Ouch
Someone once had one of those horoscope books where you could look up your specific birthday and learn so many interesting facts about yourself (facts that apparently the book knows and you don’t). So, we were passing this book around the room and it comes to me so I naturally look up my birthday and read that while I take care of everything else in my life way before it is necessary, I always put off going to the doctor.
Which is true.
Scary book. If we were in a movie, we would then gather around the ouija board and it would spell out i-n-f-e-r-t-i-l-i-t-y and then the planchette would spin wildly out of our hands and then come to an abrupt stop pointing at…ME ME ME.
It is true. I start planning for Halloween in June. I sent out my graduate school applications in October. I don’t leave things to the last minute. Except when it comes to doctors.
I wait on all health problems just in case they mysteriously go away on their own. With the exception of infertility. For the first time in my life I was like, “get me to the doctor…NOW.” Fertility seems to time sensitive. My swollen ankle, on the other hand, does not.
Last night, my ankle began swelling and taking on a purplish hue. I don’t remember twisting it. I had a bug bite last week in the same area that hasn’t quite gone away. And my instinct is to still sit here at the computer working while my ankle throbs. Since getting married, my husband has done his best to override my fate of being born on a day that includes doctor procrastination. He pestered me all morning to make an appointment with the general practioner. I have one for this afternoon because he always wins.
He has to work hard to get me to allow a doctor to LOOK at my ankle, yet I was eager to jump into the stirrups and allow them to slide a cathetar into my hoo-haa. Maybe because the ankle is just a physical pain and the infertility was an emotional pain. And I think we all know which one wins out if the two kinds of pain got into a superhero fist-fight.
And speaking of intense pain, I just posted Carolyn’s third (yes, you SQ slackers, her THIRD) write-up for Operation Heads Up. It’s for the HSG, which was, hands down, the most pain I have ever experienced in my life. I know that makes me sound like an enormous wimp, but remember that I am the woman limping around on a swollen, painful ankle who would have had no intentions of fixing it if not for her husband.
When I was in labour, the doctor asked how the pain was on a scale from one to ten. I told her that the numbers were arbitrary because she had no idea how painful my 10 was to me. She asked me what I considered a 10 and I answered, “an HSG.” She then asked me how labour fell on that scale and I said…a 6. Maybe getting up to an 8. That HSG was so painful.
Ouch.
Ouch.
Just thinking about it. Ouch.
0 comments
I always win? News to me. – The Sperm Palace Jester
I’m no slacker, I’m just a newbie and don’t have experience with anything beyond lap and HSG (which I did without asking any questions, so I’m pretty naive about what actually happened to my body, too. That Carolynn is so knowledgable, I learned stuff in her HSG write-up that I didn’t learn when I had my HSG). If you need to know how to take your own blood pressure, I’m your girl, but beyond that I’m living on the outskirts of IF, renting a nice little cabin, waiting for house in town to open up so we can move.
Aw shucks, I’m blushing.
BTW–I’m a total health procrastinator too. I’d rather walk around in pain for weeks than go to the dentist.
All right all right… so I am a slacker. You’ve got mail – one is done. 🙂
I do the same thing, too – with the exception of IF, which was the first time I went to the doctor timely.
Hope your ankle gets better soon…
Anything you say, dear!
–The Stirrup Queen
Can I just add that, for me too, the HSG was–hands down–the most pain I’ve ever experienced. It was godawful.
Like you, I’ve since been through labor, and while that was painful and no cake walk (ended up with a forceps assist with an epidural that had worn off–um, ouch), the HSG beat it in every. single. aspect. Horrific.
Everybody told me how painLESS the HSG was,and it felt like somebody was shoving hot pokers thru my ovarian tubes or something. I was in tears. It was so bad, I was in my “happy place” the whole time. So I hear ya(haven’t experienced birth YET), but it can’t be much worse than my HSG, either, LOL.
and I’m a planner, too. Must be us planners get hit w/the infertility so we can really feel out of control, huh?
I too tend to procrastinate on the dr’s…I had a bullseye on my leg last summer (obviously lyme disease) which I just ignored until it was so gross that it was embarrassing!
I thought the HSG was the most painful thing in my entire life UNTIL a week later when I had what I call the ‘botched’ saline sonogram… This was done by a nurse in my dr’s office b/c he thought he saw a polyp on my HSG. Well, besides getting the cathetar stuck back up my ‘hoo-ha’ (I am borrowing your name for it!) again, just a short week after the HSG, my cervix I learned is tilted. Without all the fancy schmancy hospital equip. (most of which I was told wouldn’t fit up there along with the u/s equip.) they weren’t able to get the catheter where it needed to be so the nurse just kept shooting saline solution up there for what seems like hours…the lady just wouldn’t give up!! Finally, she gave up and even after all that cr*p, they never could tell if I did have a polyp or not. And, I drove myself home from the dr’s appoint. and almost passed out b/c I had the worst cramps in my entire life. I thought my internal organs were going to fall out because she shot all that saline cr*p up into me helter skelter….
Oh, and I will definitly do a couple more write ups for you but I am much slower than Carolyn so you’ll have to bear with me!!
Kelly
The answer to the HSG problem is simple: Valium! Worked great for me. Now PAIN was the hysteroscopy with saline injection. The sadistic RE told me to take 1 Aleve an hour before. My current (love him!) Re said his office puts you under for it.
I just had an HSG on Weds. Here it is Friday and I’m still feeling like crap. It took the doctor 3 tries to get that elephant syringe in me because my cervix was too narrow. But he prevailed. Oh, the pain. I’ve been through a lot. A hysteroscopy which I was put under for, 3 DNC’s, and laproscopic surgery, and of course child birth. Nothing compares.