OK, if you’re still reading:
I saw a tweet last week from a male emergency medicine doctor in his residency. He asked, in a way that seemed kind of shocked, if women really don’t get any kind of pain relief or anesthetic when an IUD (intra-uterine device) is inserted for birth control. Like he was today years old when he realized women’s pain - and so many other women’s health issues - has been completely discounted by the medical establishment for millennia. I commend him for questioning this.
If, like me, you have ever had an IUD shoved up your nethers (because most family planning falls on women), you will not be surprised that his tweet received over 2,500 responses. Most were from women who were happy he asked but indignant about the needless pain they went through. One very, very unwise male anesthesiologist decided to wade into the fray stating most women tolerate the procedure just fine, and there’s just a confirmation bias because we only hear whining from the women who can’t take it. If they don’t say anything, having a device shoved up through their undilated cervix and into their unsuspecting uterus must’ve just been like a lovely sway in a hammock on a summer’s day for them.
My cervical dramas
I never complained about my IUD pain publicly. I didn’t get one of those doctor’s office surveys afterward. But I can tell you I was on my knees in the hospital parking garage after it was inserted weeping in pain. I was told in advance it would be fine, and I could go back to work afterward. Instead I was calling my husband because I didn’t know if I could drive home with the blinding pain. When I finally got home, I quickly discovered ibuprofen was no match for this foreign object in my womb, one I was told “may cause some mild cramping.” I found the oxycodone I’d had left over from when I was in a car crash and bruised my sternum and ribs like five years prior, and it was what got me through the next 24 hours. Most of the women in those tweets had experiences just like mine.
According to the Washington Post, “Research also shows that physicians and other providers underestimate women’s pain during IUD insertions. In a study of 200 women, most of whom had given birth, the women reported an average maximum pain score of nearly 65 on a scale of 0 to 100.
The providers, however, rated the women’s pain at about 35.”
I have been told by many physicians and even dentists that I have a high pain tolerance. Like most women, I wonder if that’s just because I grin and bear it. Maybe I feel just as much pain as anyone else, but I keep my mouth shut because who is someone like me to tell the very educated doctor they may be doing something wrong because it hurts? I even tried to stay quiet while I gave birth unmedicated (not really by choice, btw) because I didn’t want to be seen as one of those hysterical, screaming women.
At least with the IUD, it was a procedure I asked for (albeit without full knowledge of the pain it would entail). Something very different happened when I was 19 years old. I had to get on the birth control pill to take the drug Accutane for cystic acne. It apparently causes really bad birth defects, and despite the fact I was a virgin with a capital V, the dermatologist still insisted I get on the pill.
To get the prescription, I had to get a pap smear. I would later learn the gynecologist I went to at the time used a very outdated type of pap smear test that resulted in a lot of false positives. It came back as possibly positive for cervical cancer (which if you know anything about HPV, it’s super unlikely to get cervical cancer if you’ve never had sex). So I had to go in for a follow up: A follow-up in which the doctor invited medical students in without my consent while I was splayed open in stirrups so they could all have a look at my cervix through basically a small telescope. Then he took a biopsy of my cervix without asking if I was OK with it - cut a chunk out of it about the size of my fingernail (I saw it floating in the container he put it into) - with no numbing or anything. I screamed. He said it shouldn’t hurt. Then he complained about how much I was bleeding, asked a nurse to put a tampon in me to soak it up and left. I stumbled to the waiting room where my mom was. I cried and told her I felt like I’d been raped. This was my first experience with women’s reproductive health care.
I never went back to that doctor.
The hot new thing: studying the majority
Why did doctors think my IUD insertion or a colposcopy wouldn’t hurt? Maybe it’s because we haven’t studied women’s bodies in medicine nearly enough. Did you know women - who comprise 51% of the country’s population - weren’t included in most clinical trials in the United States until 1993?! Heart attacks have different symptoms in women. Hip replacement joints work differently in women. Medications have different levels of effectiveness among the sexes. Women have whole-ass internal organs men don’t that they just assume “shouldn’t hurt.”
“Failure to study medications and other interventions in a broad sampling of women has contributed to women experiencing adverse effects from medications at twice the rate of men.” It’s even worse for women of color.
I won’t event get into my recent visit to the museum of psychiatry in which some of the symptoms listed not so long ago for mental illness in women included “no interest in doing housework.”
Speaking of vaginas …
Another “whoopsie” in terms of not testing things that go in women’s bodies and what effects they might have: a new study just determined pretty much all commercially available tampons contain heavy metals like arsenic and lead. Quoth the news release from U.C. Berkeley on the study: “Tampons are of particular concern as a potential source of exposure to chemicals, including metals, because the skin of the vagina has a higher potential for chemical absorption than skin elsewhere on the body.”
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that Facebook relentlessly advertised period underwear to me a couple years ago. While I was at first grossed out, all those targeted algorithms eventually wore me down, and I gave those washable, charcoal crotch-lined undies a shot. Turns out they’re amazing, I converted, and I’m no longer pumping arsenic up my baby chute.
Men, this is about you, too
Men, if this was all too much vagina/cervix/period talk for you to handle, that’s tough. Because women’s health is human health. Women’s reproductive organs are how you got here. It’s how your children got here. It’s what your mother, sisters, wives and friends deal with. If they’re not well, if they’re in pain that’s perfectly preventable, if they’re being told “it shouldn’t hurt,” that’s cause for concern for you, too. And if you want to give your lady a promo code for period underwear discounts, hit me up.
