Even with the coolest, hippest, most easy-going lady doctor in the world, I get really insecure. I shower twice before my appointment, I dab perfume on my abdomen, and I avoid "having fun" for a few days prior, because who knows if she can tell?
Once, I forgot to shave my legs and walking into her office I almost cancelled my appointment. Vanity thy name is Sarah.
There’s also the humiliation of the sex interview while I’m wearing a paper dress.
“Are you having sex?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t need a prescription for birth control?”
“Nope.”
“No.”
“Then you don’t need a prescription for birth control?”
“Nope.”
With certain things, I like to maintain a bit of intrigue, and there’s just no mystery in that relationship. It’s a little heartbreaking.
Plus, the waiting room is full of women who are chubby and pregnant and toting kids around. I’m not jealous, I don’t want a baby, but as soon as they see my un-ringed left hand, these bitches look at me like I walked in wearing jelly sandals, and a tube top with “Slut” emblazoned across the boobs. It’s a real ‘down the nose, raised eyebrows’ look. Gee wiz, how dare I be in my early twenties and concerned about the health of my uterus? It’s only a major organ, but I suppose I’m just a big whore for even acknowledging I have a vagina right?
sigh.
As rough as it is to walk through my gyno’s door and become a blaringly non-mysterious tart; I have a slight inkling herpes and cancer would be somewhat more troubling...
As the fear-mongering news reporters were all too delighted to shout from their digital rooftops, slightly more than one in four American girls (14-19) is infected with an STD. Now, I don’t particularly enjoy using public restrooms, but like most, I often find myself in a situation where I have to. I’m not germo-phobic, but it would be just my luck if some Hannah Montana, anal-doesn’t-count tween leaves her HPV on a toilet seat for me.
Not fun. And while a pap smear isn’t a day at the movies, it also isn’t death from cervical cancer, or a certain mood killer when someday I want to have meaningless sex with a stranger.
Plus, the waiting room is full of women who are chubby and pregnant and toting kids around. I’m not jealous, I don’t want a baby, but as soon as they see my un-ringed left hand, these bitches look at me like I walked in wearing jelly sandals, and a tube top with “Slut” emblazoned across the boobs. It’s a real ‘down the nose, raised eyebrows’ look. Gee wiz, how dare I be in my early twenties and concerned about the health of my uterus? It’s only a major organ, but I suppose I’m just a big whore for even acknowledging I have a vagina right?
sigh.
As rough as it is to walk through my gyno’s door and become a blaringly non-mysterious tart; I have a slight inkling herpes and cancer would be somewhat more troubling...
As the fear-mongering news reporters were all too delighted to shout from their digital rooftops, slightly more than one in four American girls (14-19) is infected with an STD. Now, I don’t particularly enjoy using public restrooms, but like most, I often find myself in a situation where I have to. I’m not germo-phobic, but it would be just my luck if some Hannah Montana, anal-doesn’t-count tween leaves her HPV on a toilet seat for me.
Not fun. And while a pap smear isn’t a day at the movies, it also isn’t death from cervical cancer, or a certain mood killer when someday I want to have meaningless sex with a stranger.
So while I believe that going to the gynecologist is just shy of a truly traumatic experience, I will go and be prodded and scraped. Because I also believe that my health, my life, is more important than my fears.
1 comment:
Where were all the Hannah Montana, anal-doesn't-count tweens when I was growing up?
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