The first time I went to the OB-GYN, I was terrified. Getting the most personal part of your body examined is quite an unnerving thing to think about. I was 15 at the time and extremely uneducated in anything to do with the female reproductive system. My mom would assure me everything would be fine, but when I wasn’t at the OB-GYN, I was laying at home, unable to walk and on an impressive selection of pain medications, so to be truthful, I didn’t believe her.
After going to the OB-GYN multiple times and getting all sorts of examinations and tests done, I was told I had a bartholin cyst (don’t search this if you don’t want to be traumatized). I was given medication and basically told to wait it out, and if it got worse to go to the hospital.
Unfortunately, the pain was becoming unbearable, and was preventing me from falling asleep, so one night I woke my mom up and we made our way to the ER. This was the night I would experience the most pain I’ve ever had in my life.
Sitting in a blue gown on a hospital bed, I was cold and very tired. Hours passed, and multiple nurses and doctors filtered in and out of the room. A children’s specialist came in and offered me a stress ball to squeeze on. That’s when it clicked that I would be very much conscious and awake during this procedure, which was probably the thing I was most worried about to begin with.
After multiple hours, three nurses and a doctor came in, and it was finally time to begin the procedure. I was relieved, yet very nervous, and my palms started to sweat an abnormal amount.
To begin the procedure, local anesthesia was applied, and they would say, “You’re going to feel a touch on your left side” to warn me before doing anything.
If anybody heard me during the procedure from outside the door, it probably sounded like I was giving birth—it probably looked like I was giving birth too. The stress ball the counselor gave me most definitely came in handy. That night was probably the most I’ve ever cried. I remember my mom hovering over me, holding my hand, crying with me.
Before the procedure they told me that they would be placing a catheter in the incision to keep it open, but they also said the chances of the catheter staying in were quite low, and they were right, because not even a minute after they inserted the catheter, it fell out. This meant that it was very likely the cyst would come back and I would have to go to the hospital for a proper surgery.
The days that followed I couldn’t walk properly, I was basically bed-ridden, and for the days I was in school, I had mastered the art of manspreading. Barely a week after the first surgery, it came back. This time we made an appointment for surgery at the UNC hospital.
The experience at UNC hospital was definitely less painful, as for this procedure I would be under anesthesia. I was rolled to where the surgery would be taking place. There was a bright white light above my head, it looked like the cliche shot in a movie when the character wakes up in the hospital after a near death experience. That was one of the last things I thought before the doctors told me to count back from ten. I remember getting to six, and after that it went dark.
I woke up with a few graham crackers and a cup of water next to me. I couldn’t see straight and I remember my saliva feeling very heavy in my mouth. I was definitely feeling the after effects of some very heavy drugs.
Since that day, I’ve had a great story to tell people, and an experience that very few get to encounter. My fear of OB-GYN’s quickly dissolved, and this experience has taught me to be grateful for something that many people forget to be grateful for: our vaginas!
Image by Hammond Cole Sherouse/The ECHO
