Safe and Sorry?

As previously mentioned I had an appointment for a colposcopy yesterday, which I hadn't planned on saying anything more about, but have obviously changed my mind on that score now that the matter is over.

I think the best description I can give is to refer you to the Dentist scenes in the film The Little Shop of Horrors. There was a chair which looked comfortable enough to please a practiced torturer, instruments to make your eyes water and a silently eerie doctor who grunted nearly finished now and again when I began to look as agitated as I felt.



My brother who is a doctor, once explained to me that, while they may not be taught this outright in medical school they are certainly encouraged to consider their patients as pieces of meat. While I can sort of see the logic behind this outlook, as it protects the doctor from becoming too involved, I also found it at the time to sound callous and cold and not how I would like someone to view me. After all the phrase "a piece of meat" brings images of the carcasses of soulless mammals to mind, not a way I prefer to view myself, lets be honest. However despite having many encounters with the medical profession I have not once ever felt so mistreated. Until yesterday.

I was prepared for the torture chair in my own mind but not for the indignity that accompanied getting into it while the nurses fiddled with settings and pedals and things which weren't helping me feel any better about the said indignity. A gown would have been appreciated. A place to undress in private would also have gone a long way.

I was prepared for the telescope that they had to use but not for the student nurse who stood directly behind the doctor staring at bits of me I barely know myself by sight. And worse still grimacing, once things were under way and at a time when I was really trying hard not to show fear. The fact that she continued to stare at me once I was released from the chair as I tried to draw the few scraps of dignity I had left around me did nothing to further endear her to me. Maybe she was interested in the myriad of interesting scars I sport? If so she could have asked I have no problem telling my story and she might have learned something, but just staring at me was improper, and what's more it was unfair, after all I was just trying to get dressed.

I want to make it clear right now that I would still rather have gone through what happened yesterday then discover in 5 years time that I have cervical cancer, and too late at that because I was too scared to put myself through a colposcopy. That is a foolish way to look at this and not one I would advocate. I will do whatever I have to do to be healthy, I've seen too many doctors not to know the value of health and well being. That's not what this is about. What I have a huge problem with and am increasingly angry about is the indignity of it. I was made to suffer because the hospital was short staffed (I was told this by the very kind nurse who took me aside afterwards and helped me compose myself), I was made to feel like a freak show and piece of meat by a girl who should have known better, and I was made to feel irrelevant and pathetic by a doctor who didn't care. I'm sure not everyone experiences this procedure this way, and I'm also sure there are better ways of doing it, than what I experienced.

I'll get the results in 2 weeks time and I don't foresee that there is anything to worry about but then again it probably is better to be better safe than sorry. Right??