Member-only story
I Had My IUD Removed
It was nearly as awful as I’d feared…
Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. ~ Fred Rogers
It wasn’t planned for that day, but in discussing my increasing pain during sex, how the pain triggers flashbacks, my prolonged, irregular and very heavy periods, my doctor made the point that having the IUD presented a complicating factor in figuring out what is going on and, well, I’ve wanted it out for a looooong while now.
In fact, I’d made an appointment with a different doctor, a male doctor my husband sees, to have it removed next month AND my anxiety levels had been WAY UP since making that appointment. The idea of a man’s hand in my vagina was proving to be too, too much.
Hell, there are days I can’t even attempt to make love with my husband because of the layers of different sexual traumas visited upon this body by various men — one of whom was a male doctor doing an annual exam (a story for another day. I have more to process about those memories and the realization that I’ve been hiding that experience from myself for years because I was feeling shame it happened).
So, I’m sitting there in the exam room with my doctor (a gentle, nurturing female provider), Luna, my service dog in…
