closer to her chair. When she wiped the vinegar solution on my cervix, I almost laughed at her goggle-like glasses until I remembered where I was.
“I noticed a small white area on my cervix,” she said.
A black veil clouded my vision, followed by white spots. The room seemed to tilt around me. I wanted to pass out so I wouldn’t have to feel what was going to happen next.
My eyes widened cartoonishly as she pulled out a pair of long nubs. There’s no way they can get inside me.
She asked me to take a deep breath.
As I forced the breath out of my lungs, I felt a sudden pressure.
My body flinched, like when your leg moves involuntarily after the doctor hits your knee with a rubber mallet. It was as if my body had taken a screenshot of that moment.
“You’re bleeding a lot,” she said casually.
I felt myself recoiling and wished she had kept it a secret.
“When do the cramps start?” I asked.
She tilted her head and said, “If you haven’t had a cramp yet, you probably won’t.”
The smell of metal filled the room as she applied silver nitrate to stop the bleeding.
The doctor reminded me to keep breathing as he scraped my cervix with considerable pressure with something like a blunt wooden stick.
I wondered what disturbing events my doctor had seen in her life. Was this a normal Wednesday procedure for her?
The scraping intensified and I gripped the sides of the chair tightly, barely able to hold on with my sweaty palms.
At that moment I felt like a child. All I wanted was for someone to hold my hand and tell me it was going to be okay. I wanted to sob and release all the fear in my body, but that was impossible as this stranger was staring at my cervix with microscope glasses.
So instead, I told myself it would be okay.
The doctor smiled and said my mucus was good and healthy. It felt like a victory, even if it disgusted me.
When she finally took out the speculum, my legs were shaking uncontrollably and my knees were slamming into each other. She put a warmer on my stomach and told me to get up slowly.
With one foot out the door, she told me I would probably be okay. The next moment, she disappeared from the room, as if she had some business to attend to.
When I heard the word “probably,” I had a glimmer of hope until I realized it wasn’t a guarantee. I have to live in anxiety again until I see the results.
aftermath
The day after the procedure, when I sat down, it felt like a dry tampon was stuck inside my body. At times, it felt like my cervix was pulsating, and I was acutely aware of the fact that my body was constantly doing things that didn’t feel like work.
I moved carefully, not wanting to disturb what was inside me. What if you make a mistake and start bleeding? What happens if I end up in the hospital?
When I went to the bathroom, there were black spots on the toilet paper that looked like coffee grounds. According to Google, the bleeding was caused by silver nitrate, which is used to stop bleeding. Somehow I accidentally bought lavender scented toilet paper and the smell made me nauseous every time I used it.
For days, a black slimy gunk came out of me.
When I ran up the stairs so vigorously that I felt a huge goop come out of me before I reached the top, I remembered that my body was still healing.
result
After a few days of being cautious, I found myself practicing how to react to good and bad news. I picked up my phone every five minutes, anxiously awaiting a message from the doctor.
While I was working at a coffee shop, my health app notified me of a new test result.
The chatter around me fell silent.
As I rushed to check my results, my sweaty fingers left imprints on my phone screen.
Benign.
There is no evidence of cancerous or precancerous cells. It’s just acute and chronic inflammation (I think I googled it right after).
This was good news. My doctor’s note specifically said, “Great news!”
But my body was still as tense as when I was lying in the exam chair.
Did the doctor miss something? Why did the inflammation occur? Why do I still have pain on the right side of my pelvis? How did I get infected with HPV?
My heart short-circuited. I couldn’t relax because I was stuck in a loop that started after my first HPV diagnosis.
I needed to get rid of this pelvic pain before I could relax. I was going to figure out what I was doing wrong.
I had to fix it. I always fix things.
Disclaimer: This post documents my personal history with HPV and health concerns and should not be taken as medical advice.
