Congratulations! It's an IUD!

So, I’m not sleeping with anyone right now. Right after I finished writing about Atlas and the Meat, I thought, “I can’t believe I actually debated this…there is no way I can see him again.” And I haven’t. Then I was directing a show that had me working 80- to 100-hour weeks, in which I barely had time to bathe, let alone get in bed with someone. Nevertheless, despite the time crunch and the lack of a lover, the last six weeks have seen me working relentlessly towards a single goal: getting an IUD.


A lot of women I know have been getting pregnant lately. It’s bound to happen, you know, among women my age, but despite the fact that it is commonplace and, I would argue, expected among women my age, each new baby I hear about reinforces a notion I’ve had since the moment I became sexually active: that getting pregnant would absolutely ruin my life. My enthusiastic college sex life was filled with multiple forms of birth control used simultaneously, as well as the occasional neurotic pregnancy test “just to make sure”. Because while every ounce of my desire determined that there was no way I was going to shy away from a full and indulgent exploration of my sexuality, every ounce of fear in my head made me hypervigilant about pregnancy. Because getting pregnant would absolutely ruin my life.


I suppose I don’t have any less a fear of it now. I just have a little more faith in preventative measures. But the pill makes me feel crazy. Condoms are genius…when a guy doesn’t try to negotiate his way out of one. Now that they’re back on the market, sponges give a girl total control in terms of employing birth control, but they don’t really stay in place if you happen to be particularly athletic during a given evening, and honestly, they’re kind of gross. I mean, they’re sponges. By the time you take them out, they’re sponges full of semen. Yeah. So none of these options are particularly great, but neither is abstinence, or sex ruined by the anxiety of potential impregnation. But I refuse to have my biology trump my desire. My biology can’t tell me what I can and cannot do. Biology ain’t the boss of me.


So when yet another work colleague announced her pregnancy, my first response was to (accidentally) blurt out, “I am totally getting an IUD.”


Once I had this epiphany, I developed a one-track mind. I would get an IUD. I would conquer my biology. There was no room for failure.  So I found Dr. Coast, a short, sassy gyno with black plastic glasses, and I bluffed my way into an acute appointment. I got in for an exam within five days, which is almost unheard of. So la, la, la, Dr. Coast is examining me, and we get to the obligatory questions-or-concerns section, and I blurt out “I want to get an IUD.”


And Dr. Coast asks, “Are you interested in getting pregnant over the next five years?”


And I reply, “I am interested in running, screaming, from pregnancy over the next five years.”


So Dr. Coast says, “Then I think you’d be an excellent candidate.”


However, what I didn’t know is that there’s a whole ritualized procedure to getting an IUD. When you say you want one, the doctor doesn’t say, “Okay, how’s next week looking for you?” First, I had to schedule an appointment for an ultrasound of my uterus. No biggie, I think, what with all of the pregnancy movies that have a comforting technician gently rubbing what looks like a showerhead over the bulging belly of a beaming pregnant woman—sometimes while her husband or committed partner holds her hand.


But I told Charlotte, who also happens to be pregnant, about the ultrasound, and she said “Have fun with that. I imagine they’ll be sticking the Giant, Dildo-Shaped Camera up your hoo-haa. Be sure to pee first.”


I am shocked by this, because I thought I knew what I was getting into. And because they never show a Giant, Dildo-Shaped Camera in ultrasounds on TV. And because someone I’m not having sex with is going to stick something specifically “dildo-shaped” into my vagina.  And because that thing is modified by the adjective “giant.”


So when I got to the ultrasound, I was apprehensive. But when the friendly, Midwestern technician busted out the showerhead-looking device and told me I’d only have to unzip my pants, I relaxed. Maybe Charlotte was playing a trick on me. Giant, Dildo-Shaped Camera, indeed.


And I looked at my uterus on the screen, and I asked the tech, “Hey, are you going to give me pictures of my ultrasound like you do with pregnant women? You know, so I can show people?” And she laughed like I was joking, but the thing is, I wasn’t. It would be awesome to bust out the picture with a “Oh! Have you seen my ultrasound?” and excitedly show it off. It would be great to watch people trying to play the appropriate social role when confronted with the ultrasound, politely asking, “What is it?”, too afraid to say that they do not see a fetus anywhere in that ultrasound. And I could beam with pride and say, “Oh, it’s empty. That’s exactly what I was hoping for."


But no dice from the tech. Instead she said, “Okay, um, I can’t find your left ovary, so we’ll have to do a trans-vaginal ultrasound. So I’m going to leave the room for a second, and I’ll need you to take your pants and underwear off and cover up with this sheet.”


Obviously, I do as I’m told, but I’m secretly wishing that the tech had at least had the manners to buy a girl a couple of drinks before asking me to take my pants off. And just like she promised, she was back in a second, but she was carrying with her…a Giant, Dildo-Shaped Camera. And what I mean is, she was carrying an apparatus that looked to be about 18 inches long, with a handle the diameter of a soda can. It tapered to a certain degree, ending in a big, round lens the size of maybe a cow’s eyeball. However, there was no visual indication of where the handle ended and the specifically internal part of the camera began.


It was…daunting. The tech lubed up far, far too much of the device, and as she approached me, I started thinking, “Okay, it’s okay…just relax and breathe….” As it ends up, she only inserted the cow’s eyeball portion, so I only had to deal with the overwhelming social awkwardness of making small talk about spring weather while a woman I met 10 minutes ago, you know, maneuvers a camera inside my vagina. I reminded myself that the awkwardness is worth it in exchange for five years of complete freedom from potential pregnancy. And after the procedure is over, I resist the impulse to say, “So, you’re not going to ask me for my number?” So it was as painless as such awkwardness could have been.


But then I had to take 10 days of hormones in order to induce my period. Because the doctor needs to insert the IUD when you’re menstruating. I was instructed by the nurse, “Call us as soon as you start to bleed.” And all I could think was that that is a sentence I hope I never hear again.


I waited for my period like a child waiting for Santa. And about two weeks later, I called her just like I promised, and she instructed me to take this prescribed drug to “soften my cervix.” And I just went forward, following the directions to the letter, because this whole ordeal was something that should have happened a long, long time ago.


So last Friday afternoon found me back in Dr. Coast’s office, in a room decorated sometime during the late 1980s, as it looked a little bit like Blanche’s bedroom from The Golden Girls. I was naked from the waist down, covered only by one of those oddly-sized white medical sheets that never really wrap all the way around you, when the nurse comes in and looks at me and says, “You’re not really looking forward to this, are you?”


That was the first time I had considered that this procedure was something that I should not look forward to. She then added, “Don’t worry. It’s really only a problem for women who’ve never had a baby.”


“Um, I’ve never had a baby," I confess.


She smiled blandly. “Oh…well, it will be fine, I’m sure.”


Before I have a chance to really process these comments, Dr. Coast comes in. And she is full of sass and ready to go. She busts out the stirrups and the speculum and flags me down to the edge of the table like she’s guiding in a landing aircraft. She informs me that the first step is to numb my cervix with an anesthetic. I never considered that I’d need to be numbed.


“These anesthetics are usually used in dentist’s offices,” Dr. Coast informs me. “So they’re scented and flavored. We have Wild Cherry, and we have Piña Colada. You get your choice.”


Then she adds with a wink, “Keep in mind that it is Friday night…”


“Surprise me,” I said.


So she numbs my cervix with this spray, which stings but isn’t too bad. “Now you’re going to feel a pinch,” she says, and then both she and the nurse look up at me expectantly. “Oh, did it happen?” I ask, and they both look oddly relieved, and I start to think that maybe the nurse was just playing a trick on me. Not-really-looking-forward-to-this, indeed.


But what happened next is a sensation that I still have yet to process fully. Dr. Coast inserted the guide for the IUD into my uterus, and all I could do was take a giant gasp of air that for some reason I could not breathe out again. I hate to use the term “unnatural” because it implies that “natural” is inherently good, but I was overwhelmed with a sensation that was so profoundly unnatural that it felt like every orifice in my body was about to erupt. If blood had started spurting from my tear ducts, I wouldn't have been surprised.  And I was hit with a tidal wave of nausea and horror.


Because I was being penetrated someplace that was never meant to be penetrated. The uterus was not designed to be physically penetrated. Because it’s internal. I think I would have felt the same if someone was, you know, shoving their fist in my stomach or twirling their fingers around in my intestines. In the order of the human body, this act was never meant to happen.  But it was happening.


And I think I went into shock.

Dr. Coast said “You have to breathe…you have to breathe, but don’t move…” and the nurse came up towards my face and coached me into exhaling, since I was still holding onto my initial breath like a lifeline. The insertion itself only lasted a couple of minutes, but I couldn’t move afterwards, since my uterus started trying to reject the IUD. I mean, it is a foreign device and all. The pain was intense. And unnatural.


And the doctor was casually chatting with me for I don’t know how long, and I managed to collect myself enough to ask, “When does it stop hurting?” And she looked a little concerned. She said it should go after twenty to forty minutes, and wasn’t it going away now? After I said no, she asked if I was dizzy. I said, “Um…I don’t think so,” to which she replied, “Wrong answer. Lay there for a while, and don’t try to get off the table by yourself.”


I don’t know how long I was there on the table, with the doctor and the nurse repeatedly coming back into the room to check on me, but I know I was afraid I was going to vomit, and that I wasn’t feeling any better, and that the situation felt very socially awkward. They’d ask questions like, “Do you think you can get up now?” and when I’d say, “Um, I think so,” they’d say, “Okay, you hesitated. You need to stay.” And I wondered if I was failing some kind of test somehow.


So I gathered enough strength to pull my jeans and shoes back on and stumble out to the lobby. I knew it was a mistake to leave when I had to lean my whole body against the wall while waiting to give the receptionist my co-pay, but there was no way I was turning back. Because I wasn’t going to fail this test. I was going to have reproductive agency, no matter what I had to go through. And somehow, fleeing the doctor’s office was key to this.


I stumbled out to my car, and I managed to drive across town to my house, shaking and sweating and dizzy. About halfway through, the pain and nausea and physical horror—I really don’t think there’s any other term for the visceral sensation—became so intense that I thought I should go to the emergency room. The only thing that kept me on the path to my house was that the Gingerbread Cottage was a shorter distance than the ER.


It was like Clash of the Titans in my uterus. My body was the physical host of the epic struggle between technology and the natural world, and the natural world was not giving up without a fight. It. Was. Brutal. I didn’t know how I was going to stand it. I was alone in the Gingerbread Cottage, half-delirious, and my body became a battleground. Mercifully, I passed out. While the badass in me would like to say I went to sleep, really I actually lost consciousness. I awoke about four hours later at a tiny, tinny sound, one completely out of place with the Struggle of the Century happening inside me—the sound of a text message.


I bolted upright and took physical inventory. I was weak and shaky and tired, but the residual ache in my pelvis was the only evidence of the battle that had waged there. My breathing was hard and fast, but at the same time, I felt different than I had before my loss of consciousness. Drained though I may have been, I felt like something new, like something I had not been before. A transformation had occurred—I felt strange and powerful and hybrid. A cyborg, if you will:  part woman, part machine, but all agency.


Biology had tried to best me, but I won. I transformed in the process, but ultimately I triumphed. I passed out weak, but I woke up strong.


Armed. Like a Sex Warrior.


Impregnable. Unstoppable.


And with a lady garden tasting like cherries.